Now That You mention It, Where WOULD Comics Be If There Had Been No Code?

The mention in another thread of Wertham's impact on comics, a decidedly negative one, by starting the moral crusade that led to the industry policing itself w/ the Comics Code, and also led to the downfall of EC Comics, publishers of "Tales From the Crypt" and similar violent, gory fare, got me to thinking:

What might have happened to comics as a medium if the code had not been in place? If the creative spirits writing and drawing comics had totally free rein, what would have been different?

I now I'm asking for it, but frankly I'm not sure they'd be much different than most of what we see today (although it probably would have taken them less time to get here). It was undoubtedly more difficult for new books that didn't bear the code's seal to get published. But there seem to have been some publishers willing to do it almost from the start.

In particular, I'm thinking of Warren Publishing, putting out stuff like "Creepy", "Eerie", and "Vampirella". I just started collecting the earliest issues of "Creepy", and yes they're kind of tame. But it didn't take them too long to start putting out stuff crammed w/ adult themes like drug use, sex/nudity and lots of gore and violence. And they did pretty well for more than 20 years. "Heavy Metal" also dealt with similar themes, and was definitely never code approved. And of course there was always underground stuff that became famous among the true devotees of the genre, like R. Crumb's work or "Fritz the Cat".

In the 80's, Marvel started the Epic line, and got a little grittier with its material, with titles like "Void Indigo" and similar. DC followed suit a short time later with comics that were "Suggested for Mature Readers", like "Swamp Thing" and "John Constantine: Hellblazer", later introducing its Vertigo line and touting all its titles as being for mature readers only. The 80's also saw a boom in the "independednt" publishing houses. Many of them aren't around any more, but they proved it could be done, and provided the impetus for many of the smaller press, edgier titles we see on store racks today (and have for a long time).

Maybe I just don't have the imagination necessary to posit what comics would be if there had been more people willing to plug along and put out non-code approved material. Because of their efforts, very little, if anything, seems off-limits today. I've read books dealing with drugs, sex (including violent hetero & homosexual rape), racism, iconoclastic anti-religious themes that would have gotten you burned at the stake if you uttered them a couple hundred years ago, and of course, violence and gore. For the most part, the more extreme elements of these themes still exist at the fringes of the genre, but they're there. And Vertigo, especially, seems to be dragging them into the light of the "mainstream" in ever increasing degrees. What else is there for them to do?

So, now I ask: what do you think would have been different, other than the time it took us to get here?

[QUOTE=RathBanduOf course, I think it's important to note that there probally--due to the climate and culture of the time that birthed the comic code--would have been some restrictions put on comics, at least mainstream comics, eventually. Something similar to the MPAA rather than the Hayes Code. Whenever the main target of your product is kids, you're going to have people who want to censor it or place limitations on it, and sadly, I think that would have happened whether Wertham was around or not.[/QUOTE]

I agree. After I posted this thread I thought about adding that as an afterthought. The pervading morality of the times would have, I'm sure, prompted some form of self censorship on the part of most writers, artists and publishers, Code or no Code, at least until the late 60's, when societal norms seemed to change radically. Maybe not even then, as the Old Guard would still have been in charge, and probably still shackled w/ the same morality.

I don't read hardly any superhero stuff any more, spending most of my time on horror books, but I'd be sad to see them COLLAPSE. I will still buy a hero book if it's done well. My definition of "Done well" being fairly narrow, I know, but I still get a pang of nostalgia for the superhero. Most of us who grew up reading comics grew up on superheroes, after all. I'm all for diversifying the market, especially if it means more horror books will see print, but I don't want heroes to go the way of the dodo. I keep hoping (although why it hasn't happened across the board yet isn't quite clear to me; maybe just because people are still buying whatever crap they publish, regardless of how good it is) that someday the publishers will wake up and say: "We've been putting out crap! You writers have to pick it up and write some consistently better stuff, or we'll find someone who can!" Maybe I'd start collecting a superhero title again if they did.