I've always wondered this considering how prevalent violence is in our society. I would think we'd be more weary of depictions of Violence than depictions of sex. What do ya'll think?
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1) Levels of violence are also highly regulated in comics by the Comics Code Authority- though many indie lines are not part of the Authority. There also is a bit of an issue considering the target market of comic books. Yeah, some comics are gore-fests with guts torn out and stuff, but those are marketed and mainly sold only to adults, or to edgy 12 year olds if the comic shop guy is really lazy or the age-check on Comixology is easy to bypass. But you won't see a Sin City moment in Marvel's The Avengers, because one is read by adults and the other is read by kidults. So most people encounter this "sanitized" level of violence that you don't get in real-life battles. I don't know if this is better overall for society or not- I'd like to see some statistics before drawing any conclusions.
2) Sexual situations in media tend to be a big 'nope' in the public commons media. Maybe it's because Americans are <s>punks</s> <s>wimps</s> <s>prudes</s> <s>hypocritical fascists </s> deeply concerned about how impressionable minds handle sexual imagery. So this means comics in general avoid it because they companies making them might lose access to the shelves of comic book stores because of <s> annoying sexually repressed Christians </s> parental boycotts. Yeah, you can say, Marvel's Ultimates line, but that was geared for adults anyway and people were focused on celebrities walking around without panties on around the same time. This means Goku punching Frieza through his skull is less likely to attract attention than Black Widow and Winter Soldier doing it on a motorcycle in Times Square.
3) And then there's the monkey-see-monkey-do aspect, which comics can get away with <s>dancing around the line </s> sexually explicit content but may lead to copycat crimes. If someone reads about a serial rapist do they then think serial rape becomes OK? What if the comic covers the raping from the rapist's perspective? And what if we go way past the kinky fields and straight up enter the Loli/waifu zone? Japan had no problem dancing around that line, but nowadays some manga/anime companies have leapt over the line into 'you can sleep with your younger sister if it's in a video game' territory. And now they're getting yelled at by the UN because they see where the wind's blowing and it's not to a good place.