Marvel Comics has recently pulled out of the Comics Code, that "self-regulatory body" formed by most of the comic publishers back in the fifties. One wonders why it took until this century for a major publisher to do so. The Code perhaps had its purpose at the time. Comic books were under fire with distributors and newsstands souring on the very format, and even laws being proposed which would have imposed government banning or regulation of "those awful books." Self-regulation is always better than having it imposed from outside…but the union of ostensible competitors had its moral shortcomings, as well.
John Goldwater, who was the head of Archie Comics, was the main champion of the effort and some — well, Jack Kirby, for one — called it "…a way of letting Goldwater approve whatever was published. If he didn't like it, it didn't get on the stands." It has also been noted that, from the day the Code was established, newsstand comic racks were controlled by the publishers who founded the Code.
Western Publishing and Dell Comics split their cooperative venture into two separate lines…but otherwise, not one single "new" comic book company ever had a prayer of getting decent distribution, Code or no Code. This persisted until decades later when direct sales marketing emerged, by-passing traditional independent distribution.
Whatever, the Code outlived its usefulness long ago. A lot of folks think it did enormous damage to the content of comic books. I'm not sure it did. I think the real harm was in killing competition on the newsstands…which, in turn, may have been one of the things that killed the newsstands.