IN MEMORIAM: William Gaines
J3SF000
best known today as the publisher of MAD magazine, died Wednesday at
the age of 70 (didn't catch the cause of death- I presume reasonably
natural causes).
Gaines has not been accorded the same measure of fame which his EC
staff (Harvey Kurtzman, Wally Wood, Jack Davis, Bill Elder, and
Graham Ingels, to name a few) has captured over the years, but this
is largely due to his relatively obscure role as a publisher.
Gaines' father is in fact responsible for the creation of what we
now recognize as the comic-book magazine format, and William followed
in those footsteps by setting the world of comics on its ear with EC.
EC Comics astounded cartoonists with their quality while enraging
would-be sensors with their audacity; a formula which lives to a lesser
extent in Gaines' longest-lived creation, MAD magazine.
I am consoled by the fact that Gladstone, Russ Cochran and other
publishers have attempted to revive the EC line in recent years; but
I hope that Gaines' name and accomplishments will be kept in our
memories as well. Those wishing to learn more about the man should
hunt down the Ron Mann film COMIC BOOK CONFIDENTIAL, which shows
footage of Gaines' eloquent speech before the Senate Committee on
Juvenile Delinquency in the early 1950's. I'm sure that the recent
"coffee-table" book devoted to MAD will express Gaines' importance
far better than I could. Still, I can say this: it is a very dark
day in the history of comic books.
Scott Marshall
Arthur C. Adams
>I was extremely saddened to hear a few minutes ago that William Gaines,
>best known today as the publisher of MAD magazine, died Wednesday at
>the age of 70 (didn't catch the cause of death- I presume reasonably
>natural causes).
>
>day in the history of comic books.
You speak truly.
And in the same vein, a lot of the silver Age giants may not be with us
for long. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby are both in their seventies, along with
Julie Schwartz.
And considering the state of comics today, and what's become of their
creations, their loss wil be even sadder.
--
The world is not analog. The world is digital, just
with an incredible number of bits.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Arthur C. Adams - E-Mail aca...@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu
cha...@wkuvx1.bitnet
> I was extremely saddened to hear a few minutes ago that William Gaines,
> best known today as the publisher of MAD magazine, died Wednesday at
> the age of 70 (didn't catch the cause of death- I presume reasonably
> natural causes).
>
> day in the history of comic books.
Agreed, a giant has been lost!
> Scott Marshall
>
Mitchell Maltenfort
>best known today as the publisher of MAD magazine, died Wednesday at
>the age of 70 (didn't catch the cause of death- I presume reasonably
>natural causes).
>
>publishers have attempted to revive the EC line in recent years; but
>I hope that Gaines' name and accomplishments will be kept in our
>memories as well. Those wishing to learn more about the man should
>hunt down the Ron Mann film COMIC BOOK CONFIDENTIAL, which shows
>footage of Gaines' eloquent speech before the Senate Committee on
>Juvenile Delinquency in the early 1950's. I'm sure that the recent
>"coffee-table" book devoted to MAD will express Gaines' importance
>far better than I could. Still, I can say this: it is a very dark
>day in the history of comic books.
>
One story about Mr. Gaines that should be circulated - and wasn't in
the Mann film when I caught it on cable - was his bout with the Comics Code
Authority, a fight which produced Mad Magazine as we know it.
Now, many of the CCA rules were deliberately aimed at EC: for example,
the prohibition against using "Weird" or "Fear" in a title. The CCA reviewed
EC's stories with a fine-tooth comb. The last straw came in a science-fiction
story in which a representative from Earth was inspecting a planet of robots
to determine whether they could join a galactic union. There were two types
of robots, orange and blue, and the orange robots rules while the blues did
the labor. The Earthman told the robots that the unfair treatment of the
blues meant that their planet wasn't mature enough to join the union. On the
spaceship home, the Earthman removes his helmet; he's black.
The CCA told Gaines to make the Earthman white so he wouldn't offend
anybody.
Gaines blew his stack, ran the story as was, then cancelled everything
except Mad Magazine.
My source for this is the Great Comic Book Book, and I wish I
remembered the authors (might have been Ron Goulart).
Sorry for the long post, but this was a story that belonged in the
record (not to mention the obituary).
Mitchell Maltenfort Northwestern Unversity Chicago, Illinois
"Mean, cruel, nasty, paranoid, antisocial... but basically happy."
glenn alan carnagey jr
>In article <03JUN92.22...@UNBVM1.CSD.UNB.CA>, J3SF000 <J3...@UNB.CA> writes:
>> I was extremely saddened to hear a few minutes ago that William Gaines,
>> best known today as the publisher of MAD magazine, died Wednesday at
>> the age of 70 (didn't catch the cause of death- I presume reasonably
>> natural causes).
>>
You probably have to be of a particular age-span to be hit by this, but for
me, it was a lot like when Dr. Suess died. Some of the happiest portions of
my childhood were Shelly's creations, I owe him.
Cheers, Shelly
J3SF
>In article <03JUN92.22...@UNBVM1.CSD.UNB.CA> J3SF000 <J3...@UNB.CA> writes:
>>I was extremely saddened to hear a few minutes ago that William Gaines,
>>best known today as the publisher of MAD magazine, died Wednesday at
>>the age of 70 (didn't catch the cause of death- I presume reasonably
>>natural causes).
>>
>>far better than I could. Still, I can say this: it is a very dark
>>day in the history of comic books.
>
>You speak truly.
>
>And in the same vein, a lot of the silver Age giants may not be with us
>for long. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby are both in their seventies, along with
>Julie Schwartz.
>
>And considering the state of comics today, and what's become of their
>creations, their loss wil be even sadder.
You speak truly as well, BUT:
Will Eisner is 73. I have hope, barely. :-)
Scott Marshall
J3SF000
too upset yesterday. What's weird about the story above is that
Gaines tells it himself on my video copy of the Mann film.
Go figure!
Scott Marshall
>.
Ka Chun Yu
###############################################################################
WILLIAM M. GAINES IS DEAD AT 70; WAS PUBLISHER OF MAD MAGAZINE
By James Barron
William M. Gaines, who as publisher of Mad magazine conferred immortality on a
goofy-faced, gaptoothed cover boy and the "What, me worry?" motto, died yester-
day at his home in Manhattan. He was 70 years old.
He died in his sleep, editors at Mad said.
The first issue of the magazine hit the newsstands in 1952, with sharp-eyed
sendups of movies, advertising, celebrities and comic strips: "Mickey Mouse"
became "Mickey Rodent" and Superman "Superduperman." To the delight of its
largely teen-age audience, it brought satire into the mainstream, along with
up-to-the-moment New York humor sprinkled with Yiddish nonsense and non
sequiturs.
"It was my favorite magazine," said the tenor Robert White. "I remember the
first issue. I was just getting over the scare of Mrs. Pruneface in 'Dick
Tracy.'"
Mad's wacky brand of humor influenced everything from The National Lampoon to
"Saturday Night Live" to a recent issue of Esquire magazine. Its cover showed
President Bush with a grin like Mad's Alfred E. Neuman character and the caption
"What, me worry?"
_'Esoterica in the Margins'_
"It's got to have been an influence on almost every comedy writer I know," said
Steve O'Donnell, the head writer for "Late Night With David Letterman." "It's
rare that you would meet a comedy writer who doesn't know who Arthur the Potted
Plant is, or the kinds of esoterica in the margins that we ardently absorbed
because we were scanning every page for most of our childhoods."
Presiding over those margins was a 240-pound publisher who filled the office
water cooler with wine and celebrated hitting the million mark in circulation by
packing his staff off to Haiti, where Mad had exactly one subscriber. Few
readers ever receive the kind of personal attention that Mr. Gaines lavished on
him: Mr. Gaines drove to his house and handed him a subscription-renewal card.
At Mad's office (on MADison Avenue, according to the fine print beneath the
table of contents) he was a sounding board for jokes, but he left the writing
and drawing to others. "My staff and contributors create the magazine," he
said. "What I create is the atmosphere."
It was an atmosphere as zany as anything that went into in the magazine. Frank
Jacobs, Mr. Gaines's biographer, said a teen-age reader once strolled into Mad's
Madison Avenue office and cornered the first person he saw, demanding an
audience with the publisher.
"I am the publsiher," the man said.
He was not a pinstripes-and-suspenders type but a shaggy, rumpled man in baggy
trousers and stringy hair that Mr. Jacobs said was "styled only by the force of
gravity." He never exercised -- he danced twice in his life (once at a lesson
to prepare for his high school prom, the other time at the prom) -- and he
played softball once (he managed a single but lost his enthusiasm for the game
when someone said he threw like a sissy), skied once (he could not bend over to
fasten his skis) and tried water-skiing once (but needed one hand to hold up
his glasses and one hand to hold up his swimsuit, leaving him no hands to hold
up to the tow).
Mr. Gaines had inherited a comic-book empire from his father and made it into a
huge success, specializing in horror comics. The Senate Subcommittee on Juve-
nile Delinquency held hearings in 1954 into charges that comics were ruining
the nation's youth.
Mr. Gaines was a star witness, defending what he published as being in good
taste. Senator Estes Kefauver asked if a cover showing an ax-wielding man
holding a decapitated human head met that standard. Mr. Gaines replied, "I
think it would be bad taste if he were holding the head a little higher so the
neck would show with the blood dripping from it."
When the comics industry voluntarily agreed to refrain from such blood-thirsty
goings-on, Mr. Gaines went Mad. The magazine had begun when Harvey Kurtzman, a
cartoonist who had been interviewing Korean War veterans for combat comic books,
came down with jaundice and decided to create something that he could write from
his sickbed. Mr. Gaines gave him the go-ahead, even though the Mad format was
not guaranteed to make money.
But to children of the air-raid shelter generation, the first primary-school
group taught to "duck and cover" -- hide under school desks and shield their
faces in case of the white-hot flash of an atomic bomb -- Mad quickly became an
essential part of growing up.
"It's no accident that it came along when it did, in the 50's," said Tony Hiss,
a staff writer at The New Yorker. "That's when TV was beginning to take hold,
and one of its unexpected side effects was a new kind of bunkum-detector. All
those commercials gave you an awareness that you were being conned and allowed
you to see through the hype in a way that an earlier generation had not."
Alfred E. Neuman was a composite of several characters from the early issues:
one whose name was a takeoff on the Hollywood composer Alfred Newman, another
the unnamed "What, me worry?" boy. When Al Feldstein took over as editor, Mr.
Jacobs said, "he put the two together."
Mr. Gaines once left an "Alfred E. Neuman for President" poster atop the Leaning
Tower of Pisa. Neuman made his political debut as a 1956 write-in candidate.
Later Mad depicted him as a fifth face on Mount Rushmore, a flower child, Alfred
the Hun and other characters. But he always had a demented grin.
Mr. Gaines fought a never-ending war between his willpower and restaurants of
the world. Every few months, he would have an on-again, off-again flirtation
with a new diet. This meant that no two pair of pants fit him at the same
moment. His wardrobe, Mr. Jacobs said, looked as if it were fresh out of the
laundry hamper, but Mr. Gaines had his own dress code.
"I own three ties, which I wear as infrequently as possible," he said. "I wear
my multicolored tie to wine tastings because it's required. I wear my bright
red tie with my orange jacket and my green tie with my brown jacket to restau-
rants when ties are required. My ties are narrow. I wear short socks, gray or
blue, which I buy eight dozen at a time, at Korvettes. I own one pair of cuffed
slacks that fits me and one suit that fits me."
Mr. Gaines, who was born in New York City, graduated from New York University.
He is survived by his wife, Annie, and three children, Cathy Missud, Wendy
Bucci and Chris Gaines.
################################################################################
--
*Ka Chun Yu * "Deputy dog dog a ding dang depa depa deputy *
*kac...@as.arizona.edu * dog dog a ding dang depa depa . . ." *
* * --Don't Let's Start *
BRAZIL,Marcus N
In <1992Jun4.1...@news.acns.nwu.edu> mit...@casbah.acns.nwu.edu writes:
> One story about Mr. Gaines that should be circulated - and wasn't in
> the Mann film when I caught it on cable - was his bout with the Comics Code
> Authority, a fight which produced Mad Magazine as we know it.
> Now, many of the CCA rules were deliberately aimed at EC: for example,
> the prohibition against using "Weird" or "Fear" in a title. The CCA reviewed
> EC's stories with a fine-tooth comb. The last straw came in a science-fiction
> spaceship home, the Earthman removes his helmet; he's black.
> The CCA told Gaines to make the Earthman white so he wouldn't offend
> anybody.
Actually, that's not quite correct. What the CCA objected to (according to
interviews I've read with Gaines) was that the man's face on the last panel
was shown with beads of perspiration (not surprizingly since he'd just removed
his helmet). The CCA wanted Gaines to remove the perspiration, apparently
because they thought people may be offended by seeing a black man sweat.
> Gaines blew his stack, ran the story as was, then cancelled everything
> except Mad Magazine.
Gaines fought the CCA on this, accusing them of the very rascism the story
was condemning, and eventually won the fight. The story eventually ran
unchanged with a CCA stamp of approval. But presumably by this time
Gaines realised he was in general fighting a losing battle, and soon afterwards
gave up comics for magazines.
.....Marcus Brazil......
bal...@ohstpy.mps.ohio-state.edu
"The Mad World of William Gaines". It was written in the
70's when Mad was still very popular. The book talks a lot
about the EC era and the Senate hearings. I doubt that the
book is still in print but you might be able to find it at
a library.
Mark Balbes