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 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!'"
For decades, The Comics Code served as one of America's premier Censorship Bureaus (this site even named the page after it for a time).
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 comic book publishers formed the Comics Code Authority as a self-censoring body to prevent the government from stepping in and making a mess of things - which probably led to even tighter censoring in order to get their code approved by the government. Among other things, the CCA - and its governing rules, known as The Comics Code - prohibited characters from questioning public authority figures, the usage of revealing clothing, and any depiction of narcotics. The Code also regulated what advertising could appear in comic books, though the restrictions are not especially surprising or controversial even now (e.g, no ads for liquor, tobacco, weapons, fireworks or gambling equipment...)
Once in place, The Code killed off adult interest in comic books and stereotyped the medium as fit only for children. William Gaines' EC Comics essentially left the newsstand comics business to focus on MAD. note Incidentally, Dr. Frederic Wertham, the psychologist who fueled much of the public backlash against the medium with his book, Seduction of the Innocent, actually denounced the code as a whitewash that made comics worse by removing the consequences of violence.
Major publishing houses Archie Comics (protecting its image of "wholesome American youth") and DC Comics (which, at the time, made most of its money from kid-friendly romance and science fiction titles) more or less forced the Code onto the comics industry. DC also owned Independent News, then the largest distributor in the Code's governing body, the Comics Magazine Association. Numerous publishing houses folded after the formation of the CCA since their subject matter was too dark, or had the living dead in it, and so couldn't pass the code, which conveniently cut down competition for the big guys.
Dell Comics and Gilberton (publisher of Classics Illustrated) stayed out of the CCA; Dell believed that their company brand and reputation was enough to reassure parents, and sold its comics with the slogan "Dell Comics are Good Comics." Neither publisher's lack of a CCA stamp harmed their profits, as both companies' comics sold well for most of the Comics Code's heyday. This also allowed Dell (and Gold Key Comics, which "spun off" from Dell in 1962) to occasionally publish comics that would not pass muster under the code, such as an adaptation of Dark Shadows featuring vampire Barnabas Collins.note
The Code began to lose power in the 1970s when Stan Lee wrote a Spider-Man story involving narcotics. Even though he portrayed drugs in an extremely negative light and wrote the story on the recommendation of the United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, the CCA stubbornly refused to place a seal of approval on the story because of the depiction of narcotics being used. In contrast, the CCA approved an earlier Deadman story where the superhero fought narcotics smugglers because the story focused on the wholesale handling of narcotics. Lee defied the CCA by removing the Code Seal from the storyline, which appeared in Amazing Spider-Man issues #96-98. Lee's story gained considerable public appreciation and critical acclaim, and thanks to all the egg on its face in light of the story's success, the CCA changed the Code to allow negative portrayals of drug abuse — but even with the change, the CCA would never recover from the damage to its reputation.
Two major revisions - one in 1971— Jonathan Ross on QI. The specific alleged rule is just an urban legend  , though comics editors were aware of The Problem with Pen Island.
and another in 1989 - relaxed and outright dropped many of The Code's stricter rules. The 1971 revision altered some of the stricter and more outdated provisions of the original Code while maintaining its basic structure, and the 1989 revision combined less restrictive views on old "crime, punishment, and sexuality" issues with Politically Correct injunctions against stereotyping.
The Code lapsed into true irrelevance during the 1980s. "Direct market" comic book specialty stores (which the Code didn't cover) cut into sales on the newsstands (which the Code did cover), and as "direct-only" comics from the established publishers became increasingly common, those publishers began to publish more and more comics without the Code Seal. Newer publishers, often producing comics explicitly aimed at older teen and adult readers, ignored the Code entirely.
DC Comics dropped the Code from the majority of their titles shortly after the turn of the 21st century, at about the same time that Marvel Comics withdrew from the Code entirely. In January 2011, DC abandoned the Code entirely in favor of its own in-house rating system. After those major departures, Archie Comics remained the Code's sole participant and administratornote , and after concluding that the Code served no purpose in light of its publishing standards - "We aren't about to start stuffing bodies into refrigerators", said Archie Comics' President Mike Pellerito - Archie abandoned the Code the day after DC did, thus rendering The Comics Code officially defunct.
According to some sources, the CMAA barely existed in the final year or so anyway; one person was checking the few DC books, while Archie just assumed that their comics were entitled to bear the stamp because, well, it was Archie, why wouldn't they?
On September 29th 2011, the Comics Magazine Association of America announced 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 which 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 coincided with the annual Banned Books Week campaign.
To learn more about the Code, including its origins, read The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America by David Hajdu.
The Code (1954 version
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| Comic Book Limbo | Comic Book Tropes | Comics Merger |
| Censorship Bureau | Censorship Tropes | The Hays Code |
| The Interregnum | The Ages of Superhero Comics | The Silver Age of Comic Books |
| Colbert Bump | Politics Tropes | DRM |
| The Interregnum | Useful Notes | The Silver Age of Comic Books |
alternative title(s): Comics Code Authority; Comics Code
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