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.

Bill Gaines' Two Secret Ingredients

Besides a unique message, excellent writers, and terrific artists, Gaines had two secret ingredients:

One was that the magazine carried no advertising, beyond that for reprints of its own material.  

Consider the point. That was nothing in Mad to suggest that the editors had more on their minds than the content itself, such as delivering its readers into the hands of the commercial  world. Mad’s message was subversion, but nothing in Mad subverted Mad itself, beyond the assurance by the editors that those who read it were, obviously, dolts.

This encouraged trust, and trust amplified force. It is not a small thing for a publication.

This powerful absence was matched by another. In this classic period of which we speak, the satire, while often silly (almost always silly) and often pointed, was notably free of rage, contempt, or obscenity. Mad’s adherence to the basic tao of human morality was total. Someone remarked that under the mask of Alfred E. Neuman was the heart of a rabbi, and there is some truth to this.

By contrast, we may glance at two other publications of the time. Punch also took on the whole of society. But the message underlying Punch was that while many things were amusing, nothing was quite as amusing as the lower and middle classes–not people like us, you know. As Punch revelled in contempt, so National Lampoon took obscenity as its main tool, though it also had a strong line in hate. Mad accepted no ads. Punch advertised high class hotels and National Lampoon sex aids.

“They was a fine crew, only I ask you, where are they now?” as Mr. Silver said.

That was classic Mad. Times moved on of course. The magazine was sold to Time Warner in the sixties, although Gaines remained in control. After his death, the editors began to accept advertisements, and the editorial content became considerably coarser–but of course society had become considerably coarser. The Mad continues, but the spirit (at least for this reader) has departed.

Gaines is worth recollection and praise as a figure on the cultural

Alfred E. Newman

landscape and for pointing out, in an amusing and wholesome way to young people, that their society deserved some careful scepticism. “Don’t believe the advertising,” is a good message now, and it was especially important at the height of the Madison Avenue age when commerce, sociology and perverted psychology made league together against the man in the street.

Gaines was no literary figure himself, of course, or as grand as Twain or Karl Kraus. But he was  an antidote to his time. "Sir, if  a man be moral without pride and popular without vulgarity, trust me, he may claim merit." So might Johnson have replied to the sneers of Boswell. I am sure Chesterton would have enjoyed him, I  think Karl Kraus would have smiled, and I suspect Voegelin would have found him interesting, perhaps as a response to the tensions of the time.        

Max Arnott is an independent scholar living in Toronto and has been a reader of Voegelin for many years. He is also a devotee of the writings of G.K. Chesterton. In addition to contributing his regular column, Mr. Arnott is an editor at VoegelinView. He may be contacted by email from the Contact Us link found at the bottom of any page.