How would comic history have changed if they never existed?
>>150743301more variety other than superheroes, superheroes would likely be a niche genre. No MCU or DCEU
>>150743301I don't like these "what if?" scenarios. but it would be better, more variety of comics. less censorship, ect. possibly comics would be more widely accepted. think of the manga industry.
>>150743301more tity and pusy
>>150743301Truthfully, comics would not have been as good. The limitations were simple- no degeneracy, no swearing. This prevented comic creation teams from half-assing it for decades. They had to put work into the story. They had to put work into the art. They had to be classy. They had to tell heroic tales, and sweeping Shakespearean epics about whatever character they were hired to create comics about.Look at how far it's fallen without the Comics Code. Comics are mostly large-panel art, because it takes up more room. Crossed and Preacher exist. Invincible wouldn't have gotten away with a fraction of the blood-pouring art- and hopefully wouldn't have gotten away with the trashy Eve's father stuff either.
>>150743301We'd have more genres, but publishers would still have control and force IPs, 'universes', and timeline cancer - which are all the real reasons why American comics suck ass.
>>150743433This is utterly laughable. Comics Code actively clamped down on the kinds of stories that could be told, forcing writers to rely on superdickery.
>>150743433>sweeping Shakespearean epics
>>150743433Ok, I'll take the bait.What is your gripe with Preacher?
>>150743317Funny animal, western, and general adaptation comics thrived under the code though. They eventually went away because of issues with distribution
>>150743433>They had to put work into the story. They had to put work into the art. They had to be classy. They had to tell heroic tales, and sweeping Shakespearean epics about whatever character they were hired to create comics about.Where are these comics? Please tell me. I've been searching for ages.
>>150743301Would be more varied and diverse, more popular, better in every way. Superheroes would be much less prominent in American culture, Marvel might not even exist
>>150743301-no Morbius-more crime stories-more porn-more leftist stuff, characters and plots that criticize capitalism-more violence-drugs-homosexual stuff-rebellious stuff, stories that depict corrupt cops and politicians-more horror-lex luthor might have been depicted as a corrupt CEO soonerbasically some stuff that made manga and anime successful, and stuff (leftist stuff and depicting corrupt officials) that is still not depicted enough>>150743433highly debatable. by taking away freedoms of writers, the comics of the past are vanilla and cheesy, which had and still has the effect of lowering the bar. the vanilla boy scout shit carried over in to cartoons and movies
>>150743509He's saying they had to write Shakespeare when Shakespeares plays never would've made it past the Code. What with the Ghosts, the violence, the suicides, the subversion of authority figures, bad ends and occasional villain protagonism. Heck, they might even have disallowed Othello like they tried with that one Bradbury adaption. He is at best a contrarian looking for attention by lying on the internet, and at worse something far more vile and despicable.
I've always hated that the medium of comics is so disproportionately wrapped up in a single niche of costumed heros with powers, endlessly recycling one sliver of an idea over and over while all the other genres are barely explored.
>>150743433What's so bad about blood?
>>150743301Comics would actually compete with manga.
>>150743509X-Men. Jack of Hearts. Warlord. OMAC. Sectaurs. ROM. DP7. Green Arrow. John Sable. Captain America. Conan. Komandi. Jonah Hex. The Forever People. Empire.How many writers were handed trash assignments and were expected to turn it into gold? How many were narrowly pushed into succeeding due to the CC? How many genres are now lost to time, where writers would work themselves like torture over to follow order to turn some stupid space invasion story into something epic- for 5 pages? The restrictions of the CC prevented comic teams from only producing "The day my boss got killed" for 12 issues a year. I'm sure that 'co would happily give a pass to horror writers who would have drawn 50% of their work as pinup girls, but they weren't all Bruce Timm.
>>150743526What makes manga successful is that artists are allowed to have original stories rather than "oh, your superhero is in his own universe? that universe is now the DC universe. Batman is now the most important person in your hero's universe".You cannot function as a writer in those conditions.
>>150743301People have this fantasy of comic paradise if there was no CCA but the reality is that after reading about comics history, only some things would changeDC would've stayed mostly the same, they stopped having Batman and Superman kill by the mid-1940s, way, way before the horror/crime trend much less the CCAFawcett pretty much stopped making comics after the DC lawsuit settlementEC might've continued on and still turned MAD into a magazine (Gaines only did that to keep Kurtzman on board; it was only coincidental that it was able to bypass the CCA, they weren't even thinking of that), they would probably keep publishing the horror titles Quality Comics would've still gone under (because they lost their distributor, which had nothing to do with CCA)Harvey Comics might've either continued publishing horror or pivoted because they bought the rights to the Famous Studios characters (Casper, Baby Huey, etc).Knowing about all the drama with comic creators and fandom means I honestly don't believe it would've improved much, you'd still have the petty dramas and penny pinching that was going on. They'd still have to deal with the comics market problem in the 70s that caused the direct market to happen.
>>150743819Are you being serious with this list?
>>150743964Obviously not. Jon Sable is a comic that was published independently and without the CCA
>>150743819Preacher is easily better than all of these, come on.
>>150743526Stop talking shit
>>150743301>How would comic history have changed if they never existed?America would have a thriving comic book industry with actual variety in genres and might realistically rival the manga industry instead of being a pathetic fucking joke.Comics Code fucked America so completely that people who were born after it don't even realize how bad it is. It's the reason why comics are today seen as a juvenile thing, something for children and idiots only.
By the mid-50s comics were already facing a shrinking market, due to competition from television and censorship pressures from parents groups and Congress. Eventually some publishers, like Martin Goodman, would have just gotten out, leaving DC, Dell and maybe Charleton, Archie or Harvey. No Marvel.
>>150743433Kill yourself apologist.Superhero comics were a tiny fucking niche before Comics Code. After Comics Code, they became 90% of everything cause the code made it impossible to tell stories that are not meant for stupid five-year-olds. It crippled storytelling completely, all based on the idiotic lie that the whole art medium needs to be suitable for toddlers.
>>150743492funny animals is far superior than cape shit
>>150744825Maybe in other countries
>>150743568Yeah, another thing I noticed is that titles like Johan Hex and Princess Amethyst were more comics that existed in there own worlds but eventually became apart of the greater DC superhero universe.
>>150743301As far as cape comics go, probably would allow uncensored cursing in the big 2. Things like nudity would still be rare because that an american thing that stretches far beyond comics code.
>>150743478don’t you know this is an obvious reference to Hamlet? uncultured swine
>>150746026What part, exactly?
Oh look another thread where people just say things without knowing the actual history of what happened.The CCA didn't kill non-superhero genres. It just got rid of the horror and edgy crime books. Those books continued to be published as magazines, though distribution issues made them a small market. Most retailers didn't want to have adult-only books available for purchase. The cultural mores of the 50s through the mid-60s were much different from today. Films and television that featured what would eventually be considered R-rated or TV-MA content didn't exist in America. Of course that wouldn't be allowed in picture books either.
>>150746596Didn't that let Archie and kids comic florish? I remember reading Harvey used to make horror comics before switching to kids comics. I think Harvey buying out Famous Studio's cartoon IP's also had something to do with it.
>>150746655This blog researched comic sales from 1969 through 1989. https://rsmwriter.blogspot.com/2023/01/comics-sales-1969-1970.html Lot of Archie domination in 69, no fewer than 10 best-selling comics from that line.
>>150746596To be fair Blood Feast was released in the early 60s so things were changing
>>150747270Very slowly. The production values, acting, editing on Blood Feast are absolute bottom of the barrel because no one remotely professional would go near something like that.
>>150746596It gets annoying to see automated botslop and smoothbrains claim that the CCA got rid of every genre when anyone who actually researches comics history knows the only genres that went mostly away were horror and crime, and even then it was only brief. Was the CCA idiotic and had stupid-ass restrictions? Yes. But their peak of power was 1954 to maybe arguably 1968. Dell did a horror comic in 1962 where there was a story where kids were implied to have gotten crushed and absorbed into a monstrous hand. (Find this in Ghost Stories #1) Dell was able to get away with this because they convinced people that they were able to self-censor better than the rest of the comics industry and didn't need the CCAHorror anthologies came back through Warren Publications' Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella. Creepy started in 1964. Because they were magazines they bypassed the CCA. Warren ended in the early 80s because of a combination of bad circumstances (business problems, James Warren having health problems)DC which never jumped on the 50s horror trend, got EC alumni Joe Orlando to revamp House of Mystery as a full-on Horror book in the late 60s. From there early 70s DC had a bunch of horror titlesMarvel also brought back more horror stuff in the 70s and did their own black-and-white magazine line during that decade.Nobody who keeps peddling the CCA Destroyed All Genres mantra ever stops to think about when the genres came back and why they didn't do well after. (Protip: 1970s problems had nothing to do with the CCA)
>>150744825Not really.
>>150743433The code wouldn't have stopped any of those books from existing, the CCA only policed books sold on newsstands, not those sold on the direct market.>>150743526Morbius was created in 1971 in a CCA approved comic, when Marvel started giving him is own solo adventures throughout the 70's they moved him to a large format magazine Vampire Tales like the original Vampirella and Heavy Metal which weren't under the CCA's Jurisdiction.>>150743492The animal books didn't die because they weren't approved, they were, Gold Key just didn't print the seal on the books. They died because licensing them became too expensive by the 1960.
>>150743301>How would comic history have changed if they never existed?The truth nobody wants to talk about is that if the industry didn't self-regulate with the CCA, it would've ended up with a government body forming to regulate it. Things were already past the point of no return, the scandal had gotten big enough that there was no way out where things could just stay the same.
>>150749430But what if Wertham never went after comics
>>150743819>Conan>Thrash.Anon... there's a reason for it having one of the most rabid copyright holders around.
>>150749430What would government regulation be life though, the actual regulation was partially a scam from DC and Archie designed to destroy certain companies and genres all together
>>150749771Well, for one thing; it'd be absurdly unconstitutional. Whether you consider that a reason for or against it's existence depends on your opinion of 50s to mid 60s congress and supreme court.
>>150743301We'd have flying cars and free pussy for everybody.
>>150743433Can't sleep contrarian without /co/
>>150743433>The limitations were simple- no degeneracy, no swearingyou're a fucking revisionistthey couldn't should horror elements, which were so strict to ban basic movie monsters
>>150743689Holy shit, this!
People often fixate on the effect of the CCA on the comic books themselves rather than the much more damaging in the long run stigma that it created: By saying that comics need to be suitable for young kids, it also pushed the idea into the public consciousness that comics ARE for young kids and made adults look down on them in a way that didn’t happen in Europe or Japan.
>>150750350They even got upset at Marv Wolfman's last name it was so bad>>150752661You still see this today with people who claim to be fans of the medium going on about how comics should always be silly and that Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns ruined everything
>>150743301Comics would die as a medium because jews would only draw pornography and snuff.
>>150752855There's no pulling "the joos" card here. Wertham was Jewish too.
>>150752913So?
>>150752661Everything back then needed to be suitable for young kids, film and television. Picture books just always had that stigma, especially superheroes, an inherently juvenile concept. Same deal with animation. Can't get past it.>>150752815Alan Moore regrets making edgy superheroes for adults and wishes people would move on from them.> “Hundreds of thousands of adults lining up to see characters and situations that had been created to entertain the 12-year-old boys – and it was always boys – of 50 years ago. I didn’t really think that superheroes were adult fare. I think that this was a misunderstanding born of what happened in the 1980s – to which I must put my hand up to a considerable share of the blame, though it was not intentional
>>150744825Nah
>>150743354>Last oneDidn't that eventually did happen?
>>150743301Someone would make a commie-sympathizing comic in the late 60s/early 70s, the government would've talked about, and publishers would've had to establish their own MPAA/CCA or get fucked by the FCC
>>150743526>(leftist stuff and depicting corrupt officials) that is still not depicted enoughMaybe on Planet Retard
>>150754710Funny thing is that Stan Lee was anti-commie in the 60s because that was LBJ's position.
>>150754400His capestuff is for teens, though.
>>150754400>Everything back then needed to be suitable for young kids, film and television.My point is that was a peculiarly American phenomenon. Before the Hays Code and the CCA, Americans WERE producing more adult films and comics. After those rules were applied, blanket-style to the entire industries regardless of who that content was aimed at under the pretext of protecting the youth, Americans didn't produce mainstream adult content again until years later when first the Hays code, then the CCA started to be weakened and then ignored. Meanwhile other countries continued to produce more adult films and comics.Other (democratic) countries brought in age ratings more in line with what the MPAA would do after the Hays Code was dead, but they didn't say>if you produce content featuring anything from this list of objectionable content, theatres won't show it and stores won't sell itlike was done in the US, with the exception of outright porn and the odd particularly gory horror movie that was banned on an individual basis under local obscenity laws.
>>150743301The world would have ended sooner.
>>150756297?
>>150743844alan moore did it with swamp thingneil gaiman did it with sandman>>150744769stop wasting my air?>>150749159morbius was created as a scientific "living" vampire to get around CCA>>150754723let me guess. you think liberals and leftists are the same?
>>150743526no morbin' time?
>>150757752kek it would be normal vampires, constantly rebooted. just like today.
>>150743301They did really ruined our life?
>>150757745Sugma
>>150759073Not remotely.
Albert Fish is responsible for the MCU
>>150752661>By saying that comics need to be suitable for young kids, it also pushed the idea into the public consciousness that comics ARE for young kids and made adults look down on them in a way that didn’t happen in Europe or Japan.Some parts of Europe yes, some parts no. There was no public outrage against lurid violent comics in the UK, there were a lot of comics in the 80s particularly that very much weren't for kids, but the general public perception there still remains "comics are for kids", and even the "not for kids" comics were mostly read by teens, not adults.There's a very good chance that in a timeline with no CCA, the USA is still stuck in a "comics are just for kids" mentality, and never becomes like Japan or Italy.
>>150754900Regardless of their silly elements, Swamp Thing and Watchmen are quite a bit more sophisticated than say Friday the 13th, a dumb slasher movie made for 17-19 year olds. It's the Image bros who catered to that market.
>>150743301I cannot believe people defend this shit. Comics are censored up the ass already and it sucks.
>>150743689You're a moron if you actually believe that.
>>150760547People just like to be contrarian
>>150743433>They had to tell heroic tales, and sweeping Shakespearean epics Holy reddit
>>150743819The Grell comics are better without the Code. Conan is better without the Code.X-Men and the toy tie-ins are slop.
