>people still bring up the Comics Code Authority like it's relevant when Marvel stopped following it in 2001, and the last two publishers that did follow it, DC and Archie, stopped doing so in 2011
>>152961733Um, it ended a long, long time before 2001. Not sure where you're getting your info from. the comics code ended in the mid-70s
>>152961733I haven't heard it discussed in decades, but it feels like a lot of guys abided by the code long after it was irrelevant. Like the whole 90s was a back and forth between people who wanted superheroes to be edgier and guys who wanted to maintain golden/silver age morals. Kind of why I don't like Kingdom Come. It's very much arguing for the morals imposed by the CCA to be the defining traits of superheroes
>people still bring up the Comics Code Authority like who?
>>152961733You are the only one that has brought it up. In green text no less.
Reminder that every pedantic bonehead that insists the CCA ruined capeshit glosses over the fact that it was alive and well during Marvel and DC's golden eras.
>>152962907It loosened some rules in the mid 70s.
>>152962989Marvel and DC stopped following it in the early 2000s. Although the CCA rules had been greatly loosened from the early 70s onwards, there were still hard limits on just how edgy and violent mainstream Big 2 comics could get in the 90s when compared with what Image could do, or even what a non-mainstream DC imprint like Vertigo could do.>>152963517The posters who keep reeeing about the CCA tend to keep posting the same inaccurate bot script about the CCA in the 1950s "banning every genre" of comics except superheroes, and it's literally impossible to educate them about what actually happened because they're not listening. These are people who don't like Marvel and DC, and have convinced themselves that there was a large adult audience for comics before the CCA (off nothing more than the anecdotes about WWII soldiers reading comics), and that without it, the USA would have a comics industry more like Japan or Italy with comics of all genres, comics for adults and comics for children. But in reality a USA with no CCA probably just gets a comics industry more like the UK, where comics for older readers exist but the general perception of "comics are for kids" is widespread anyway. It generally wasn't adults who were reading the 1950s crime and horror comics the CCA was created in response to.
>>152963906>probably just gets a comics industry more like the UK, where comics for older readers exist but the general perception of "comics are for kids" is widespread anywayThat's so much better.>It generally wasn't adults who were reading the 1950s crime and horror comics the CCA was created in response to.So?
>>152963906In reality you are making shit up and you can't know how comics would have developed.
>>152964185This is what DC was publishing in 1959, five years after the code went into effect:A Date with JudyAdventures of Bob HopeAdventures of Jerry LewisAll-American Men of WarAll-Star WesternBig TownBlackhawkThe Brave and the Bold (this was not a superhero book in its first few years of publication)Falling in LoveFlippity and FlopGang BustersG.I. CombatGirls' Love StoriesGirls' RomancesHeart ThrobsHopalong CassidyHouse of MysteryHouse of SecretsMr. District AttorneyMy Greatest AdventureMystery in SpaceNew Adventures of Charlie ChanOur Army at WarOur Fighting ForcesPeter PorkchopsReal Screen ComicsSecret HeartsSergeant BilkoSergeant Bilko's Private DobermanStar-Spangled War StoriesStrange AdventuresTales of the UnexpectedThe Three MouseketeersTomahawkWestern ComicsAction ComicsAdventure ComicsAdventures of Rex the Wonder DogBatmanChallengers of the UnknownDetective ComicsThe FlashShowcaseSuperboySupermanSuperman's Girl Friend, Lois LaneSuperman's Pal, Jimmy OlsenWonder WomanWorld's FinestOf those 49 books, only 14 are superheroes. Just nearly 30% of the line. And here's Marvel for good measure:Gunsmoke WesternJourney Into MysteryKid Colt OutlawLove RomancesMillie the ModelMy Own RomanceTales of SuspenseTales to AstonishBattlePatsy and HedyPatsy WalkerStrange TalesStrange WorldsTwo-Gun KidWorld of FantasyWyatt EarpNot a single superhero. If you want to blame someone for the cape monopoly, blame the children of the 60s and 70s who decided they only wanted to read superhero books and nothing else.
>>152964372so watered down genre fictionthats why superheroes won outthe code ruined everything
>>152965621>the code ruined everythingNo, the code ruined crime comics and horror comics for about 20 years, and killed 'good girl' cheesecake books just as they were getting started. And publishers eventually figured out they could publish horror comics as 'magazines' and circumvent the CCA entirely. Everything else just carried on regardless, that anon is right that you need to blame the audience in the 60s and 70s for superheroes dominating the market.
>>152961733They should unironically bring it back and enforce it bigly
>>152965704We live in a world we have things called ratings and that they never tried doing reforms by having mpaa or esrb style ratings is why the industry deserves to die
>>152965681Japan's PTA almost killed Shonen Jump in its infancy after finding Shamless School too ribald for their taste. And violent shonen manga had to be toned down no thanks to the Otaku Killer.And in the U.K. Action anthologies suffered the worst of it no thanks to Mary Whitehouse. 2000 A.D. had to be toned down lest it suffered the same fate
>>152963517Marvel and DC wanted the code to exist to use it as a hammer against publishers like EC.
>>152967525Marvel was not calling anyshots in the 50's. that was the era the lights were barely on over there.
>>152963517Its limit the genre , and allowed Superheroes to taking overIf not for its, i think Noir would be mainstream, or at least 2nd most used genre, followed by horror genre
>>152965704How would they Ironically bring it back?
>>152961733CCA eventually going away does not change the fact that CCA is what made American comics garbage for retarded children by removing every single genre that adults liked (crime, horror, smut).
>>152965621It was the same kind of content you could see on movies and television. Did books, which avoided this kind of censorship because it's not a visual medium, suddenly get a boost in sales? No.>>152965833What are you talking about, Marvel was the first to switch from the CCA to age ratings. Initially they used the very ones you posted until they found out that legally you can't, only the MPAA can.>>152967664In addition to that, Stan the Man tried to get on the EC train himself with Menace and Adventures into Terror. Both these books were cancelled in 1954 when the code went into effect. This scene here is hilarious, but you can see why a lot of parents would be furious about their kid reading this, right?>>152968838As mentioned, those comics just moved to magazines. Eerie, Creepy, Vampirella all started in the 60s and lasted through the 80s. National Lampoon published quite a number of edgy comic strips in their magazine starting in 1970. Even Marvel got in on it in the 70s but the only one that stuck was Savage Sword of Conan which lasted from 74 to 95.
>>152963541no, it was forced into an embarrassing climbdown by Stan Lee in the early 70s and moved from a position where it vetted books before publication and prevented those that didn't meet CCA standards from being published, to a position where it was offering guidelines that publishers frequently pushed back on and publication was simply a matter of rubber-stamping the CCA mark; the Dark Age would not have happened if the CCA had retained any real power by the early 1980sin reality the code was always voluntary; no publisher would have lost the 1A argument in court if they'd chosen to sue, they just would have been called communists for suing in the 1950s, but by the 1970s public opinion had changed so massively that the public didn't care about that shit>>152963906right up until the early 1970s the CCA literally did veto publication for issues that didn't meet its rules, which is in effect a banit's not a legal ban, but it's a ban nonetheless
>>152961733One thing that doesn’t get talked about enough when it comes to the CCA is that it was ran entirely by Archie, a massive conflict of interest given that it gave them near total control of what non-underground comics got published in America at the height of the code. I’m amazed things didn’t turn out much worse.
>>152967898>I thinkHave you actually done any research, anon?
>>152968838Those genres never went anywhere
>>152961733>people still bring up the Comics Code Authority like it's relevantThey do?
>>152967898No, it didnt. Horror, western, romance and war comics were all selling like shit before the CCA came into existence. This is purely revisionist history.
>>152968838See: >>152970121
>>152969086> Initially they used the very ones you posted until they found out that legally you can't, only the MPAA can.I meant like a similar system to that or the esrb
>>152970128Nice cope
>muh non capeshit>implying those genres weren't equally slopWhy do we pretend western comics back then were some kind of John Ford masterpieces when literally all of them were like, "Bull Raper McManus duels the Buttfuck Kid after he stole his parrot"
>>152970201I think people idealize that if there only had been 20 years of cowboy comics between 1960 and 1980, we'd have gotten a Cowboy DKR or something.
>>152967898>>152965621If you don't know Dell/Gold Key comics, and why they exited the industry, you have no business talking comic history, especiakky in regards to genres. Like a massive chunk f genre variety in comics was licensed Dell comics. They were the biggest comic publisher well into the 60s.
>>152968838Effectively the code just brought down comic levels to every other American media of the era. I'm sure comics could've carved out more of a niche if they had an avenue to do stories other visual media couldn't, but conformism was strong in the era and I doubt it would've worked. It's like if you had 2000's HBO level content in the 50's. There wasn't going to be a way to make it work without backlash.Ironically that's probably why the 60's comix scene ended up booming, the kids who grew up with 40's/50's stuff grew up and wanted to push envelopes and mainstream comics being censored probably pushed them because now they were counterculture instead of the norm.
>>152961733It's like McCarthyism, it's the perfect scapegoat for when your receive even the most mild push back.
>>152970169The ESRB way of doing things was how they did it starting in the 80s once the Direct Market became booming. Turns out most people did not care for books like Camelot 3000, they wanted Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen.
>>152968838And the reason the industry became full of and run by people with that mentality, the CCA succeeded at replacing the culture with wasp servants
>>152961733Comic books have never paid particularly well, so they didn't really try until about the 80s.
>>152961733Not only is it no longer relevant, but it's now owned by the pro-freedom of the press nonprofit Comic Book Legal Defense Fund just as a big "fuck you" to censorship.
>>152969170isnt it weird how communist the "anti-communist" stuff was in the 50s?feels familiar..but yes thanks for clarifying about the comics code. that';s what I meant. It might have still EXISTED, but it was dead.
>>152963145The faggots that keep crying over "muh puritans" and censorship when they don't really care about censorship and all the industry hates Whitey
>>152961733While it existed it had a phenomenally negative impact on comics as a medium, and the industry is still dealing with the fallout and consequences of it to this dayThe whole reason the industry is dominated by Marvel, DC, and a few outlers like Archie and Image, is because the Comics Code made it impossible for anyone who wanted to make a horror comic, or an edgy story about evil superheroes to get a story published.
>>152962907That's really more to OPs point
>>152961733The damage was done
>>152974523>"Muh damage was done"go beg for reparations for slavery or internment or whatever, faggot
>>152974429Like clockwork >>152963906
