Comics Code Versus The Underground Comics

The Comics Code

Authority (CCA) was created in the early 1950’s and lasted until the early 21st century. The CCA was a censorship guideline in which comic book creators must adhere to. These guidelines are used to cleanse the magazine, and some of these guidelines include, good must always triumph over evil, kissing scenes were carefully regulated, and they were not allowed to use the word “zombies”. If the comic book follows all the guidelines it will receive a CCA seal of approval. To counter the CCA, the Underground comics were created in the 70’s in which they do not follow the comic code guidelines. This in turn brought in more men to create comics that sexualized but also to create scenes of brutality and violence, and to make fun of women.

Women Liberation

The late 60’s to the 80’s was known as the period of Women Liberation (Feminist Movement) in which women were fighting against unfair treatment with a series of political campaigns. In the comic industry, this was a time in which many women said they do not like all the cliché romance stories and stories with messages such as: “that to be happy you must find a right man, marry him, settle down, and start a family. ” These kinds of stories were very popular during the 50’s and early 60’s but were not connecting to women and girls in the 70’s. Around this time as well, the first women liberation newspaper began, known as “It Ain’t me Babe. ” This was an underground comic book, published in 1970, where the discussion of issues such as menstruation, lesbianism, and more, were written about.

Men’s Domination in Comics

Men domination in Comics has created this imbalance of more men readership than women readership since the underground comics. Some reasons for this are because men who create comics, have discriminated women by sexualizing and making fun of women. During the 90’s women did have a large presence in comics but only in the creative side. By then, women readership declined because men were typically the ones running comic book stores, therefore they ignored the women or assumed that the women were shopping for her boyfriend, when they came to the comic book store. This is also a similar situation at conventions in which men think women just dress up just because they want to attract attention or think that women do not know what comics all are about, that they are fake, not real geeks. It is said that in the 50’s, women had more readership, of 55%, while men only had 45%, stated in a book called “How to get girls (Into your Store). ”

The change to the Comics

Industry, thanks to the Organization for Women in Comics & the Rise of the Internet What brought back the women readership was organizations that were created and the internet during the 90’s into the 21st century. An Organization for Women in comics was created by Heidi MacDonald in 1994. This organization was called ‘Friends of Lulu’ a reference to a comic called Little Lulu. Women were told that they cannot read, write, or draw comics, so this organization gave a voice to women. Another way that women readership has improved was by the creation of blogs and forums for women interested in comics on the internet. Gail Simone started an online blog in 1999 called “Women in Refrigerator. ” Simone used this blog to document all the ways in which female characters have been distinctively brutalized in comics. She also discusses how unfair it was when a female character disappears or dies, and the comic book changes focus to the male characters.

Manga Craze

Another form of comics that started to appeal to the female readers were Manga. The “Big Two,” Marvel & DC, were leaving their female audience behind as they believe that girls don’t read comics or didn’t care about the female audience. All they cared about was how many people were reading their comics as opposed to which gender is reading their comics. So now female readers, both women and girls, turn to manga. Manga has and still are offering more content to the female readers. This has inspired many women to go into art school or even draw their own fan artwork of characters they love and post them online on sites such as DeviantArt. This has empowered many women to go into more creative roles.