The Comics Code Is Dead: DC and Archie Drop Out

[The Straight Story]

The Comics Code Is Dead: DC and Archie Drop Out


The dominoes fell quickly. From comic institution and infamous legacy of kneecapping a medium in order to “protect the children” to irrelevant and unused in just two days.

The Comics Code Authority was an industry trade group formed to promote self-regulation and fend off government censorship. The code was first adopted by publishers in 1954 in response to Fredric Wertham‘s Seduction of the Innocent and Congressional investigation into lurid and excessive comics, often horror titles.



A comic was submitted to a group of readers, who would then evaluate whether that issue was suitable to carry the CCA seal, shown here. Concerned parents were supposed to look for this stamp on the cover to be sure they were getting something suitable for their children. The size of the seal varied over the years, from taking up significant cover real estate during periods of concern to smaller than a stamp at other times. Many purchasers in the current age had no idea what it was about. Historians of the field now bemoan it as restrictive and controlling.

The first chink in the code happened in 1971, when Stan Lee pushed through the publication of The Amazing Spider-Man #96–98 without the code seal. This story, about how terrible drug abuse was, demonstrated the problem with blanket rules. If you said that narcotic use, for instance, couldn’t be shown in a comic, you also couldn’t do a story about its evils. For much more on the history, including copies of the code in its different revisions, read Seal of Approval: The History of the Comics Code by Amy Kiste Nyberg.

Marvel Quits

In 2001, Marvel announced that they were quitting the group and would not be using the seal, instead adopting their own rating system. (At first, they ran into trademark issues, as they copied the movie ratings, which are protected as intellectual property to prevent movie companies from self-rating.) Since independent companies rarely used the CCA, aiming to sell to older readers through the direct market instead of attracting the young on newsstands, that left just a few big publishers as members.

http://comicsworthreading.com/2011/01/22/the-comics-code-is-dead-a-history-and-recent-news/

[alphafemale]

1. Some of the horror comics I devoured as a kid were pretty damn gruesome.

And that would have been in the 70's.

[Teaser]

2. damn. Can't wait to see what Archie, Betty and Veronica get up to now

.

[LiberalEsto]

3. Don't forget Jughead

I always suspected he might be a perv

[Teaser]

4. "hey baby"

"Wanna see why I wear the crown?"

[WolverineDG]

9. Reggie's the perv

Jughead is the druggie.

dg

[Ikonoklast]

7. Archie isn't invited.

Go from there.

[CanSocDem]

5. Darn those Free Press Weeklies...

...of the 60's.

The first time I realized the ComicsCode was under attack was in 1967 when someone showed me that famous REALIST centerfold with all the Disney characters in one sex act or another. That was mindblowing but when all the underground cartoonists started publishing...seemingly without any restraint, it was as if there were NO rules.

.

[Amerigo Vespucci]

6. I remember when Marvel dropped the code seal for a couple of anti-drug issues of Spider-Man

This was back when Gil Kane was the illustrator, in the 70s. If I believe correctly, Harry Osborne...son of The Green Goblin...had a monkey on his back and the Comics Code said "no" to the story. Marvel said "fine" and ran the issues without the Code seal, which returned when they had finished.

At the time, it was a bold move, one that was applauded by many, and rightly so.

:toast:

[Towlie]

8. The word "FLICK" is forbidden by the code, just in case the "L" and "I" run together.

True story.

[TlalocW]

11. Ursula Andress, Catherine Deneuve., and Charo... twice.

Sean Connery ringing in on SNL's Celebrity Jeopardy when Foreign Flicks was chosen as the category.

TlalocW

[TlalocW]

10. Go here and scroll down to the images I uploaded

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x256086

It's all done in fun, but there have been some weird things done in comics that you can see at this site (where I got the images from):

http://www.superdickery.com

Some of it is the website owner's skewed sense of humor looking for whatever he can find; some of it are panels of comics that use words that have changed their meaning over the years (like boner); a lot of it is probably just poor judgment by artists and editors on what to put in comics, not thinking that something would be considered wrong or weird, but some of it is weird stuff you wonder how it got past the CCA to begin with.

Early Wonder Woman has always fascinated me because the guy who created her, William Marston, had an interesting history - credited with creating the lie detector (and giving Wonder Woman a golden lasso that compels people to tell the truth) as well as having an interesting marriage where both he and his wife had a relationship with the same woman. I wonder - did any of that get into Seduction of the Innocent?

TlalocW