The Comics Code Authority is an organization founded in 1954 to act as a de facto censor for American comic books.
In the 1950s there was public outcry against crime and horror comics. To placate their critics most of the major comic book publishers joined to create an organization that would censor their own comics. While the CCA had no legal authority over other publishers, magazine distributors often refused to carry comics without the CCA's seal of approval.
The CCA's strict code prohibited depictions of gore, sexuality, and excessive violence; it required that authority figures were never to be ridiculed or presented disrespectfully, and that good must always win; it prohibited any scenes with vampires, werewolves, ghouls or zombies. The code also prohibited advertisements of liquor, tobacco, knives, fireworks, nude pin-ups and postcards, and "toiletry products of questionable nature".
There were critics. Dr. Frederick Wertham, whose book Seduction of the Innocent helped enflame public antipathy against comics, dismissed the code as an inadequate half measure. William Gaines, head of EC Comics among whose best selling titles were Crime Suspenstories, The Vault of Horror and The Crypt of Terror, complained that clauses prohibiting titles with the words "Terror", "Horror", or "Crime", as well as the clause banning vampires, werewolves and zombies, all seemed targeted to put EC out of business.
Most comics historians believe the CCA had a damaging effect on the medium, with artists allowed to create only simple morality tales. This drove away much of the adult readership and stigmatized the medium (in North America) as fit only for children.
The code held sway for years, with mainstream publishers like Marvel Comics managing to devise idioms that allowed for some relevant expression. In the late 1960s, the underground comic book scene arose with artists creating comics (sans code) that delved into formerly unthinkable subject matter.
In 1971, Marvel Comics editor in chief Stan Lee was approached by the National Department of Health to do a comic book story about drug abuse. Lee agreed and wrote an appropriate Spider-Man story. When the CCA refused to approve the story because of the presence of narcotics, Lee, with the approval of his boss Martin Goodman, published the story anyway, which was so well received that the CCA's influence was undercut. That year the code was revised to permit the depiction of "Narcotics or Drug addiction", if presented "as a vicious habit", also newly allowed were vampires, ghouls and werewolves, "when handled in the classic tradition such as Frankenstein, Dracula, and other high calibre literary works written by Edgar Allen Poe, Saki, Conan Doyle and other respected authors whose works are read in schools around the world." Perhaps because no such respected authors depicted the walking dead, zombies remained forbidden. Marvel Comics evaded this restriction in the mid-1970s by calling the possibly deceased, mind-controlled followers of its Haitian villain Baron Samedi "zuvembies." According to legend, a Marvel editor of the time explained that the CCA failed to notice this transparent attempt to skirt the Code for the simple reason that "most of these people can only just barely read."
Despite the CCA revising the code to keep up with fashion over the years, its influence on the medium has diminished. DC Comics, Marvel, and other CCA sponsors have published lines of comics intended for adult audiences, without the CCA's seal.
In 2001, Marvel Comics withdrew from the CCA in favor of their own ratings system which was seen as yet another step in the organization's decline into irrelevance.
