Two versions of “Dick Tracy” show odd censorship

There are two versions of “Dick Tracy” today.  The first is found in the print and digital Chicago Tribune:

So there’s obviously a threat being made to George, but to understand the nature of that threat we have to remember a couple of days before, that the driver had kidnapped a young girl (although we saw only the lead up to the kidnapping and then a police report of it afterward, not the kidnapping itself).  The version on Comics.com provides a clear reminder:

I’m not going to criticize the Tribune harshly here. It is a comic. Perhaps thee is a policy against showing violence against women / children (or maybe everyone) as an explicit picture – although apparently story lines involving murder and kidnapping are OK (hard to imagine Dick Tracy without them!).

Actually, it’s just surprising that the Tribune still has editors who have time to pay attention to stuff like this; the paper has been improving recently, but it’s still not where it was – how could it be, with all the cost cutting?