COMICS CODE GOES DEFUNCT

With the dawn of the new year, DC Comics has ceased using the Comics Code Authority Seal of Approval, which has identified its comics as appropriate for all ages for over 50 years. Instead, it will use its own rating system for DC Universe and Johnny DC titles. That system has four ratings: E - Everyone: Appropriate for readers of all ages; may contain cartoon violence and/or some comic mischief. T - Teen: Appropriate for readers age 12 and older; may contain mild violence, language and/or suggestive themes. T+ - Teen Plus: Appropriate for readers age 16 and older; may contain moderate violence, mild profanity, graphic imagery and/or suggestive themes. M - Mature: Appropriate for readers age 18 and older; may contain intense violence, extensive profanity, nudity, sexual themes and other content suitable only for older readers. All DC’s Vertigo titles will continue to be “For Mature Readers.”

As soon as the news came out from DC, Archie Comics, the last remaining subscriber to the Comics Code Authority, announced that it, too, was getting out. According to Newsarama, Archie had made the decision some time ago and hadn’t been submitting its books for approval for “a year or more,” but held off announcing the defection until DC took the plunge. With these two desertions, the Comics Code Authority is “pretty much defunct,” said Alan Gardner at DailyCartoonist.com.Marvel withdrew from the Comics Code Authority in 2001, and Bongo last year. Without members, the Authority has no funding and therefore can’t function.

It is serenely appropriate that Archie Comics should be the last publisher to leave the Code room, turning out the light as it left. John Goldwater, one of the trio of founders of MLJ Comics out of which Archie emerged, was, as he himself claimed, “the prime founder” of the Comics Magazine Association of America (CMAA), which invented the Code and enforced it with a pre-publication review board called the Comics Code Authority. 

From CMAA’s founding and incorporation in September 1954, Goldwater served as CMAA president for twenty-five years until he voluntarily relinquished the office, whereupon the board of directors created the position of Chairman of the Board, in which capacity Goldwater served for several more years. It has been supposed that Goldwater’s enthusiasm for creating CMAA was inspired mostly by his desire to put William Gaines’ EC Comics out of business. (For the entire sordid tale of Goldwater’s aspirations and impersonations, visit the Usual Place, click on Harv’s Hindsight and find the entry for the summer of 2001.)

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