William Gaines

William Maxwell Gaines, known as Bill Gaines (1922 to 1992), was an American publisher who shaped comic books and satirical magazine publishing in the United States. He inherited EC Comics after his father's death in 1947 and presided over a line of horror, crime, and science fiction comics notable for their creative ambition during the medium's early decades. Gaines is best remembered for publishing Mad magazine over more than four decades, building it into a culturally influential satirical publication that outlasted EC's other comic lines after the 1954 comics content controversies. That year he testified before the United States Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency about comic book content, a hearing that became a landmark moment in the industry's history. Gaines was posthumously inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 1993 and the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1997.