From: [j l miller] at [hamp.hampshire.edu]
Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics.misc
Subject: More CCA History (was: Re: Isn't the CCA censorship?)
Date: 8 Aug 93 17:35:24 EDT

To continue the excellent CCA history posted, after the Spiderman story (one of
the best Marvel's ever done, IMHO) the CCA was forced to reform and relax some
of its rules to "move with the times." This led to such groundbreaking stuff as
O'Neil and Adam's Green Lantern/Green Arrow stories, as well as silliness like
the Prez.
Throughout the late 60s and 70s people who were fed up with the CCA began to
publish things themselves or form small companies to publish such. Ignoring the
newsstand distributors and their supposed "control" of the industry, these
companies took their books directly to their customers, in head shops, at rock
shows, etc. This was "The Underground." (Rip Off Press is one of the biggest
survivors of this movement.)
As for the "mainstream," with the exception of the above stated, things
continued pretty much in the status quo. Then, in the late 70s, things began to
change again. A new phenomenon appeared, growing out of the idea of the head
shops and "taking the material directly to the customers:" The Direct Sales
store. Starting small at first, these stores gathered momentum as the 70s
ended. This new outlet, distinguished from the newsstand because all it sold
was ccomics, led to a lessening of the code by some distributors, as they
weren't being acccessed primarily by young children. (Supposedly.) Meaning,
unlike the newsstand, not just anyone could walk in and buy a book. (No, it
doesn't make sense to me either. I'm trying to do some reconstruction here...
who can fathom the minds of distributors?) At any rate, this led to the rise of
the modern "indepenndant" company, primarily one or two people self-publishing
at first. The earliest examples of this are ElfQuest and Cerebus. These books
were "innocent" enough (unlike Rip Off's stuff) to distribute to the special
stores, but were not under the dictates of the CCA. (Not that they didn't have
problems anyway. Ask Richard Pini about the "elf orgy" sometime. One of the
first "Mature Readers" labels!) These led to other companies, like Pacific and
Comico and First...and eventually to Dark Horse and Malibu and Valiant...
Still, all this time the "mainstream" world of Marvel/DC remained quite firmly
under the (still fairly strict) CCA. Then, in 1984, the proverbial straw broke
the proverbial camel's back.
Alan Moore, a young English writer who had just begun a surprising run on a DC
horror title called Swamp Thing, wrote a script called "Love and Death." It was
a true psychological horror, and Karen Berger, his editor, loved it. As did the
artists, Steve Bissette and John Totleben, who threw themselves into drawing
the blood, insects, zombies and general low-gore that kept the script (which
maintained a very goreless building tension) moving along wonderfully. Berger
loved the finished product, although she was a bit worried about it. It was
shown to Jeanette Kahn, publisher of DC, who was also very impressed. Then it
was submitted to the CCA, a necessity. The CCA rejected it as unsuitable. In a
historic move, Kahn defied the CCA and published it anyway, labeling it "For
Mature Readers Only."
And there we have the stake driven through the heart of the Comics Code
Authority. (It's important to note that the censorship problems later
encountered by DC have little to nothing to do with the CCA; they remain firmly
within the organisation on a corporate level.) And now we get to the world of
today.

Whew--someone else want to take it?

jonathan.