# Archie is leaving the CCA. So what was the CCA exactly? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 23, 2011, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/archie-is-leaving-the-cca-so-what-was-the-cca-exactly/568682 "2011-01-23T18:57:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![davidm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidm/32/225_2.png) [@davidm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidm)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2011, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/archie-is-leaving-the-cca-so-what-was-the-cca-exactly/568682/1 "2011-01-23T18:57:16Z")
Archie has dropped the CCA. So I guess the CCA is no more. [http://www.comicsbeat.com/2011/01/21/archie-drops-the-code-wertham-dead-forever/](http://www.comicsbeat.com/2011/01/21/archie-drops-the-code-wertham-dead-forever/) [http://www.newsarama.com/comics/archie-drops-CCA-in-february-110121.html](http://www.newsarama.com/comics/archie-drops-CCA-in-february-110121.html) This makes me curious. I’ve read those two articles as well as Wikipedia and they don’t really answer my question. > **[Comics Code Authority](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comics_Code_Authority)** > > The Comics Code Authority (CCA) was formed in 1954 by the Comics Magazine Association of America as an alternative to government regulation. The CCA enabled comic publishers to self-regulate the content of comic books in the United States. The code was voluntary, as there was no law requiring its use, although some advertisers and retailers looked to it for reassurance. Some publishers, including Dell, Western, and Classics Illustrated, never used it. Its code, commonly called "the Comics Code", ... What exactly was the CCA? I understand that they were an informal authority with no legal enforcement ability and that they enforced a published code. What I can’t find by looking around the web was the physical nature of the authority. Were they an organization with offices and paid employees? Did publishers have to pay a fee to have their comics approved? Were they a group of volunteers from the comics industry? Was there, at the end, some guy (either paid or volunteer) who sat and approved each issue of Archie? ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2011, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/archie-is-leaving-the-cca-so-what-was-the-cca-exactly/568682/2 "2011-01-23T19:34:36Z")
I think policing was in-house. More a set of editorial standards than an external authority. But I don’t know for certain how it worked. Considering the crap DC & Marvel used to put out with a Code seal, arguably it didn’t. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![davidm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidm/32/225_2.png) [@davidm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidm)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2011, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/archie-is-leaving-the-cca-so-what-was-the-cca-exactly/568682/3 "2011-01-23T19:50:58Z")
I don’t think so. The Wikipedia article describes several disagreements between publishers and the authority. One example: > [@](#): > > In one early confrontation between a comic-book publisher and Code authorities, EC Comics’ William Gaines reprinted the story “Judgment Day”, from the pre-Code Weird Fantasy #18 (April 1953), in Incredible Science Fiction #33 (Feb. 1956). The reprint was a replacement for a Code-disapproved story — “An Eye For an Eye”, drawn by Angelo Torres — but was itself also “objected to” because of "the central character being black."The story, by writer Al Feldstein and artist Joe Orlando, was “a strong allegory on the evils of race prejudice,” which point was necessarily “nullified if the lead character” was not black. Following an order by Code administrator Judge Charles Murphy to change the final panel, which depicted a black astronaut, Gaines engaged in a heated contretemps with Murphy. He informed Murphy that “if they did not give that issue the Code Seal, he would see that the world found out why”, causing Murphy to reverse his initial decision and allow the story to run. Soon after, however, facing the severe restrictions placed upon his comics by the CCA, and with his “New Direction” titles floundering, Gaines “quit comic book publishing to concentrate on Mad”. This example would seem to argue against the idea of in-house enforcement. Of course, it’s possible that in more recent times it was in-house. It wouldn’t seem like an actual “authority” would have much to do regarding Archie comics. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2011, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/archie-is-leaving-the-cca-so-what-was-the-cca-exactly/568682/4 "2011-01-23T23:36:07Z")
The CCA was established pretty like like the Hays Code for movies. It was an industry organization put into place to ensure that the government wouldn’t step in and do the censoring. Once it got established, though, everybody bought into it. (Except Disney, which stated that it was too pure and Innocent ever to need to.) If your comic didn’t have the Code Seal on it, nobody would sell your comic. That was the true power. You could write whatever you wanted, but nobody would touch it. Yes, somebody went over every single drawing and word balloon and judged them. Every comic from the entire industry. Imagine how much you must have hated every comic book in existence after about a week. That included Archie and every kids comic not published by Disney. The writers and artists got bored, too, and tried to slip stuff in. It worked. MAD became a magazine instead of a comic book. Nobody else even tried to buck the system until the underground comics of the 60s. But they were sold through head shops and other places that didn’t care about the Code. Normal newsstands wouldn’t touch them. Spider-Man did an antidrug series (early 70s, I think) without the Seal that got a lot of attention. The Code started to reform itself a bit. That’s what lead to the zombie and vampire craze of the early 1970s. They were suddenly allowed. But it was the rise of the comic store that killed the Code. Independents had a place to sell comics who didn’t care whether they were properly mainstream. The Code has been a relic for years. Marvel pulled out a decade ago, but it’s really been dead since the 80s. ---
**Author:** ![postcards](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8e8cbc/32.png) [@postcards](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/postcards)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2011, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/archie-is-leaving-the-cca-so-what-was-the-cca-exactly/568682/5 "2011-01-24T01:39:50Z")
[Recent, earlier thread.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=593971) ---
**Author:** ![davidm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidm/32/225_2.png) [@davidm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidm)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2011, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/archie-is-leaving-the-cca-so-what-was-the-cca-exactly/568682/6 "2011-01-24T02:02:04Z")
I did see that thread but I figured that Archie comics leaving, and therefore ending the CCA, deserved a separate thread. Maybe not, I don’t know. ---
**Author:** ![Spoons](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spoons/32/3141_2.png) [@Spoons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoons)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2011, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/archie-is-leaving-the-cca-so-what-was-the-cca-exactly/568682/7 "2011-01-24T02:31:12Z")
I recall, as a young child, reading a lot of Gold Key comics. They never had the CCA endorsement; but then, they were mostly reprints of stories featuring kid-friendly characters: Yogi Bear, the Flintstones, Bugs Bunny, Donald Duck, and similar, all in stories that would never run afoul of the CCA anyway. At the same time, I read Superman and Batman and Archie (all CCA-approved), which led me to the conclusion–when I was older–that the CCA was more a self-regulating industry code than it was an imposed-by-a-governmental-authority one. Much later, I would learn about “freedom of the press,” and suchlike; which solidified my conclusion that the CCA was an industry code, without many teeth. If comics went against the Code and still sold, there wasn’t much the Code could do about it. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2011, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/archie-is-leaving-the-cca-so-what-was-the-cca-exactly/568682/8 "2011-01-24T04:01:04Z")
Gold Key was owned by Disney. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2011, 4:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/archie-is-leaving-the-cca-so-what-was-the-cca-exactly/568682/9 "2011-01-24T04:27:13Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Except Disney, which stated that it was too pure and Innocent ever to need to. That’s just the cover story. The real truth is Disney refused to comply with the CCA’s insistence that Donald Duck put on some pants. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2011, 4:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/archie-is-leaving-the-cca-so-what-was-the-cca-exactly/568682/10 "2011-01-24T04:34:53Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > That’s just the cover story. The real truth is Disney refused to comply with the CCA’s insistence that Donald Duck put on some pants. Hey, that got him banned in Finland. I know. It didn’t really happen. ---
**Author:** ![madmonk28](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madmonk28/32/20811_2.png) [@madmonk28](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madmonk28)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2011, 7:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/archie-is-leaving-the-cca-so-what-was-the-cca-exactly/568682/11 "2011-01-24T07:00:48Z")
I read 10 Cent Plague about the comic book industry from it’s early days until the creation of the CCA. It was an independent body with a staff. Comic book publishers who participated paid user fees that funded the CCA. ---
**Author:** ![Student\_Driver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3da27b/32.png) [@Student\_Driver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Student_Driver)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2011, 12:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/archie-is-leaving-the-cca-so-what-was-the-cca-exactly/568682/12 "2011-01-24T12:38:28Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Gold Key was owned by Disney. Eh? Gold Key was owned by Western Publishing, of Big Little Books and Golden Books fame. ---
**Author:** ![davidm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidm/32/225_2.png) [@davidm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidm)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2011, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/archie-is-leaving-the-cca-so-what-was-the-cca-exactly/568682/13 "2011-01-24T13:35:18Z")
> [@madmonk28](#): > > I read 10 Cent Plague about the comic book industry from it’s early days until the creation of the CCA. It was an independent body with a staff. Comic book publishers who participated paid user fees that funded the CCA. First real answer. Thanks. So now I’m wondering if, at the end, Archie Comics was paying to support the CCA all by itself. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2011, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/archie-is-leaving-the-cca-so-what-was-the-cca-exactly/568682/14 "2011-01-24T16:15:23Z")
> [@Student\_Driver](#): > > Eh? Gold Key was owned by Western Publishing, of Big Little Books and Golden Books fame. Sorry. Memory glitch.