City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

DC drops the CCA Seal

2short2care

By 2short2care,
Posted on: 2011-01-21 06:02 in Comic and Hero-Villain Culture

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Battlerock_X View Post

Crimes shall never be presented in such a way as to create sympathy for the criminal, to promote distrust of the forces of law and justice, or to inspire others with a desire to imitate criminals.
  • If crime is depicted it shall be as a sordid and unpleasant activity.
  • Criminals shall not be presented so as to be rendered glamorous or to occupy a position which creates a desire for emulation.
  • In every instance good shall triumph over evil and the criminal punished for his misdeeds.
  • Scenes of excessive violence shall be prohibited. Scenes of brutal torture, excessive and unnecessary knife and gunplay, physical agony, gory and gruesome crime shall be eliminated.
  • No comic magazine shall use the word horror or terror in its title.
  • All lurid, unsavory, gruesome illustrations shall be eliminated.
  • Inclusion of stories dealing with evil shall be used or shall be published only where the intent is to illustrate a moral issue and in no case shall evil be presented alluringly, nor so as to injure the sensibilities of the reader.
  • Scenes dealing with, or instruments associated with walking dead, torture, vampires and vampirism, ghouls, cannibalism, and werewolfism are prohibited.
  • Females shall be drawn realistically without exaggeration of any physical qualities.
I think that just putting a rating on the cover would be much easier, as most people will know what those mean fom games and movies - I'm pretty sure that way fewer people even know what the CCA is, or the things on that list

@Golden Girl

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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by ObiWan View Post
Do they have any self regulated rating system for comics?
In a way that's what the CCA started out as. The comics companies themselves came up with the idea as a way of fighting back against the hysteria caused by Seduction of the Innocent, etc.

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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Sevenpenny View Post
Its about friggin time! The CCA is an antiquated "thing" that is best put on the scrapheap of history and forgotten.
Hear, hear!

 

Posted

I remember hearing about this while watching a documentary on comic books.

The CCA was originally proposed in response to the backlash from a study done by a scientist. The study was to find the relationship between comic books and violent behavior, and this correlated very positively. Since the novel idea that it's possible that more violent kids just read comic books was too difficult (that, or people didn't want to risk it), people blamed violent behavior in kids on comic books. They did what any responsible parent should do, and solved the problem by trying to eliminate comic books and their influence. CCA gave standards to comic books that would allow parents to be at ease while their children watched it.

Which is basically the story of nearly any witch-hunt that goes on. Through the thralls of time, it is forgotten that these things are done with legitimate concern, and not trying to deal with a problem that legitimately affects kids is morally reprehensible.


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Posted

I was glad when Marvel got rid of the CCA and I liked it when they adopted ratings like some TV shows and Movies do. They had PGV (Parental Guidance for Violence) as well as others. I'd suggest that both companies go back to something like that.

@Joshua.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Father Xmas View Post
Well the CCA is now quite dead with Archie Comics dropping it as well.
Actually it just leaves...

BONGO COMICS!

Bongo? Okay, they are the ones doing the comic book versions of the Simpsons and Futurama.

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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Battlerock_X View Post
Females shall be drawn realistically without exaggeration of any physical qualities.
PHEW! I was afraid my delicate adolescent mind would be scarred for years with images of females with gigantic elbows* imprinted on my teenage mind.

* - Why do official-type people always refer to elbows as 'bazzombas'?

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Posted

I was more shocked to hear DC actually USED the CCA. Things been obsolete for around 30 years.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Battlerock_X View Post
Actually it just leaves...

BONGO COMICS!

Bongo? Okay, they are the ones doing the comic book versions of the Simpsons and Futurama.
Bongo comics has dropped the CCA Seal as well IIRC.

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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Schismatrix View Post
Bongo comics has dropped the CCA Seal as well IIRC.
Beautiful. That leaves... hmm... some minor publishers, maybe?

Perhaps we should hold a funeral service for the CCA. Anyone have a spare toilet to use as a tombstone?

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Posted

It makes me wonder if the ESRB will be just as obsolete in uh... 50 years.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Coyote_Seven View Post
It makes me wonder if the ESRB will be just as obsolete in uh... 50 years.
ESRB is not nearly the same thing - CCA was never a rating system, it was a censorship system. If you wanted to be published with the seal you had to conform to their standards, period. If you didn't have the seal, you wouldn't be sold in shops (theoretically - this is what Marvel's "drug issue" thing proved wrong).

With the ESRB, yes, you have to meet the standards of the ratings and if you cross the M line into AO then you're not going to hit store shelves, but at least ESRB has degrees and you can get into adult stuff and still be in great shape commercially with the M rating. It's not nearly as restrictive as the CCA. ESRB is much more like MPAA which has been going strong for forever with no signs of that changing any time soon (despite some legitimate complaints).

@Quasadu

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Posted

What Quasadu said. Plus Video games are becoming more and more mainstream, closer to what movies are, reaching larger, wider audiences where comic books have always been a sort of niche entertainment form, so the rating system there can sort of fall by the wayside since there isn't a ton of heavy media attention on comics themselves these days.

Where as movies and video games are often talked about for their content, impact on kids etc and so those ratings systems are seemed as much more important or necessary.

"Where does he get those wonderful toys?" - The Joker

 

Posted

Pretty much comics are at the "well...at least the kid's reading" stage.

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