BYE-BYE COMICS CODE AUTHORITY

The Comics Code Authority is about to go bye-bye! Yesterday DC Comics announced they would finally drop the CCA label on their books, going instead with their own internally-created rating system. And today Archie Comics announced they will be dropping it. Marvel dropped it back in 2001. This leaves Bongo Comics as the sole comic book company to use it (which publishes about 2 comics a month; Simpsons & Futurama).

I say good riddance simply for the origins of the CCA. I can't believe it lasted this long, to be honest.

The Comics Code Authority was created in 1954 due to "the public's" concern that comic books were harmful to children.

via Wikipedia (cause I'm too lazy to write all this up on my own):
The 1954 Code Criteria:

• Crimes shall never be presented in such a way as to create sympathy for the criminal, to promote distrust of the forces of law and justice, or to inspire others with a desire to imitate criminals.
• If crime is depicted it shall be as a sordid and unpleasant activity.
• Criminals shall not be presented so as to be rendered glamorous or to occupy a position which creates a desire for emulation.
• In every instance good shall triumph over evil and the criminal punished for his misdeeds.
• Scenes of excessive violence shall be prohibited. Scenes of brutal torture, excessive and unnecessary knife and gunplay, physical agony, gory and gruesome crime shall be eliminated.
• No comic magazine shall use the word horror or terror in its title.
• All scenes of horror, excessive bloodshed, gory or gruesome crimes, depravity, lust, sadism, masochism shall not be permitted.
• All lurid, unsavory, gruesome illustrations shall be eliminated.
• Inclusion of stories dealing with evil shall be used or shall be published only where the intent is to illustrate a moral issue and in no case shall evil be presented alluringly, nor so as to injure the sensibilities of the reader.
• Scenes dealing with, or instruments associated with walking dead, torture, vampires and vampirism, ghouls, cannibalism, and werewolfism are prohibited.
• Profanity, obscenity, smut, vulgarity, or words or symbols which have acquired undesirable meanings are forbidden.
• Nudity in any form is prohibited, as is indecent or undue exposure.
• Suggestive and salacious illustration or suggestive posture is unacceptable.
• Females shall be drawn realistically without exaggeration of any physical qualities.
• Illicit sex relations are neither to be hinted at nor portrayed. Violent love scenes as well as sexual abnormalities are unacceptable.
• Seduction and rape shall never be shown or suggested.
• Sex perversion or any inference to same is strictly forbidden.
• Nudity with meretricious purpose and salacious postures shall not be permitted in the advertising of any product; clothed figures shall never be presented in such a way as to be offensive or contrary to good taste or morals.

Periodic revisions were made to the Code to reflect changing attitudes about appropriate subject matter (e.g., the ban on referring to homosexuality was revised in 1989 to allow non-stereotypical depictions of gay men and lesbians).