That's fair of course - obviously that's an orders-of-magnitude difference. But that doesn't make me a fan of a massive censorship regime that crippled and possibly permanently stunted the development of an new art form through an entire continent, just as it was entering adolescence, because hey, at least we got Alan Moore to behave that one time.
It did ruin careers and livelihoods. It wasn't war or slavery but it was a pretty terrible thing nonetheless.
Well, yes, I just think the issue of the benefits of the Comics Code is more complicated than immediately comparing it actual systems of oppression. The "massive censorship regime" was actually a voluntary code of conduct adopted by the industry to prevent an incensed public and government from producing much more strict, legal systems that would have crippled the comics industry further. Then again, it was also designed specifically to sink EC and leave the field open to just DC & Marvel superheroes.
Not exactly. First of all, Fantastic Four was years away and Marvel/Timely/Atlas was primarily publishing watered-down versions of EC's horror comics. The publisher that became Marvel was not even really a player; it went onboard with the Code but it's a mistake to suggest it had the same level of influence that DC or Archie did.
And I wouldn't call the code "voluntary". It's true that it was created by the industry as a means to self-regulate rather than as a government censorship regime, but it wasn't voluntary if you wanted your comics to be, you know, available at newsstands for sale to people.
Indeed, there's an argument to be made that government censorship at the federal level would have been less catastrophic -- because there WERE local laws passed in the years prior to the Code (and maybe some state ones too, I don't remember offhand), and every single one of them was struck down by the courts. If Congress had had the balls to pass laws saying that, oh, comic books weren't allowed to have vampires in them, that never would have passed constitutional muster. But the Code successfully kept the no-vampires rule in place for, what, 20 years?
And it's not like Marvel didn't continually push the boundaries of the code during the 60s and 70s anyway.
Well, in a safe, coloring-inside-the-lines kind of way. They did a story about DRUGS! -- which was a schmaltzy after-school special about how Drugs are Bad. And they pushed for the inclusion of vampires and reanimated corpses! In non-threatening forms best resembling the Universal Monsters of the 1930's.
The push-pull of Marvel's creators trying to test limits and editorial and the executive office pulling back is everywhere, but I can't think of a better example than Kirby putting a black superhero on the cover of Fantastic Four and somebody deciding to cover up his jaw so you couldn't tell he was black.
i... what? I mean, that doesn't even make sense. It'd been at least a decade since Marvel ditched the Comics Code before they did Ultimates.
Er, if by "at least a decade" you mean "a little over six months"...?
X-Force #116 -- the "Hey kids! Look, no Code!" issue -- was cover-dated July 2001; Ultimates #1 was cover-dated March 2002.
Which doesn't make the argument that Ultimates makes up for the Code any less dumb, mind (and I say that as somebody who LIKED Ultimates); it's just that your dates are way off.
