March 1: William Gaines and MAD

William M. Gaines, the publisher of MAD magazine for over forty years, was born on this date in 1922. Gaines took over the family business, EC Comics, from his father, and expanded their line from Bible story adaptations to science fiction, horror, war stories, and humor. He launched MAD in 1952 with artist-editor Harvey Kurtzman, and the two of them built it into a humor sensation that tremendously influenced two or three generations of comedians and artists. After MAD skewered the famous Christmas poem, “A Visit from Saint Nicholas” ("'Twas the night before Christmas . . . "), Gaines was asked to testify (in 1954) before the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency. He offered an impudent defense of a free press that gained him notoriety and resulted in the loss of his control over the Comics Magazine Association of America, which enforced the “Comics Code.” MAD escaped the Comics Code in 1955 by becoming a magazine and achieving a circulation that spared it from running any advertising. Gaines remained the publisher of MAD until his death in 1992.

“The truth is that delinquency is the product of real environment, in which the child lives and not of the fiction he reads. There are many problems that reach our children today. They are tied up with insecurity. No pill can cure them. No law will legislate them out of being. The problems are economic and social and they are complex.” —William M. Gaines