Senate Subcommittee investigation With the publication of Dr.
Fredric Wertham's
Seduction of the Innocent, comic books like those that Gaines published attracted the attention of the U.S. Congress. In 1954, Gaines testified before the
Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency. In the following exchanges, he is addressed first by Chief Counsel Herbert Beaser, and then by Senator
Estes Kefauver: : :
End of EC Comics and conversion of Mad format Gaines converted
Mad to a magazine in 1955, partly to retain the services of its talented editor
Harvey Kurtzman, who had received offers from elsewhere. The change enabled
Mad to escape the strictures of the Comics Code Authority. Kurtzman left Gaines's employ a year later anyway and was replaced by
Al Feldstein, who had been Gaines's most prolific editor during the
EC Comics run. (For details of this event and the subsequent debates about it, see
Kurtzman's editorship of Mad.) Feldstein oversaw
Mad from 1955 through 1986, as Gaines went on to a long and profitable career as a publisher of satire and enemy of bombast. To celebrate a circulation milestone of 1 million magazines, Gaines took his staff to Haiti. In Haiti the magazine had a single subscriber. Gaines personally delivered his subscription renewal card. Despite his largesse, Gaines had a penny-pinching side. He would frequently stop meetings to find out who had called a particular long-distance phone number. Longtime
Mad editor
Nick Meglin called Gaines a "living contradiction" in 2011, saying, "He was singularly the cheapest man in the world, and the most generous." Meglin described his experience of asking Gaines for a raise of $3 a week; after rejecting the request, the publisher then treated Meglin to an expensive dinner at one of New York's best restaurants. Recalled Meglin: "The check came, and I said, 'That's the whole raise!' "And Bill said, 'I like good conversation and good food. I don't enjoy giving raises.'" (According to veteran Golden Age comics artist
Sheldon Moldoff, Gaines was not too fond of paying percentages, either.) In his memoir
Good Days and Mad (1994),
Mad writer
Dick DeBartolo recalls several anecdotes that characterize Gaines as a generous gourmand who liked practical jokes, and who enjoyed good-natured verbal abuse from his staffers.
1960–1992 In 1961, Gaines sold
Mad to Premier Industries, a maker of venetian blinds, but remained publisher until the day he died, and served as a buffer between the magazine and its corporate interests. He largely stayed out of the magazine's production, often viewing content just before the issue was shipped to the printer. "My staff and contributors create the magazine," declared Gaines. "What I create is the atmosphere." Around 1964, Premier sold Mad to
Independent News, a division of National Periodical Publications, the publisher of
DC Comics. In 1967,
Kinney National Company purchased National Periodical, and then in 1969, they bought
Warner Brothers. In 1972, Kinney became
Warner Communications. One of Gaines' last televised interviews was as a guest on the December 7, 1991, episode of
Beyond Vaudeville. Circa 2008, director
John Landis and screenwriter
Joel Eisenberg planned a
biopic called
Ghoulishly Yours, William M. Gaines, with Al Feldstein serving as a creative consultant. The film, however, did not get past
pre-production. ==Death==