I had no idea, when I was a child and reading comics, that comics had ever been considered so bad that publishers established a code to protect themselves. So all the comics I read were comic code or equivalent.
Personally I don't think it does creators much harm to be restricted. They just grow in other directions. I like mystery and suspense, but gratuitous horror stories just leave me cold. So gallons of blood, chainsaws, axes, severed limb and heads, to me are usually evidence of poor story-telling.
So for example, Hitchcock's Psycho, is a masterpiece, because people came away thinking that they had seen horrible stuff on the screen, but in fact it is all sleigh of hand by the director. All suggestion.
The Twilight Zone scared me when I was younger because of what it made me think.
Cheers!