Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the seven hundred and ninetieth installment where we examine three comic book legends and determine whether they are true or false.

As usual, there will be three posts, one for each of the three legends.

NOTE: If my Twitter page hits 5,000 followers, I'll do a bonus edition of Comic Book Legends Revealed that week. Great deal, right? So go follow my Twitter page, Brian_Cronin!

COMIC LEGEND:

The Comics Code Authority, by the time it finished, was just a single old woman checking all of the comic books.

STATUS:

A Nice Mixture of True/False, Mostly in Terms of Being Misleading

A few months back, Will Smith quote tweeted an amusing cartoon by XKCD Comics about the idea that all modern digital infrastructure is likely reliant upon some small piece of the overall infrastructure that has been updated by a single person in Nebraska since 2003 without any acknowledgement. Sean Pendleton responded to him, "Reminds me of when I found out that the last vestiges of the Comics Code Authority was a single old lady who was supposed to read every book sent for approval." Will was incredulous and Sean noted that he thought that he had read in one of my old columns. I knew that wasn't the case but, of course, that set off my Legend-Sense (my wife was all, "What are all of those weird squiggly lines emanating from your face?") and so here we are.

As you may or may not now (and really, if you've been reading this column at all, you probably know), Comics Code Authority (CCA) was formed by the Comics Magazine Association of America in 1954 in an attempt to get around the very real possibility that the United States government might try to get some oversight into the production of comic books. Obviously, no industry wants THAT, but the work of Fredric Wertham and his book, Seduction of the Innocent, turned the comic book industry on its ear as suddenly there was a whole big uproar about how the content of comic books were rotting kids' minds and turning them into juvenile delinquents.

When Congress even held some hearings on the topic, you knew that things were going really poorly for the comic book industry and so they quickly came up with the Comics Code Authority, which would be run by an independent overseer who would have very restrictive rules on how comics could be published if they were to get the much-needed "Comics Code Seal of Approval" (notably, though, one of the biggest comic book companies of the era, Dell, never got involved in the Comics Code, rightfully assuming that no one was ever going to stop carrying Donald Duck or Uncle Scrooge comics because it was not approved by the Comics Code).

Over the years, publishers had to submit their comics for approval by the Comics Code and they would occasionally get sent back for revision (for the most part, comic book companies tended to know what to avoid and cut it off at the pass). By the early 1970s, the influence of the Comics Code had relaxed and the comic book industry was less afraid of it and so the Comics Code Authority dramatically reduced its restrictions.

By the 1980s, comic book companies began to care less and less about the Comics Code. With the introduction of the Direct Market, where comic books would be sold in specialty shops, there was less worry about parents freaking out about content than there was when comics were sold in grocery stores or drug stores. Then, though, there was a surprising backlash to the backlash and the Comics Code became relevant again in the mid-1980s, as Marvel went from not even bothering to get Code approval for their Direct Market comics, to Marvel getting the Code put on everything.

The Code was relaxed even further in 1989, but the interesting thing is that the Code had REALLY lost its force by then. Marvel, for instance, if they had a comic book that they thought that the Code would not approve, they would occasionally just release the book anyways. No one really paid too much attention.

The final straw for Marvel was when the Code rejected X-Force #116 and Marvel just released it anyways...

They dropped the Comics Code and came up with their own rating systems in 2001. For the rest of the decade, only Bongo, DC and Archie still submitted their books for Comics Code approval and it wasn't like DC was even bothering for most of their books. Picking a month mostly at random, books cover-dated January 2007, I looked through DC's superhero releases that month in alphabetical order and it wasn't until I hit Batman that I hit a Code approved book (non-Code approved books included five issues of 52, an issue of All-Star Superman, an issue of All-New Atom and an issue of Aquaman: Sword of Atlantis).

So DC dropped the Code in 2011 and Archie followed suit that year, as well.

Once Archie dropped it, though, they revealed some fascinating stuff that Vaneta Rogers wrote about in an excellent article for Newsarama.

You see, Archie hadn't even submitted books for over a year. They were just rubber-stamping their own books, which, of course, makes sense, since they were never going to violate the Code themselves. DC, though, submitted their books until they stopped the code in 2011 (and Bongo also submitted their books until they dropped the code in 2010). The Code was managed until 2009 by Kellen Company, a trade organization management firm. The specific representative for the Kellen Company was Holly Koenig. That, of course, is how it got out that one woman was overseeing the Code all by herself. Also, while Koenig had been working in the industry for 20 years at the time, I wouldn't call her old. That part just popped up out of nowhere in the various retellings of the story (and that's not coming from Sean, by the way. The whole "An old woman was running the Code by herself at the end" is a popular "fact" on the 'net).

Even after Kellen stopped getting paid, Koenig would continue to oversee the submitted comics on her own time. The reduced capacity made it so Koenig DID do all of the oversight herself. Archie wasn't submitting, so it was just Bongo and a few DC books (and then Bongo stopped) until DC stopped submitting books, as well. So we're talking, what, a couple of dozen comic books or so a month? Koenig told Vaneta Rogers, "Without Kellen getting paid, I personally read and responded to the books DC was submitting. Westbury is where I live. I was having them send it to my home. Or if it came into the office, I would bring it home and respond from my personal email."

Where I think it's misleading is that the story as circulated makes it sound like it was just one lady pouring through hundreds of comics, while that just wasn't the state of the Comics Code for the last decade of its existence.

Thanks to Sean for the suggestion and thanks to Vaneta for the excellent article. Thanks, too, to Holly Koenig, who seems like a really cool lady.

SOME ENTERTAINMENT LEGENDS!

Check out some other entertainment legends from Legends Revealed:

1. Was South Park Originally Going to be a Big Parody of The X-Files?

2. Were Luke and Leia Meant to be Siblings When They Kissed in Empire Strikes Back?

3. How Did the Tonight Show Save Twister From Oblivion?

PART TWO SOON!

Check back later for part 2 of this installment's legends!

Feel free to send suggestions for future comic legends to me at either cronb01@aol.com or brianc@cbr.com