Comic World History: The Comic Code Authority

 By Rebi Houlihan

The ‘Golden Age’ of comics existed from the late 1930s to the early 1950s. It was a flourishing time for comics and graphic art that, while important, undeniably had a lot of problems. Racist caricatures existed when juxtaposing comics featuring strong cowgirl protagonists in ‘Women Outlaws’ and ones featuring Mantoka, a Native American who battled the ‘white man’s treachery’. Looking back, it’s hard to believe that such a diverse comic culture could evolve into the industry we have today, with all its problems with underrepresentation, misrepresentation and bad representation. So how did this massive transformation happen? The Comic Code Authority.

In 1948 a psychiatrist called Fredric Wertham started advocating that comics were evil and corrupt children (such an original thought process). He also apparently - and I’m quoting from the website here - said ‘Adolf Hitler… was “a beginner compared to the comic book industry”.’ Doesn’t he sound like such a nice, non-wacko guy? He also declared things like Batman and Robin were gay (this Robin was most probably in his early teen years), Superman advocated fascism and anarchy, and don’t even talk about Wonder Woman’s status as an unmarried woman. He argued his point by taking comic panels completely out of context, which I’m sure many people know, never leads to good things.

This campaigning led to the Comic Book Code. The code was basically: no sex, no graphic violence, no showing how crimes are committed unless they use superhuman powers, no exaggerated female bodies or cleavage lines (which is ironic given some of the issues in comic books today), heroes can’t doubt their paths or be tempted by evil, and no trashing of government authorities. They even banned excessive use of ‘slang and colloquialism’! So essentially this code insinuated that comic books are propaganda (and arguably prevented a lot of interesting character development).

The stamp of approval from the Comic Code Authority became a must-have for all comics that wanted to be bought. This was partially because of publishers hoping to appease a heavy-handed right-wing government at the time.

In more recent times, Marvel stopped submitting their comics to this Code in 2001, and DC in 2011. Some independent or lesser-known comic book companies have never submitted to them.

It’s clear that this code potentially damaged what could have been, although to say that it destroyed the creativity in comics altogether would be pushing it a bit. Today the Code is not used, but the comic book industry is still affected by its aftermath.

Here is a basic copy of the code:

http://www.comicartville.com/comicscode.htm