Gosh Dang It / Comic Books

• Through most of the period The Comics Code was in place, one of the rules was that characters weren't allowed to curse, which led to many of the examples listed below. Even after the Code started to relax during the Bronze Age, the minced oaths were kept (for example, "hell" could not be used unless it referred to the place, like in the Ghost Rider comics).
• Spider-Man:
  • Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane has its teenage girl protagonists replace relatively mild "Omigod!" with "Omigosh!" whenever they get excited.
  • J. Jonah Jameson in most incarnations has an impressive vocabulary of mild swears ranging from "Poppycock" to "What in the dad-blamed Sam Hill?" Although in one comic by Peter David, when he gets repeated notes signed "F.N.S.M." (Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man), he mutters "I hate that F-n' S.M."
• In Madman, the titular character can't bring himself to curse even in the most dire of circumstances.
• Luke Cage - Luke promised his Momma he wouldn't swear. He just says things that sound kinda like usual swears, like "Sweet Christmas" and "Holy Spit!". This was averted in his later incarnations (SWEET F**KING CHRISTMAS!), but then was exaggerated in his most recent Heroes for Hire series (where wife Jessica Jones has him control his language after the baby starts cussing in imitation), and this carries over to his missions with Iron Fist.
  Cage: This guy is a bad Knick-Knack-Paddy-Whack!
  Iron Fist: A bad what?
• Nova never swears for the same reason. "Blue Blazes!" (his dad does it too)
• No one swears in Marvel Adventures, the all-ages version of the Marvel Universe, but cursing is alluded to...
  Captain America: For the record, I didn't say that.
  Storm: What did you say?
  Captain America: I can't say with ladies present.
• Squirrel Girl seems incapable of anything harsher than "Good golly gosh!" During the GLX-Mas Special, she warned the readers that the comic contained inappropriate use of the word "flock." Partly justified because the use of the word "flock" involved Mr. Immortal screaming Flock You!, as a substitute for, you know. Partly because Mr. Immortal was flocking with a flocking gun...
• X-Men: Wolverine, whose vocabulary likely includes a lot of words The Comics Code would have looked askance at, has generally settled on "flaming" as a compromise. He once prepared to fight Sabretooth by announcing it was time to open a can of "kick-butt." Seeing as, in more modern times, "flaming" can refer (often in a derogatory way) to flamboyant homosexuality, the change makes it worse. Instead of being a potty-mouth, now Wolverine sounds like a homophobe.
• Mark Gruenwald's Justice League pastiche series Squadron Supreme did this constantly, being released before Marvel began releasing comics without Comics Code approval. The result is a dark and cynical take on the Justice League with no insults harsher than "Son of a fish!"
• The Irredeemable Ant-Man lampshades and justifies this trope: S.H.I.E.L.D. operatives are trained to say "Blast!" instead of "Damn!" to avoid offending anyone in the field.
• PS238 has Zodon, an evil genius attending a school for superpowered children. The staff janitor is a technical genius himself though and implants a chip into Zodon which forces him to replace swear words with harmless random words. If he tries to go into a stream of profanity he will begin speaking out the lyrics to show tunes.
• Atomic Robo doesn't swear, tending to make use of more esoteric terms like "horsefeathers!" and "Cheese and Crackers!" Justified, since Robo was created and "grew up" before World War II.
• Captain America: The Cap, being traditional American values on legs, never swears, though he sometimes uses this trope.
  (Captain America jumps onto an F-15 and smashes the cockpit; understandably, the pilot expresses his surprise)
  Pilot: Jesus!
  Captain America: Keep flying, son. And watch that potty mouth!
• Tintin:
  • Tintin himself would use "Great Snakes!" or "Crumbs!"
  • As a sailor Captain Haddock's stream of abuse is, if not rude, then certainly inventive. His trademark phrases are "Billions of blue blistering barnacles!" and "Thousands of thundering typhoons!" When particularly angry, "billions of blue blistering barnacles in a thundering typhoon!" is heard. When Hergé originally designed the character, he wanted him to swear, well, like a sailor. However, the publishers wouldn't let him, so he came up with a bunch of creative euphemisms instead. It became one of the Captain's defining and most memorable character traits.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: In the early black and white issues, the characters' swearing was limited to heartfelt cries of "Dung!"
• Rogue Trooper uses hell! as its curse of choice. This continued even after 2000 AD started to use proper swearing. In some parts of the world (America specifically), it is still proper swearing (albeit very mild).
• World War Hulk had this exchange between The Incredible Hulk and his father-in-law.
  General Ross: Hulk! Why won't you die already?!
  Hulk: That's your job!
  Ross: Not ding-dong likely, you crazy monster!
• Super Dinosaur being an all ages series uses this crud all the time.
• In The Powerpuff Girls story "Smart And Smarter" (Cartoon Network Block Party #59), Blossom alienates her sisters by trying to show how intellectually inferior they are to her. When she asks Buttercup what her motivation for fighting Mojo is, Buttercup replies, "Usually it's to beat the puckey out of him... but right now it's to get you to shut up!!
• I Hate Fairyland is filled with Cluster "Fluff" Bombs. You heard that right. Among other swears, "fluff" serves as a cutesy replacement for "fuck", despite its Gorn-filled Sugar Bowl setting. The revival series shows that even after leaving Fairyland, Gert still uses "fluff" instead of the F-word. She claims it's force of habit. In-universe, this is justified with wizards whose job is to magically censor profanity.
• Knights of the Dinner Table usually spells "God" as "Gawd". They also frequently use amusing outburst like "Firk-Ding-Blast!" and "What the SAM FRICK?"
• Several members of the Archer family in Archer & Armstrong speak like this. Even during a battle to the death they won't utter anything stronger than "goshdangit" or "flippin' bullcorn".
• Superlópez: ¡Mecachis en la mar! (a family friendly "Holy crap!")
• Superman:
  • If Superman utters even the word "hell", you know you've pissed him right off. He's nice and polite enough to avoid curse words, so if you've made him mad enough to start actually swearing at you, you are in trouble. (See: Darkseid in The Supergirl from Krypton (2004)).
  • Parodied in The Killers of Krypton:
    Supergirl: You're a strong, independent young woman. Heck, you're a superhero. Cousin of THE superhero. And he must have rubbed off on you. Why else did I just use the word "heck"?
  • Parodied in The Hunt for Reactron when Lois Lane utters "Oh Snap", eliciting an incredulous reaction from Lana Lang. Lois mutters she got it from Jimmy Olsen.
    Lois Lane: "Oh Snap![...]"
    Lana Lang: "Did you... Did you just say "Oh Snap"?
    Lois Lane: I heard Jimmy saying it.
• Shazam!/Captain Marvel is, if anything, even milder than Supes himself under most writers, justified in that the Big Red Cheese's alter ego is a kid several years too young to drive.
• "Marvel What-The..." parodies the trope to hell and back, as usual. Executive Meddlers take offense at "Son of Satan" and change the character to "Son of Santa". Hilarity and a hailstorm of bad X-mas puns ensue.
• In The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye, "damn" and "hell" are now considered as passable curses. However "frag" and "scrap" are also thrown in for variety. Most notably though, there is the occasional use of the word "frikking" — it translates to "freaking" which is itself a potential replacement for "fucking". So far Whirl is the only one to have used it to imply that he is particularly foul-mouthed.
  • Ultra Magnus is particularly polite, and when he does attempt to curse it's usually via some euphemism from decades past. The closest he's gotten to a real curse word is when he yelled "Screw Getaway!" and them promptly apologized for his language.
• In an issue of X-Force, Psylocke gets fed up with Marrow swearing constantly, and messes with her brain so that she's saying random words or gibberish instead. But Marrow still thinks she's swearing and doesn't understand why people keep giggling at her.
  Marrow: Aw, croutons.
• In the 2017 Comic-Book Adaptation of Rocko's Modern Life, when Rocko's Deal with the Devil takes him to hell, there's a "Welcome to Heck" sign with the "ck" being written on a piece of paper that's covering what's likely to be two "l"s. The sign also reads "Mind your manners. This ain't a barn! We got families here!"
• Batman: The Robins usually used interesting lingo in place of swears, until Tim took up the mantle as he generally just used cuss words instead (though milder ones, like saying "Crap squared"). Damian makes no attempts to avoid cussing either.
• Wonder Woman Vol 1: Etta Candy uses "goldurned" (as a substitute for god dammed) on occasion, though Bobby's "Cataleptic Cats!" exclamation takes the cake.
• The Sensational She-Hulk:
  • While falling down in issue #11, She-Hulk utters a string of g-rated "profanities" such as "ear wipe", "dog shingles", "death pokes" and "pig strings".
  • Issue #13 features an entire town full of people who talk like this because they've been terrified into being as ludicrously wholesome as possible by an alien-possessed priest.
• Alt★Hero: Shiloh's reaction to the police car signaling her is "Well, fudgesticks!"
• Hitman uses a fair number of minced oaths, including "frigging" and "motherlover." As Tommy is downright mortified after using one in front of Superman, the implication seems to be that they're using the full words.

---