William Gaines
Birth name	William Maxwell Gaines
Born	March 1, 1922 Brooklyn, New York
Died	June 3, 1992 (aged 70)
Nationality	American
Area(s)	Writer, Editor
Notable works	Mad EC Comics

William Maxwell Gaines (March 1, 1922 – June 3, 1992) (more frequently referred to as Bill Gaines), was the publisher and co-editor of EC Comics, and publisher of Mad for over 40 years. Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... March 1 is the 60th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (61st in leap years). ... Year 1922 (MCMXXII) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display full calendar). ... For other meanings, see Brooklyn (disambiguation). ... June 3 is the 154th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (155th in leap years), with 211 days remaining. ... 1992 (MCMXCII) was a leap year starting on Wednesday. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Entertaining Comics was headed by William Gaines but is better known by its publishing name of EC Comics. ... March 1 is the 60th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (61st in leap years). ... Year 1922 (MCMXXII) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display full calendar). ... June 3 is the 154th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (155th in leap years), with 211 days remaining. ... 1992 (MCMXCII) was a leap year starting on Wednesday. ... Entertaining Comics was headed by William Gaines but is better known by its publishing name of EC Comics. ... Mad is an American humor magazine founded by editor Harvey Kurtzman and publisher William Gaines in 1952. ...

Following a shift in EC's direction in 1950, Gaines was arguably the first publisher to oversee a line of comic books with sufficient artistic quality and interest to appeal to adults. A comic book is a magazine or book containing the art form of comics. ...

Bill Gaines was the son of Max Gaines, who as publisher of the All-American Comics division of DC Comics was also an influential figure in the history of comics. The elder Gaines tested the idea of packaging and selling comics on newsstands in 1933. In 1941, he accepted William Moulton Marston's proposal for the first successful feminine superhero, Wonder Woman. Maxwell Charles Gaines a. ... DC Comics is one of the largest American companies in comic book and related media publishing. ... Dr. William Moulton Marston (May 9, 1893 – May 2, 1947) was a psychologist, feminist theorist, and comic book writer who created the Wonder Woman character with his wife Elizabeth Holloway Marston. ... Wonder Woman is a fictional DC Comics superheroine co-created by William Moulton Marston and wife Elizabeth Holloway Marston. ...

Army years

As World War II began, Bill Gaines was rejected by the United States Army, United States Coast Guard and United States Navy, so he went to his draft board and requested to be drafted. He trained as an Army Air Corps photographer at Lowry Field in Denver. However, when he was assigned to an Oklahoma City field minus any photographic facility, he wound up on permanent KP duty. As he explained in 1976 to Bill Craig of Stars and Stripes, "Being an eater, this assignment was a real pleasure for me. There were four of us, and we always found all the choice bits the cooks had hidden away. We'd be frying up filet mignon and ham steaks every night. The hours were great, too. I think it was eight hours on and 40 off." Combatants Allied powers: China France Great Britain Soviet Union United States and others Axis powers: Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Chiang Kai-shek Charles de Gaulle Winston Churchill Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki Tōjō Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead: 33,000... The United States Army is one of the armed forces of the United States and has primary responsibility for land-based military operations. ... USCG HH-65 Dolphin The United States Coast Guard (USCG) is a branch of the United States armed forces and is involved in maritime law enforcement, mariner assistance, search and rescue, and national defense. ... The United States Navy, also known as the USN or the U.S. Navy, is a branch of the United States armed forces responsible for conducting naval operations. ... The Army Air Corps is a component of the British Army. ... Sailor on KP duty on a U.S. Navy ship KP duty is kitchen police work under the kitchen staff assigned to U.S. enlisted military personnel. ...

Stationed at DeRitter Army Airfield in Louisiana, he was reassigned to Marshall Field in Kansas and then to Governor's Island, New York. Leaving the service in 1946, he returned home to complete his chemistry studies at Brooklyn Polytech, but soon transfered to New York University, intent on obtaining a teaching certificate. In 1947, he was in his senior year at NYU when his father was killed in a motorboat accident on Lake Placid. Instead of becoming a chemistry teacher, he took over the family business, EC Comics. New York University (NYU) is a private, nonsectarian, coeducational institution in New York City. ... Entertaining Comics was headed by William Gaines but is better known by its publishing name of EC Comics. ...

Early publishing career

The EC initials stood for both Educational Comics and Entertaining Comics, and the company was at that point best known for its adaptations of Bible stories.

Bill Gaines found his niche in publishing horror, science fiction and fantasy comics, as well as realistic war comics and two satirical titles, Mad and Panic. His books, including Tales from the Crypt, The Vault of Horror, Shock SuspenStories, Weird Science and Two-Fisted Tales featured stories with content above the level of the typical comic. For a complete roster of titles, see the List of Entertaining Comics publications. Begun in 1952, Mad was the company's biggest and longest-lasting success. It was so popular that dozens of imitations were published, including EC's own Panic. Horror fiction is, broadly, fiction in any medium intended to scare, unsettle, or horrify the reader. ... Science fiction is a form of speculative fiction principally dealing with the impact of imagined science and technology, or both, upon society and persons as individuals. ... Smaug in his lair: an illustration for the fantasy The Hobbit Fantasy is a genre of art that uses magic and other supernatural forms as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. ... This article or section needs additional references or sources to improve its verifiability. ... MAD is an acronym with several different uses and may refer to: MAD Magazine, an American magazine Mutual assured destruction, a military theory Moroccan dirham, an ISO currency code MAD, the IATA Airport Code for Barajas International Airport MPEG Audio Decoder, an audio decompression software Michigan Algorithm Decoder, a programming... Panic is the primal urge to run and hide in the face of imminent disaster. ... The original title, Crime Patrol. ... The Vault of Horror was part of Bill Gaines EC Comics line during the early 1950s. ... Shock SuspenStories #6 cover by Wally Wood Shock SuspenStories was part of the EC Comics line in the early 1950s. ... Weird Science was part of the EC Comics line in the early 1950s. ... Entertaining Comics was headed by William Gaines but is better known by its publishing name of EC Comics. ... EC Comics was a major publisher of comic books in the 1940s and 1950s. ...

EC horror comics were not simply compilations of ghoulish clichés, but subtle, satiric approaches to horror with genuine dilemmas and startling "twist" outcomes. Likewise, EC's science fiction and fantasy titles dealt with adult issues like racism and the meaning of progress. In part because of the higher-quality material, EC soon assembled a stable of artists unparalleled in the industry then (and some argue, ever). Regular contributors included Wally Wood, Jack Davis, Will Elder, George Evans, Graham Ingels, Al Williamson, Johnny Craig, Reed Crandall, Jack Kamen, Bernard Krigstein, John Severin, Joe Orlando and Frank Frazetta, along with editor/artists Harvey Kurtzman and Al Feldstein. The company also treated its illustrators as selling points, profiling them in full-page biographies and permitting them to sign their work, a rarity in 1950s comic books. EC was notable for its lack of a "house style," as the artists were encouraged to pursue their own distinctive techniques. Wallace Wally Wood (born June 17, 1927, Menahga, Minnesota, United States; died November 2, 1981), was an American writer-artist best known for his work in EC Comics and Mad. ... A 1956 Jack Davis page for ECs Picto-Fiction Jack Davis (born December 2, 1924) is an American cartoonist and illustrator. ... Will Elder self-portrait William Elder (aka Bill Elder) (born September 22, 1921 in the Bronx, New York) is an American illustrator and comic book artist who worked in numerous areas of commercial art yet is best known for a zany cartoon s tyle that helped launch Harvey Kurtzmans... There have been a number of prominent people named George Evans: For the American congressman, see George Evans (politician) For the Australian explorer, see George Evans (explorer) For the Sergeant-Major of The Manchester Regiment awarded the Victoria Cross in World War I, see George Evans (VC) For the comic... Graham Ingels (June 7, 1915- April 4, 1991) was a comic-book artist best known for his work at the EC Comics company in the 1950s, notably on the Al Feldstein-edited horror titles The Haunt of Fear, The Vault of Horror and Tales from the Crypt. ... Al Williamson Al Williamson (March 21, 1931 - ) is an American cartoonist of partly Colombian descent. ... Johnny Craig is an American illustrator who was born in Pleasantville, New York, in 1926. ... Reed Crandall (February 22, 1917 - September 13, 1982) was an American illustrator and penciller of comic books and magazines. ... Jack Kamen is an illustrator who was born May 29, 1920 in Brooklyn. ... Bernard Krigstein, or B. Krigstein, (1919–1990) was an American artist and illustrator best known for his groundbreaking work in comic books. ... John Powers Severin (born December 21, 1921, Jersey City, New Jersey) is an American comic book artist noted for his distinctive artwork with EC Comics, primarily on the war comics Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat, and for Marvel Comics, primarily on its war and Western comics. ... Joe Orlando was an illustrator, writer, editor and cartoonist who was born April 4, 1927, in Bari, Italy, and died December 23, 1998, in Manhattan. ... Frank Frazetta (born February 9, 1928) is one of the worlds most influential fantasy and science fiction artists. ... Harvey Kurtzman (October 3, 1924 - February 21, 1993) was a U.S. cartoonist and magazine editor. ... Al Feldstein (born October 24, 1925) is an American painter of Western wildlife and an influential author-editor who wrote, drew and edited for EC Comics and MAD Magazine. ...

All this was promoted with a snappy company attitude, in which the EC readers themselves were regularly tweaked and insulted for their poor taste in having selected an EC product. This only had the effect of attracting an avid fanbase who enjoyed the impudent posturing and in-jokes. Pressed for content, Gaines' company soon began adapting stories drawn from classic authors, such as Ray Bradbury, Edgar Allan Poe, and H.P. Lovecraft, and Kurtzman periodically ran humorously illustrated versions of famous poems to fill space in his Mads. Ray Douglas Bradbury (born August 22, 1920) is an American literary, fantasy, horror, science fiction, and mystery writer best known for The Martian Chronicles, a 1950 book which has been described both as a short story collection and a novel, and his 1953 dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451. ... Edgar Allan Poe (January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American poet, short story writer, editor, critic and one of the leaders of the American Romantic Movement. ... Howard Phillips Lovecraft (August 20, 1890 – March 15, 1937) was an American author of fantasy, horror and science fiction, noted for combining these three genres within single narratives. ...

Senate Subcommittee investigation

Gaines's comics may have appealed to adults, but comic books were considered by the general public to be aimed at children. With the publication of Dr. Fredric Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent, comic books in the Gaines style drew the attention of the U.S. Congress and the moralizing classes in general. Gaines' testimony before a 1954 Senate subcommittee into juvenile delinquency achieved notoriety for his unapologetic, matter-of-fact tone, and Gaines became a boogeyman for those wishing to censor the product. One exchange became particularly infamous: Fredric Wertham Dr. Fredric Wertham (March 20, 1895 – November 29, 1981) was a German-American psychiatrist and crusading author who protested the purportedly harmful effects of mass media—comic books in particular—on the development of children. ... First U.S. printing, 1954 First U.K. printing, 1954 Seduction of the Innocent was a book by Dr. Fredric Wertham, published in 1954, that warned that comic books were a bad form of popular literature and a serious cause of juvenile delinquency. ...

• Chief Counsel Herbert Beaser: Let me get the limits as far as what you put into your magazine. Is the sole test of what you would put into your magazine whether it sells? Is there any limit you can think of that you would not put in a magazine because you thought a child should not see or read about it?
• Bill Gaines: No, I wouldn't say that there is any limit for the reason you outlined. My only limits are the bounds of good taste, what I consider good taste.
• Beaser: Then you think a child cannot in any way, in any way, shape, or manner, be hurt by anything that a child reads or sees?
• Gaines: I don't believe so.
• Beaser: There would be no limit actually to what you put in the magazines?
• Gaines: Only within the bounds of good taste.
• Beaser: Your own good taste and saleability?
• Gaines: Yes.
• Senator Estes Kefauver: Here is your May 22 issue. [Kefauver is mistakenly referring to Crime Suspenstories #22, cover date May] This seems to be a man with a bloody axe holding a woman's head up which has been severed from her body. Do you think that is in good taste?
• Gaines: Yes sir, I do, for the cover of a horror comic. A cover in bad taste, for example, might be defined as holding the head a little higher so that the neck could be seen dripping blood from it, and moving the body over a little further so that the neck of the body could be seen to be bloody.
• Kefauver: You have blood coming out of her mouth.
• Gaines: A little.
• Kefauver: Here is blood on the axe. I think most adults are shocked by that.

End of EC

Gaines was negatively depicted by the nation's media as its foremost amoral publisher. By 1955, EC was effectively driven out of business by the backlash, and by the Comics Magazine Association of America. The Association was an industry group that Gaines himself had suggested to insulate themselves from outside censorship, but he soon lost control of the organization to John Goldwater, publisher of the innocuous Archie teenage comics. The Comics Code that was approved and adopted by most of the country's prominent publishers contained restrictions specifically targeted at Gaines' line of horror and crime comic books. Although he had already ceased publishing his line of horror comics, Gaines refused to subscribe to the code, considering it in many details to be hypocritical, and not applicable to the new, clean line of realistic comics he was at the time promoting. This refusal together with his already tarnished reputation put EC on the verge of bankruptcy. Although Gaines relented and accepted the code, after a couple of months in which his line failed to reach the newsstands the damage was done. He chose to concentrate the energies of his business, investing a considerable portion of his own personal fortune, in EC's only profitable title, the recently begun Mad. Archie Comics is an American comic book publisher known for its many series featuring the fictional teenage Archie Andrews, Betty Cooper, Veronica Lodge, Reggie Mantle and Forsythe Jughead Jones characters created by Bob Montana. ... The Comics Code Authority (CCA) is an organization founded in 1954 to act as a de facto censor for American comic books. ...

Mad becomes a magazine

Gaines converted Mad to a magazine in 1956 in order to retain the services of its talented editor Harvey Kurtzman, who'd received offers from elsewhere. The change enabled Mad to escape the strictures of the Comics Code. Kurtzman would leave Gaines' employ a year later anyway, but Gaines went on to a long and profitable career as a publisher of satire and enemy of bombast. Harvey Kurtzman (October 3, 1924 - February 21, 1993) was a U.S. cartoonist and magazine editor. ...

Although Mad was sold for tax reasons in the early 1960s, Gaines remained as publisher until the day he died and served as a buffer between the magazine and its corporate interests. In turn, he largely stayed out of the magazine's production, often viewing content just before the issue was scheduled to be shipped to the printer. "My staff and contributors create the magazine," declared Gaines. "What I create is the atmosphere."

Business methods

Gaines ran his business in an eclectic and sometimes counterintuitive fashion. He valued reader Larry Stark's letters of critical commentary to such a degree that he gave a lifetime subscription to Stark, who later became a well known Boston theater critic. Although the original EC comic books ran paid ads, Mad magazine never accepted advertising during Gaines' lifetime. Merchandising was also scarce and heavily overseen by Gaines, who apparently preferred to forego profit rather than risk disappointing Mad's fans with substandard ancillary products. In 1980, following the colossal success of National Lampoon's Animal House, Gaines lent the name of his magazine to the bawdy spoof Up the Academy. When the movie proved to be a disjointed botch, Gaines paid the film company to remove all references to the magazine from all future prints and even issued private refunds to fans who wrote complaint letters. Larry Stark (born August 4, 1932 in New Brunswick, New Jersey) is an American journalist and reviewer best known for his in-depth coverage of the Boston theater scene at his website, Theater Mirror. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...

This he accomplished through various means, notably the "Mad trips." Each year, Gaines would pay for the magazine's staff and its steadiest contributors to fly off to some world locale. The first vacation, to Haiti, set the tone. Discovering that Mad had a grand total of one Haitian subscriber, Gaines arranged to have the entire group driven directly to the person's house. There, surrounded by the magazine's editors, artists and writers, Gaines formally presented the bewildered subscriber with a renewal card. Eventually the trips became more elaborate, and the staff would visit six of the world's continents.

Toward the end of his life, Gaines' name on Mad's masthead grew more and more elaborate, ending as "William Mildred Farnsworth Higgenbottom Pius Gaines IX Esq."

Mad writer Dick DeBartolo's memoir, Good Days and Mad, provides an image of Gaines as a fun-loving and sometimes eccentric mogul. DeBartolo recounts Gaines' generosity to contributors (e.g., the Mad trips), his insistence on Mad's "cheap" image (at one point paying double the amount to keep Mad on low-quality paper although it was in short supply) and his offbeat methods for running a magazine. It is said that when asked about Mad's philosophy, he said "Mad's philosophy is; we must never stop reminding the reader of how little value they get for their money!" Dick DeBartolo (morphing into Alfred E. Neuman) Dick DeBartolo is one of the most prolific writers of satire for Mad Magazine. ...

He would frequently stop meetings to find out who had called long-distance phone numbers. His passions for gourmet food and wine prompted him to build a wine cellar in the middle of his Manhattan apartment. He managed to go from his apartment to his favorite restaurant by mapping out a route so he could get there by walking downhill only.

DeBartolo's book, filled with anecdotes and forewords from Mad contributors, shows Gaines loved elaborate practical jokes (both played by him and on him) and verbal abuse from his staffers. These eccentric behavior patterns are also described in Gaines' biography The Mad World of William M. Gaines, written by Mad writer Frank Jacobs and published in 1972 by Lyle Stuart, a longtime friend of Gaines. Frank Jacobs is MAD Magazines longest-tenured writer, having appeared in its pages for 50 years. ... Lyle Stuart is an American independent publisher of controversial books. ...

External links

• Annotated transcript of the William M. Gaines memorial service
• Transcript of Gaines' 1954 testimony to Congress
• Gaines interviewed by Steve Ringgenberg
• The Long, Gory Life of EC Comics Reason magazine article
• Dick DeBartolo's William M. Gaines Memorial Page
• Dick DeBartolo's Daily Giz Wiz podcast (often reminisces about Gaines)