DC Comics has announced it will abandon the Comics Code, a move which Marvel Comics made back in 2001. Like Marvel, DC will have its own rating system. This leaves Archie Comics and Bongo Comics as the sole companies submitting their wares to this allegedly-outside censorship board.
I have mixed feelings about the Comics Code. In 1954 when comic book publishers were under fire for sometimes selling violent and/or sexy content, there was serious talk of government censorship of comic books either at the state or federal level. The major publishers banded together, invented the Comics Code and staved that off…and I guess when you look at that way, it was a good thing. But you can also look at it as the lesser of two evils. It infantilized the American comic book for a long time and, perhaps worse, consolidated control of the form in the hands of four men — the heads of four of the five largest companies. Thereafter, they pretty much controlled who could be in that marketplace and what they could publish. A lot of those who wrote and drew comics believed the members of that same star chamber were also conspiring to hold down the rates paid to writers and artists.
In case you're wondering, the Top Five company that refused to sign on was Dell Comics, then perhaps the biggest publisher of comic books. Execs at Dell believed that their line, which included the Disney comics and others unthreatened, didn't need the protection. They also saw no need to lend their squeaky-clean reputation to a rescue effort for those whose products had brought on the threats of comic book censorship. (Gilberton, which published Classics Illustrated, also declined to sign on for the same reason and because most of their line went through other distribution channels.)
At some point, the Code probably became unnecessary…probably by the seventies, maybe halfway through the sixties. The chance of outside censorship became pretty remote. But the publishers liked it as an instrument of intra-industry cooperation and as long as it didn't get in the way of putting out the product they felt would be most commercial, they saw it as a good thing. I'm not sure why they kept it on when even that part stopped working for them.
And now it's all but gone and I guess you can look at it two ways. It gave us some less-than-wonderful comics over the years…but it also kept the industry alive so there were comics at all. You kinda wish there'd been a better way.