[Rune Son of Bjarne]

In my book there is a "nice" little drawing of dead elves as well as one of a dead Glaurung. I would say that both these drawings has what you ask for, the first one is quite brutal (but not vulgar) and the second one has a monster.

The conserns about what is potrayed might not be baseless, but they are certainly not as big problems as they are made out to be. . . . We all want different things and most of the time we don't get what we want.
I would have like to see sertain landscapes in the illustrations, but other motives where picked. That is too bad, but I doubt that it is because of some plot against these particular landscapes.

Don't blow things out of porportion

And just for the record: I belive that it does matter if the battles and killings are written in great graphic detail or not. If a writter finds something important they will put extra focus on the event, point it out to you.
Now Tolkien seldom goes into great detail about the killings and battles, but yet there is quite a lot of them. The thing is that war is what drives these kind of stories about heros and their deeds, that Tolkien wanted to write. If you look at what he spends time on, it is what goes on between charachters (and sometimes he likes to descripe a landscape), he seldom uses alot of time on the battle itself. The battle is there because it needs to be in order to drive the story forth.

Yes killings has a place in the story, but the main focus does not lie on how many orcs Turin killed and how he killed them.

At least that is my take on it, not having given it very much thought.