A thread remembering William M Gaines

[struggle4progress]

TESTIMONY OF WILLIAM M. GAINES, PUBLISHER, ENTERTAINING COMICS GROUP, NEW YORK, N. Y.
... Mr. GAINES. Since 1942 we have sold more than 5 million copies of Picture Stories from the Bible, in the United States. It is widely used by churches and schools to make religion more real and vivid ...



... When William Gaines inherited the company from his prematurely deceased father, Max, he realized that these were not the type of material that flew off the stands ... Calling EC Comics "graphic" was an understatement .... Zombies, werewolves, and other familiar creatures of horror were drawn with realistic detail ... Covers, which typically show only a taste of what lay inside the magazine, would show a piece of whittled wood about to be hammered into a man's heart as he lays in a coffin, indicating vampirism (TALES FROM THE CRYPT 42), and then two months later show the blatant beheading of a man at the hands of an iron maiden (TALES FROM THE CRYPT 44) ...



TESTIMONY OF WILLIAM M. GAINES, PUBLISHER, ENTERTAINING COMICS GROUP, NEW YORK, N. Y.
... Mr. GAINES. You will see that a child leads a miserable life in the 6 or 7 pages. It is only on the last page she emerges triumphant ...



TESTIMONY OF WILLIAM M. GAINES, PUBLISHER, ENTERTAINING COMICS GROUP, NEW YORK, N. Y.
... Senator KEFAUVER. Here is your May 22 issue. This seems to be a man with a bloody ax holding a woman's head up which has been severed from her body. Do you think that is in good taste?
Mr. 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 ...



... In 1952 Gaines launched Mad as a 10-cent comic book titled "Tales Calculated to Drive You MAD." Although he staunchly denied that horror comics had any connection to juvenile crime, Gaines was the object of congressional scrutiny in 1955, testifying at widely publicized U.S. Senate hearings. Gaines abandoned the horror strips and changed Mad to a magazine format in order to circumvent the Comic Codes Authority, which grew out of the hearings. The codes banned disrespect for established authority -- Mad's stock in trade ...

[blm]

1. GREAT post - sharing with mr blm.

.

[Cartoonist]

2. There's a great story

in one of the SF titles they did that told of a spaceman who was stranded on another planet. The events of his life resembled that of Jesus. This caused a great stink among the believers who thought their savior was being mocked.

[blm]

3. I remember that one.

An ex of mine was pretty friendly with Gaines.

[edhopper]

4. OOPS

wrong story

[struggle4progress]

7. Or mebbe it was "He walked among us" (Weird Science #13 May/Jun 1952)?

[edhopper]

9. You are right

I got my controversial Weird Science stories mixed up.

[img][/img]

[struggle4progress]

17. What a great one-pager!

I note with approval "helped the poor rather than the high caste"

[Cartoonist]

11. Yes, that's it.

One of the comments:

"He Walked Among Us" shocked myself and my friends. Now don't think we're "Holy Joes" or anything like that, but that story openly attacks the Christian religion!

[Cartoonist]

8. No, that's not it.

This spaceman had the ability to cure diseases due to his advanced technology. He also inspired the people to rebel against the ruling class. They tortured him on a rack-like device. The people came to wear a miniature replica of the torture device around their neck. This really grated the Christians.

[edhopper]

10. S4P corrected me

I posted the page from the right one.

my oops.

[blm]

14. Weird Science. Funny - how themes can take hold

and spread - there were really many fine, irreverent, controversial offerings once the ball started rolling. Here we are trying to recall the early ones - a task that is becoming more difficult for those of us of a certain age. ; )

[edhopper]

5. Jack Kamen

who drew many of those great horror and SF stories was the father of Dean Kamen, who invented the Seque.

[edhopper]

6. As far as I know

he was an atheist.

Though that has little do with his publishing, other than he was an iconoclast.

If he had only done EC or MAD, he would have been great, but both are make him exemplary.

[struggle4progress]

12. He may have been. He was certainly inclined to heckle the establishment, and

he had the endearing trait of not taking himself too seriously either. "Tales from the Crypt" TV episodes based on Gaines comics are often much better than other episodes

[edhopper]

13. I only mention it because we are in

the Religion Forum.

I don't know what impact it had on his books. If any.

[struggle4progress]

16. I had to work a bit to squeeze this thread into the Religion forum

The gambit I found was the Bible comics

The real reason for the thread is the on-going long-term debate on "mockery"

[xfundy]

15. When I was a kid, my mother confiscated my MAD mags.

Thankfully, now there's DU to challenge and undermine authority.

[struggle4progress]

18. I suspect MAD was a subversive influence for many of us

[raccoon]

20. For me, it was, for which I am grateful. nt

[pinto]

19. +1. Missed much of his work somewhere along the way.

Thanks for the post.