Chesterton (and the rest)

We All Worried

by Max Arnott

It is with some diffidence that we recall to our readership WILLIAM MAXWELL “BILL” GAINES, American publisher, bon vivant, eccentric, and founder of Mad Magazine. In the VoegelinView, a club where Plato rubs shoulders at the bar with Kant and Aquinas, Mr. Gaines seems a little lacking in . . . . gravitas. Yet the high is not possible without the low, and we would like to suggest that Gaines deserves remembering, praise, and thought.

W. M. Gaines was born in 1922, son of Max Gaines, inventor of the comic book (as opposed to the comic strip) and of EC Comics and Wonder Woman, for which he deserves the gratitude of all eleven-year-old boys.

In 1947, Gaines Jr inherited the company, which specialized at that time in comic book versions of Bible stories. Gaines sought new directions and moved into science fiction, war comics, and grand guignol. His most famous, or notorious, title was Tales From the Crypt. He also ran two satirical comic books. One was Panic, the other Mad.

Business  boomed until 1954, when Fredric Wertham published Seduction of the Innocent, an alarmist tract about how comic books were Corrupting! Today’s! Youth!  There was a public outcry, a Senate hearing, pressure toward censorship, a panic among publishers, and, by the end of it all, EC Comics was more or less bankrupt. 

One publication remained, Mad, a modest comic book whose

William M. Gaines

focus was satire on other comics. It featured, for example, a parody entitled “Superduperman!” Mad was written almost entirely  by Harvey Kurtzman (yes, that Harvey Kurtzman). Kurtzman had solid talent of his own, and he was backed up by a remarkable stable of artists including Wally Wood, Jack Davis, Will Elder, and Frank Frazetta(!).

Kurtzman suggested to Gaines that they revamp Mad the comic as a magazine, thus getting around certain troublesome distribution problems. Soon after, Kurtzman departed, mostly over money, and Al Feldstein became editor. Feldstein broadened the target of the new magazine to popular culture in general, and especially and relentlessly, Madison Avenue and advertising.

With these two changes began the classic Mad magazine, from 1955 to the early eighties.

To young people who chanced on  Mad in that period, it broke like a thunderclap. There were imitators, but none came close. Gaines had the best artists (including Mort Drucker, the best popular caricaturist since Daumier) and the best writers. The message was, according to Art Spiegelman ". . . The media is lying to you, and we are part of the media."

Even after decades, its readers, now closer to midnight than noon, carried around memories of articles: the presence of Alfred E. Neuman, the deadly Bonanza parody “Bananas,” the satirical songs, including a hymn to holiday fireworks, "Boom the Cherry Bombs Explode" (with the lines "gad what simple minded jerks / we turn loose with fireworks), “Prodigy magazine, entertainment for the gifted child,”  mock advertisments, the United Nations musical “East Side Story.” Hundreds of others.