Comics Code - Television Tropes & Idioms

Approved by humourless 40-year-olds for concerned parents.

Comics were investigated after a certain Doctor Fredric Wertham brought out a book called Seduction of the Innocent in 1954, calling for the introduction of a self-regulating body known as the Comic Code Authority, that had such ridiculous rules as, you could not use the word "flick" in a comic for fear that the "l" would run into the "i"◊ and Spider-Man would be saying, "Look, he's got a fuck knife!"

— Jonathan Ross on QI, repeating a (not too far from the truth) urban legend.

One of the premier Censorship Bureaus (to the point where that article used to be named after it). Back in the 1950s, a moral panic about the corrupting influence of crime and horror comics swept North America, leading to calls for government regulation. To head it off, the Comics Code Authority was formed by the comic book companies as a self-censoring body so that the government wouldn't step in and really make a mess of things. Among other things, the CCA — and its governing rules, known as the Comics Code — prohibited public authority figures from ever being questioned, clothing from being too revealing, and the depiction of narcotics at all (even when the context was completely negative — something that ultimately led to the Code's undoing).

Once it was in place, The Code killed adult interest in comic books and stereotyped the medium as fit only for children. Many publishing houses folded after the formation of the CCA, which almost included William Gaines' EC Comics, publisher of Tales from the Crypt — until it hit the jackpot by focusing solely on Mad Magazine. Mad was originally published as a comic book, but changed to magazine format to keep editor Harvey Kurtzman on board. While the legend goes that the change in format was done to escape the code - which did happen - that assumption is (probably mostly) incorrect.

The Code was more or less forced onto the comics industry by major publishing houses Archie Comics (protecting its image of "wholesome American youth") and DC Comics, which (at the time) was making most of its money from kid-friendly romance and science fiction titles and owned Independent News, which was the largest distributor in the Code's governing body, the Comics Magazine Association (few fans today know that DC was the prime distributor for Marvel Comics until 1968).

When the romance comic craze petered out, DC found a way to manage by focusing on a modernized take on the Super Hero, and Marvel Comics (who had never totally abandoned the superhero concept and had attempted limited revivals for years after the war's end) took it further with more compelling characters that skirted around the Code's limitations; a good example is the Incredible Hulk, who had the U.S. military as an enemy, but only because there was a tragic misunderstanding about the monster's character.

The Code began to lose power in the 1970s when Stan Lee wrote a Spider-Man story involving narcotics. Even though it portrayed drugs in an extremely negative light and was written on the recommendation of the United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Lee was told that the Code would not allow the story to be published because of the depiction of narcotics used; in contrast, an earlier Deadman story where the superhero fought narcotics smugglers was approved because the goods in question were merely the focus of wholesale handling. Lee, realizing the stupidity of this decision, simply defied the CCA by removing the Code seal for the issues that involved that story; when the story was published, it was greeted with considerable public appreciation and critical acclaim. The Comics Code was soon changed to allow negative portrayals of drug abuse, but the damage to its reputation had already been done.

Lee's defiant act may have been the beginning of the end for the Comics Code, but the killing blow was in the 1980s. "Direct market" comic book specialty stores that weren't covered by the Code were quickly replacing the newsstands that were covered; as this change happened, comic publishers began printing comics without the Code seal regularly (just as comic books stopped showing up on newsstands on a regular basis). The Code itself had dropped or relaxed many of its stricter rules with two major revisions, one in 1971 and the other in 1989, but it was too late: Marvel's and DC's main comic lineups dropped the Code shortly after the turn of the century, and DC abandoned the Code entirely in favor of its own in-house rating system (similar to what Marvel started doing) in January 2011, which left Archie Comics as the Code's sole participant and administrator (the Code had always been under the supervision of an Archie employee). After concluding that the Code was superfluous to its own publishing standards—"We aren't about to start stuffing bodies into refrigerators", said Archie Comics' President Mike Pellerito—Archie itself abandoned the Code the day after DC did, which rendered the Comics Code officially defunct.

The Comics Magazine Association of America announced on September 29, 2011, that it had sold the intellectual property rights of the Comics Code seal to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, a U.S.-based non-profit organization that helps to protect the First Amendment rights of comic creators, publishers and retailers by helping cover legal expenses. In a nice little twist, the sale happened to coincide with the annual Banned Books Week campaign.

If you want to read more about the history of the CCA, head over to That Other Wiki

. The article includes a full list of the Code's 1954 guidelines, but here's the bottom line: if it would offend your aged Aunt Martha, it was not publishable — and since your aged Aunt Martha was not a major market for comics, the publishers basically said "whatever" and ran the presses anyway.

Those who are interested in the Comics Code and how it came about should look for The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America by David Hajdu.

It's interesting to note that although Frederic Wertham had repeatedly stated that he was against censorship ("I detest censorship.", spoken in his interview with the 1954 Senate Subcommittee Hearings into Juvenile Delinquency), many of his statements and actions would suggest otherwise ("If those responsible refuse to clean up the comic-book market - and to all appearances most of them do, the time has come to legislate these books off the newsstands and out of the candy stores." from Judith Crist's 1948 article in Collier's Magazine titled "Horror in the Nursery"). When the Comics Code was implemented, many publishers found it to be extremely strict. Wertham, however, saw it as inadequate (even though it almost led to the downfall of EC Comics, and killed some of the most popular crime and horror comics, completely removing them from the market). For the record, not only did he believe that violent and sexual imagery in comics were bad for children, but he also believed that comic books contributed to illiteracy and other problems.

(Oh, and in case you were wondering, the page-topping quote refers to something that was never a part of the Comics Code

The code (1954 version):

Please note, while some of these guidelines make sense, others are far too open to interpretation, which was essentially done not by writers but by the CCA. Others are inevitably limiting a writer to Black & White portrayals of morality. And others are just... WHAAAAA??? What's wrong with the word 'Horror'?