QUICK POST: Only 56 years later, the CCA seal of censorship is dead

By Michael Cavna



Even the malt shop has now shed that decrepit vestige from the '50s.

Archie Comics and DC Comics -- the last two publishers said to still carry the cobwebbed Comics Code Authority Seal of Approval -- will no longer bear the CCA's badge of McCarthy-era fear, hysteria and grand overreaction.

DC Comics announced this week on its Source blog that it would "employ a rating system consistent with that of the rest of the industry, as well as with our digital releases, which already utilize a rating system." (And the 1955 logo comes full circle: It was a DC artist/letterer -- Ira Schapp, father of the classic "Action Comics" logo -- who reportedly also designed the CCA seal.)

Now, Archie reportedly will cease to carry the CCA logo beginning next month. "Archie is the final publisher to announce that it will no longer use the Code logo to identify kid-safe entertainment, ending an era that started in 1954 in the wake of the Congressional hearings on comics content and juvenile delinquency," reports icv2 today.

Those congressional smells-like-Salem hearings, of course, gained great fuel from the infamous psychiatrist Fredric Wertham, who crusaded against comics of the era by wielding his 1954 tome, "Seduction of the Innocent." and all but killing EC Comics.

At least the late publisher William Gaines's MAD magazine -- having risen phoenixlike from the ashes of that witch hunt -- survives to smile a gap-toothed grin at today's news and reply smugly: "What, me worry?"