Comics Code Seal R.I.P.

Ugly isn't it?

The comics code seal was a self-imposed, self-regulatory marker crafted by the various comic book publishers to get the government and parents groups off their back.

Last month, it went tits up and died. DC comics, and finally Archie comics, stopped submitting to the Comics Code Authority, basically killing it in favor of their own reader advisories.

Discussions about the legacy of this code, and the motivations behind its rules and haphazard application will go on for a long time. For my part, I've always seen it as a mechanism for censorship, and I've always considered it to be something as un-American and fascist as the presumptuous House Un-American Activities Committee was. As damaging as its control was, the seal itself enabled something just as bad if not worse than the promulgation and enforcement of the subjective morals of a few onto the public. The seal established (-in a way that even Frederic Wertham's books and writings couldn't have-) that comic books were a medium for children. More than any of the CCA seal's insipid and condescending rules about allowable portrayals of sex, crime and violence, it was the presumptions of the comic book audience's makeup, and the parallel assumptions about the sophistication, intelligence and emotional vulnerability of readers that did the most harm.

As a reader and creator in the medium, I blame the seal and the CCA for much of the bad writing in comics for the past several decades, and nearly all of the mediocrity foisted on readers across all genres. I am thankful that I was born late enough to be spared toiling under its yoke.

I can be heard briefly speaking about the Comics Code, and the history of the CCA's predecessor at Troy Price's Completely Comics blog at about 34 minutes in at this link:
http://www.talkshoe.com/talkshoe/web/audioPop.jsp?episodeId=454653&cmd=apop


-SJ