You know, it’s interesting that both the MPAA and the question of why comic have a reputation of being “Just for Kids” came up in the same discussion.
The development and history of American comics was shaped in it very early days by a man named Werthem, a book called The Seduction of the Innocent, a Congressional Sub-Committee on Juvenile Delinquency, and a hastily convened preemptive attempt at self-censorship known as the Comics Code Authority.
Check it out on Wikipedia. It’s interesting stuff. Werthem basically claimed that comics were a major contributor to juvenile delinquent behavior and started a campaign against examples of gore, sensational crime stories, good girl art, and alleged homosexual subtext in American comics. Parents were scandalized enough by his book that the government convened a sub-committee. The mere existence of a committe alarmed publishers enough to censor themselves voluntarily.
The Comics Code was preferable to the MPAA in one respect, I suppose, in that it did have written rules. They were arbitrary, byzantine, and restrictive, but they were rules. Imagine, if you can, a rating system that only has two categories:
1.) “G”
…and…
2.) “Not frakking likely to ever get published or see the light of day”
Prior to 1990, comics came in two flavors: “Comics Code Approved”, and “Not carried by any of the major distributors”. Since 1990, the Comics Code Authority has gradually waned in influence. In 2001, I think it was, Marvel stopped bothering to submit their comics for approval in favor of their own in-house rating scheme with categories like “All Ages”, “Teen”, and “Mature”.
At the height of it’s influence however, the Code prohibited all sorts of things including vampires, zombies, werewolves, implied corruption within the police or judiciary, any implied sexual perversion, disrespecting the sanctity of marriage, distorting the proportions of the female figure for the purpose of titilation, and any story where criminals are allowed to go unpunished.
Prior to the introduction of the Code there were horror comics, western comics, crime comics, detective comics, monster comics, and romance comics. After the code, basically only superhero comics and a few romance comics survived.
American comics have a reputation of being just for kids, because between the late 40s and early 90s they were geared towards a restrictive code of censorship that was design to protect the kiddies from anything salacious. Even since then, some of the dark, “grim & gritty” comics with over-the-top depictions of sexuality and violence could be seen as a reaction against the expectations that were in place for so long: the pendulum swinging back too far and too hard in the other direction. As an art-form, comics are capable of being more than just superheroes and more than just “for kids”, (and don’t get me wrong, I like both), but their history in America has been shaped by public preconceptions going back to the forrties.