The CCA vs. the ratings system

[Nutcase65]

Prior to 2001 Marvel comics submitted it's publications to the Comics Code Authority, which had rigid guidelines for what was and wasn't acceptable. These qualifications were mostly morally based and biased. For more info you can read
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comics_Code_Authority

Anyhow, they stopped submitting to the authority back in 2001 and went to the rating system. The same system that today shows more of their publications being produced rating Adult or Late Teen.

So, which did you prefer the comics produced under the standards of the C.C.A or the ones produced now under the ratings systm.

Rules: feel free to explain why YOU like what YOU like, but please do not fault people for THEIR likes.
Thank You

[Nutcase65]

I will, no surprise, be voting for the tighter guidelines of the authority. It's not just about smut, it's about content.

Here's what I mean. Before, they were restrained on the level of shock and smut they could use so they had to concentrate a little harder on substance and story.

Now, whenever a writer is in a corner, or if they just aren't feeling fully driven, they just seem to pull out something shockworthy. Seems to hide the fact that sometimes the substance is weak.

[balok]

There's some truth to what you say about stunts - heck, we've seen every comic book company resort to them at one point or another. 52, Civil War, World War Hulk, Infinite this that and the other - all stunts.

But I feel the CCA, which grew out of Frederic Wertham's book and a real fear legislators would shut down the industry, was overly restrictive. Shackles can force writers to grow as they explore their limitations - but they can also prevent that same growth. Add to that the fact that much of the CCA represents a worldview that hasn't really been true for 40 years, and I can see why Marvel decided it had to go.

[The Night Phantom]

Submission to the CCA is all or nothing—either a comic gets the stamp of approval or it doesn’t. In olden days, movies used to be the same way. I think it makes sense to have a tiered rating system à la the MPAA and video-game industry’s. But I don’t care for Marvel’s going it alone. If a tiered system had to start with one publisher, fine—but I don’t care for a longstanding situation where a major publisher sets its own standards. In my mind, Marvel’s often changing system is a joke. A few years ago (when Marvel was using a system different from the current one) I once asked a friend of mine—a mother of two boys then in elementary and junior high school, who herself was not a comics fan but was perfectly fine in principle with her boys’ reading comics—to take a look at some covers of then-current Marvels and judge the probable “appropriateness” for her sons. She couldn’t even tell there were ratings on the covers, let alone decipher them (at the time, “PSR” or “PRS” or the like) once I pointed them out. I think Marvel’s system has improved a little, but it’s still obscure and largely unrevealing.