Sunday, January 23, 2011

Code-Approved

After 56 years, the Comics Code is dead.  Long associated with comic book censorship and basically being a symbol with no real power, the last remaining comic book is giving up the code.  In 2001, Marvel gave up the code for its own rating system and in 2010, Bongo Comics quietly ended its association.  It was announced earlier this month that DC will be dropping the Code and only a few days later, Archie Comics announced they are dropping it too.  I really have no opinion of the Code as I read mainly superhero books but no one I knew who read comics really cared if their books had the Comics Code on it or not.  I was just always stunned at how small the code had gotten throughout the years and wondered when the publishers were just going to drop it.  I feel once the Code stopped by a presence on the cover (at one point the Code took up the entire upper right corner of comic books), the end was coming.

The Comics Code is survived by its cousins, The MPAA Ratings, The Television Parental Guidelines and the Entertainment Software Rating Board.

Meanwhile in today's child-approved Born Loser:

Brutus is going to miss work which he has been told he has to do despite it being Sunday.  What inventory is he and Veeblefester going to do?  Don't they have lowly peons to handle that for them?