Citizen Gaines (1963)

Everybody has a hero.
Mine is Bill Gaines.

First, a little history.

Bill Gaines’ father, Max, was the man who invented the comic book. Max gathered the Sunday color funnies from the various area newspapers and used them as content for a 64-page booklet titled Famous Funnies. Eventually these compilations of funnies evolved into sagas of full-bodied action adventure superheroes such as Dr. Fate and the Spectre. The rather wimpy title More Fun Comics soon changed to the much manlier Detective Comics (or DC). This was Golden Age of the Funny Book.

By then Max had left the publishing business for other endeavors. After a string of poor business decisions he returned to produce a new line of comics known as Educational Comics. Where DC produced stories of daring do, EC would give the comic book reading public somewhat different fare. One title will tell you pretty much all you need to know about the Max Gaines’ editorial direction- Stories From the Bible.

The thud you just heard were sales going into the dumper.

When Max died in 1947 his twenty-five year old son, Bill, took over. Bill quickly scrapped the biblical tales of yore and came up with a truly new direction for the business: horror comics. Soon Tales from the Crypt, The Vault of Horror and The Haunt of Fear were decorating the newsstands. These titles and more like them were wildly successful and caught the eye of his competitors who quickly produced knock-off imitations.

Bill Gaines certainly knew his market.

Unfortunately he also came to the attention of the ever-watchful eyes of opportunistic politicians. This was, after all, the 1950’s and paranoia was in full flower.

A book soon gave the political class all they needed to create an issue. The Seduction of the Innocent by Dr, Fredric Wertham warned that comic books were an appalling form of popular literature and a direct cause of juvenile delinquency. Apparently gangs of youth armed with copies of Tales of the Crypt were tee-peeing houses across much of the Midwest. Faced with regulation from congress, comic book publishers created the Comics Code Authority that pretty much regulated virtually all of Gaines’ titles into the trash bin.

Except for one: Mad. It was a not a horror comic but a satiric screed aimed at current cultural icons. Everyone took a hit. Hollywood, Washington, even Madison Avenue. Especially Madison.

Mad was born in 1952 as a comic book.
I was born in 1952 as a human being.

By the time I had discovered Mad I was eleven years old. Mad had also changed. In order to escape the comic book code, Gaines transformed Mad into a “magazine” adding additional pages and artwork and charging a quarter.

I remember the first issue I purchased- issue No. 62, October ’63. The cover featured Fidel Castro who, in true Mad fashion, smoked an exploding cigar. You see, you knew it would blow up because there wasAlfred E. Neuman (Mad’s clueless human mascot) on the cigar band with his fingers in his ears awaiting the KA-BOOM. I thought it was funny and I didn’t even know who Castro was!

I loved the magazine and experienced a rush whenever I purchased an issue. My mom hated it, which caused me to love it all the more: silliness and rebellion for only a quarter.

Each issue contained regular features such as a Don Martin panel comic, Spy vs Spy, or Dave Berg’s Look at fill in the topic. Most of the times you could count on a television or movie parody by Mort Drucker. And there were beautifully illustrated articles touching on the inanity of modern life.

I rarely missed an issue and if I did, Bill Gaines was right there to help me out. He published “annuals” four times a year featuring the “worst” of previous issues. In addition he also published a library of paperback books (The Son of Mad, Mad Strikes Back, Mad in Orbit etc…) which reprinted earlier stuff from the fifties. Granted, the satiric pokes at the Eisenhower Administration made little sense to my fifth grade sensibilities, but I loved the art work by Wally Wood and Bill Elder and Jack Davis and, of course, Don Martin, Mad’s maddest artist. I could easily picture myself reading Mad for the rest of my life far into my golden years.

Then I grew up and my Mads simply collected dust in a paper bag in my closet. I went to college, married, and went to work. Sometime during all of this I picked up a copy. Everything, of course, had changed. Instead of a rush, I felt a pang of sadness. Gaines was not hip, or cool, or cutting edge. He was more like your weird uncle who wore leisure suits and tried a bit too hard to make you laugh.

In 1992 Bill Gaines passed away and his magazine now appears to be moribund as well. DC, the publisher, announced that Mad would become a quarterly magazine instead of a monthly. If I was Alfred E. Neuman, I would start to worry.

I will always admire Bill Gaines. He did not let the blowhards in Washington defeat him. He took a wildly ridiculous idea, blew it all out of proportion, and made himself a mint. His magazine became a 20th century icon. And for a season, he made me feel less self-conscious about being an adolescent.

In the middle sixties amid all the change that was swiriling around me, Bill Gaines made me laugh.

No small achievement there.

Next:
Bill Cosby and the Lost Art of the Comedy Album