William Gaines

Infobox Comics creator


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birthname = William Maxwell Gaines
birthdate = birth date|1922|3|1|mf=y
location = Brooklyn, New York
deathdate = death date and age|1992|06|3|1922|03|01
deathplace =
nationality = American
area = Writer, Editor
alias =
notable works = "Mad", EC Comics
awards =

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.

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.

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.

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."

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 transferred 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.

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".

EC horror comics were not generic 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, Harry Harrison, 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.

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 "Mad"s.

enate Subcommittee investigation

Gaines's comics may have appealed to adults, but comic books were (and to a degree, still are) 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 the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency in 1954 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:

*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 national media as America's 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 soon relented and accepted the code, distributors refused to pass his titles along to newsstands. The damage was done, and Gaines abandoned comic books completely. He chose to concentrate his business on EC's only profitable title, "Mad," which had recently changed format. After distributor Leader News went bankrupt in 1956, EC was left with over $100,000 in unrecoverable debt. Gaines invested a considerable portion of his own personal fortune to keep the company alive until a deal could be made with a new distributor.

"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.

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. When agreeing to contracts, he insisted on striking the standard clause proscribing that both parties must settle disputes in a reasonable manner, saying that he could never promise to be reasonable. On the other hand, Gaines rejected a lucrative incentive package offered to him by Warner Brothers that would have been based on increased sales of "Mad"; Gaines explained that the act of accepting the incentive would have falsely suggested that he was not already doing everything within his abilities to maximize the magazine's circulation.

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. The original EC comic books ran paid ads, but "Mad" magazine quickly dropped all advertising and never accepted it again during Gaines' lifetime. Both Harvey Kurtzman and Al Feldstein urged Gaines to accept advertising, without result.

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.

Gaines was deeply devoted to his staff, and fostered an environment of humor and loyalty. 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!"

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.

External links

* [http://www.instantclassics.com/ic_html/gaines1.html Annotated transcript of the William M. Gaines memorial service]
* [http://www.thecomicbooks.com/gaines.html Transcript of Gaines' 1954 testimony to Congress]
* [http://www.comic-art.com/intervws/gaines11.htm Gaines interviewed by Steve Ringgenberg]
* [http://www.reason.com/0506/cr.fh.the.shtml The Long, Gory Life of EC Comics] "Reason" magazine article
* [http://www.williammgaines.com Dick DeBartolo's William M. Gaines Memorial Page]
* [http://www.gizwizbiz.com Dick DeBartolo's "Daily Giz Wiz" podcast (often reminisces about Gaines)]
* [http://www.sanepr.com/prpreview.cfm?id=24414 "Ghoulishly Yours, William M. Gaines" feature film developed by Joel Eisenberg and John Landis]