The meme is about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comics_Code_Authority An organization dedicated to regulating what content was allowed to be published in comic books. The organization was founded due to moral panic focused on comic books red by children having morality damaging content.
by MaetelofLaMetal
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” Y’all American” is a troll phrase only an American can think of
When the base foundations for your country were laid by repressed Puritan assholes, you kinda get what you get.
The comic code authority lost all practical power by the mid 80’s and became increasingly ignored by the mid 70’s so it only had actual sway for at most 25 year starting in the early mid 50’s.
Like the guy who started the whole panic with his study had the good intentions but went into it completely wrong and full of ignorance. Children with behavioral problems were an issue needing to be solved, however the guy thought because those children were reading comic books the books were the thing making them behave that way and not that all children were reading comic books back then and only small portion of comics readers had those behavioral problems.
The CCA only had power for about 20 years and that power was primarily a means for the industry to avoid government content regulation. And even at its height it didn’t actually have any real power, retailers used it as a quick and dirty ‘Will this get people pissed if we stock it’ metric.
It was implemented in 1954, by 1971 the major comic publishers began blowing it off for certain stories and by 1984 were just ignoring it all together for entire runs and series. Marvel abandoned even the pretense of giving a shit in 2001.
With the way everything else is going it’ll be on its way back
The last holdout of the Comics Code was Archie Comics, and pretty much everyone agreed that they were the last place anybody expected a story to violate the code.
Still didn’t stop them from branching out after they got rid of it, with tales like Afterlife With Archie.
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Another fun fact: One of the first Marvel Comics to not publish with the code was an anti-drug PSA comic written by Stan Lee at request of the US Government. (Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.) The CCA said drugs weren’t allowed to be depicted at all under the code, (Though the code itseld didn’t specify, it was grouped under unseemly acts.) So they said to hell with it and published it anyways.
Eh more through the mid 80’s. Was a walking corpse by the 90’s
As if a large portion of the world isn’t having moral panics over books to this day
I wonder if edgy teens of the 50s read history qnd mythology books for the ultraviolence.