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Comics Code: Difference between revisions
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Major publishing houses [[Archie Comics]] (protecting its image of "wholesome American youth") and [[DC Comics]] (which, at the time, made most of its money from kid-friendly romance and science fiction titles) more or less forced the Code onto the comics industry. DC also owned Independent News, then the largest distributor in the Code's governing body, the Comics Magazine Association. [[Dell Comics]] and Gilberton (publisher of ''Classics Illustrated'') stayed out of the CCA; Dell believed that their company brand and reputation was enough to reassure parents, and sold its comics with the slogan "Dell Comics are ''Good'' Comics." Neither publisher's lack of a CCA stamp harmed their profits, as both companies' comics sold well for most of the Comics Code's heyday.
The Code began to lose power in [[The Seventies|the 1970s]] when Stan Lee wrote a ''[[Spider-Man (Comic Book)|Spider-Man]]'' story involving narcotics. Even though he portrayed drugs in an ''extremely'' negative light and wrote the story ''on the recommendation of the United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare'', the CCA refused to place a seal of approval on the story because of the depiction of narcotics being used. In contrast, the CCA approved an earlier ''[[Deadman (Comic Book)|Deadman]]'' story where the superhero fought narcotics smugglers because the story focused on the wholesale handling of narcotics. Lee defied the CCA by removing the Code Seal from the storyline, which appeared in ''Amazing Spider-Man'' issues #96-98. Lee's story gained considerable public appreciation and critical acclaim, CCA couldn't push against the material most ''other'' [[Moral Guardians]] and government have approved. It was beginning on the end: thanks to all the egg on its face in light of the story's success, the CCA changed the Code to allow negative portrayals of drug abuse — but would never recover from the damage to its reputation, the update gave up the ground they could not hold anyway. See more of this story [http://www.dorkly.com/post/87472/how-stan-lee-saved-comic-books-from-censorship on ''Dorkly''].{{Dead link}}
Two major revisions -- [http://www.thecomicbooks.com/old/cca2.html one in 1971] and [https://web.archive.org/web/20100709063557/http://www.reocities.com/Athens/8580/cca3.html another in 1989]—relaxed and outright dropped many of The Code's stricter rules. The 1971 revision altered some of the stricter and more outdated provisions of the original Code while maintaining its basic structure, and the 1989 revision combined less restrictive views on old "crime, punishment, and sexuality" issues with a newer moral fashion: [[Politically Correct]] injunctions against stereotyping.
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