Original subtitles

They were shocking.

They were horribly gruesome. They were

bloody. People were being chopped up and

battered with axes. And I'm 9 or 10, I'd

never seen anything like this. It was

amazing. Horror comics were, you know,

to my little seven eight-year-old self,

they were my pornography. This was the

stuff that I knew I shouldn't be looking

at, but you know, I couldn't give it up.

They were sensational.

They reached deeper and deeper into the

Springboard barrel. The stories got

bloodier and bloodier. Did it go

overboard? Yeah, I think so in a couple

of spots. I didn't write it, but I drew

it.

And I felt very bad about that. Mothers

and fathers say, "I don't want my kid to

read that."

They were controversial.

Well,

do you think that this cover is in bad

taste? He goes, "No, I don't think so.

How would it be in bad taste?" And he

said, "Well, if you showed the gore drop

dripping from it." And they nailed him

with that.

And ultimately, they were outlawed.

I think they were all completely shocked

when the Senate subcommittee came

forward and said, "You people are the

cause of juvenile delinquency."

The horror comics were a very convenient

target.

And the powers that be took advantage of

that.

My name is William Gaines.

On April 22nd, 1954,

William M. Gaines, publisher of

Entertaining Comics, testified before

the U.S. Senate subcommittee on juvenile

delinquency.

I was the first publisher in these

United States to publish horror comics.

I'm responsible. I started them.

Some may not like them.

That's a matter of personal taste.

It would be just as difficult to explain

the harmless thrill of a horror story to

a Dr. Wertham

as it would be to explain the sublimity

of love to a frigid old maid.

What are we afraid of?

Are we afraid of our own children?

Do we forget that they are citizens,

too?

And entitled to the essential freedom to

read?

Or do we think our children so evil, so

vicious, so simple-minded that it takes

but a comic magazine story of murder to

set them to murder, of robbery to set

them to robbery?

Just 4 years earlier, Gaines had

revolutionized the medium by launching a

new trend in comic books, horror.

EC's graphically gory tales, while

immensely popular with readers, would

soon draw the wrath of both parents and

politicians

and threaten to destroy the entire comic

book industry.

It could be said that Bill Gaines had

comics in his blood.

His father, Max, was a pioneer in the

medium, creating the first comic book,

Famous Funnies, in 1934.

4 years later, Gaines joined ranks with

Superman publisher Harry Donenfeld and

launched a new line, All-American

Comics.

Featuring such superheroes as the Green

Lantern and Wonder Woman, the AA line

was extremely popular with sales soaring

to over 8 million copies per month.

Comic books made Max Gaines a fortune.

In early 1945, he sold his share of All

American for half a million dollars.

He created a new company, Educational

Comics or EC, which published such

sedate titles as Picture Stories from

the Bible.

Not surprisingly, EC's sales languished

near the bottom of the industry.

Educational Comics were pretty much like

educational everything. Nobody wanted to

buy them.

Uh that's why slowly but surely

educational comics morphed into

entertaining comics.

Max Gaines changed his company's name

and direction, but not its fortunes.

Sales continued to lag as children

ignored EC in droves.

Bill Gaines also wanted nothing to do

with his father's comic books. In fact,

Bill wanted no part of the family

business.

Max Gaines had an explosive temper and

Bill often found himself the target of

his father's wrath.

From all accounts, the relationship

between Bill Gaines and his father was a

very hard one and a very little bit

abusive on the edge. Max Gaines had

built his comic book company out of

nothing and was very impatient with

artists and writers and apparently with

his son as well.

He considered Bill the world's biggest

klutz.

And Bill often tried to live down to

that.

Max constantly said to Bill, "You'll

never amount to anything."

Bill did his best to stay out of his

father's way.

After a stint in the Army Air Corps, he

enrolled at New York University to

pursue his teaching credential.

Then in 1947, tragedy struck.

Max was killed in a boating accident

near the family's summer home on Lake

Placid.

Prodded by his mother, Bill reluctantly

took over the reins at EC.

Bill was not enthusiastic about the

idea. His father had been failing. The

business owed already about a hundred

thousand dollars.

Uh things weren't looking good when he

came in. And uh Bill said, "How do you

expect me to do this? My father didn't

do it and he was a pretty smart

financial guy."

Gaines slowly learned the ropes and

moved the comics more in line with his

personal tastes.

A turning point came in March 1948 when

a 23-year-old artist named Al Feldstein

knocked on the door at EC.

I went down to see Bill Gaines and I

showed him

the the stuff I'd been doing and he got

it very intrigued with them. My girls,

they called them headlight comics

because I did kind of new bio girls with

tight sweaters, you know, Lana Turner

movies. And so he gave me a contract to

do a teenage book called going steady

with Peggy.

But before even one issue was published,

the bottom fell out of the teenage

craze.

Feldstein agreed to tear up the contract

and began working on EC's other titles,

imitations of then popular romance,

western, and crime comics.

After a few years of doing this follow

the leader thing, Feldstein and Gaines

realized that this was not the way to go

and they realized that they had a common

love of the old sort of lights out Inner

Sanctum radio shows.

Bayer and Ice Yeast presents Lights Out

everybody.

Lights Out

brings you stories of the supernatural

and the supernormal

dramatizing the fantasies and the

mysteries of the unknown. One of the

things that I was always fascinated with

was the old radio horror shows from Arch

Oboler like the Witches' Tale and Lights

Out and Inner Sanctum. And I said, "Why

don't we do kind of gothic horror in

comics? Scare the pants off the kids."

Eager to take the company in a new

direction, Gaines agreed to test the

waters of horror.

Feldstein wrote two stories, The Crypt

of Terror and The Vault of Horror, which

ran in EC's crime comics.

Sales improved overnight. Gaines

immediately canceled EC's current line

and launched what he called a new trend

in magazines.

In January 1950, The Crypt of Terror and

The Vault of Horror hit the newsstands.

Two other titles, The Haunt of Fear and

Crime Suspense Stories, soon followed.

After three issues, Gaines changed the

title of The Crypt of Terror to Tales

from the Crypt.

It would become EC's biggest seller.

Early stories featured standard scare

fare, such as mummies, vampires, and

haunted houses.

Gaines and Feldstein soon developed

their own signature. Simple tales of

good and evil, which culminated in an

ironic, unusually deadly ending.

Every one of those stories would have a

twist. Most of those twists were the

just dessert twists. That is, whenever

there was a really bad person in these

comics, they would indeed get their

comeuppance, usually in the same way

they were delivering it to others.

In one story titled Taint the Meat, It's

the Humanity, a mild-mannered butcher

named Zack Grissle tries to boost

profits by selling spoiled meat to his

unsuspecting customers.

Pack your things, Sarah. We're leaving

town.

You're in trouble. They found out. I

warned you not to sell horse meat. It's

worse than that, Sarah. Four people are

dead already. I sold them tainted meat.

You You what?

You're a murderer.

I did it for us, Sarah. For you and me

and Junior. Junior? He's eating at

Herbie Horton's house. Horton? She

bought some of it.

I feel sick, Mommy.

Junior, baby.

He's dead, Zack. Dead. You killed him,

too. Our son. Sarah, put down that

knife.

Good lord.

Tainted meat?

Tainted meat, anyone?

EC pioneered dozens of new and ghastly

methods of comeuppance.

Villains were eaten by ghouls, skewered

on swords, buried alive, stuffed down

garbage disposals,

even southern fried.

It gave new meaning to the term an eye

for an eye.

In EC Comics and in in much of horror,

there's a code that that allows the bad

guy or the evil force or whatever it is

to be

if not vanquished, at least put at bay

at the end so we can walk out safely.

Gaines and Feldstein mixed their horror

with an element which would become an EC

trademark, humor.

Its source was quite often the story's

narrator, a device they also borrowed

from an old radio show.

I had remembered the old witch in

Witch's Tale, and I remember her

cackling and laughing and saying, "I'm

103 years old today, Satan, and I've got

a scary story to tell all my listeners."

>> And now, Satan,

if everybody'll just dust off them

lights and make it nice and dark, we'll

get right down to business.

Draw up to the fire and gaze into them

bugs.

Gaze into them deep.

Feldstein created a trio of ghoulish

hosts who welcomed readers into the

world of the macabre.

The Crypt-Keeper, the Vault-Keeper,

and the Old Witch.

Greetings, heartlings.

Yes, it's your feeder of foul flavors,

the Old Witch, come again.

Got a certain recipe for you this time.

The humor was a very vital element of

these books because if you took these

stories out of context, there's some of

them were pretty grisly and some of them

were not children's fare. But by having

them full of these bad horror puns and

having the the host come in and

wisecrack about them, they kind of took

the edge off the horror.

By using the horror hosts, EC kept a

perspective on what they were doing and

they reminded their readers that this

was fiction and it was entertainment.

Certainly, it was entertainment. The

ghoul lunatics kept the comic horror

books comic.

This mix of humor and horror had a

tremendous influence on children's

author R.L. Stine.

When I started writing these scary books

for kids,

I thought back to the EC Comics and how

much I loved them and I tried to

remember what it was about them that I

loved so much.

And I remembered that it was that

amazing mix of horror and humor.

There was always a funny twist. People

were always making horrible puns about

it. It was funny. And it's sort of what

I try to do at a much gentler level in

my books. You know, the whole thing was

a big joke to Bill. He wanted to publish

and have fun and see if he could do

stories the way he liked to do it and

hope that he made money.

Gaines succeeded beyond his wildest

dreams.

Although his horror comics didn't match

the total sales of Superman, they

outsold almost every other comic on a

percentage basis,

propelling the company into the black.

I think Dad was very surprised that they

were as successful as they were. He knew

that it was something that he liked and

enjoyed, but he wasn't quite sure if

anybody else would really enjoy it, too.

So, I think he was surprised and and

very happy.

An avid reader of science fiction,

Gaines followed the horror books with

weird science and weird fantasy.

Featuring futuristic tales of flying

saucers and alien worlds, EC's science

fiction books never attained the same

level of popularity and success as the

horror comics.

Yet, they are considered by many to be

classics of the genre.

Although neither man had formal training

as a writer, Gaines and Feldstein shared

the title of editor.

Together, they plotted most of EC's

horror and science fiction stories.

Gaines would come in with what he called

springboards and they were story ideas

which he got from reading other books,

going to movies, and he would pitch them

to Feldstein and Feldstein would turn

down the first one and the second one

and the fifth one. And someplace around

idea number 14 Feldstein would get

interested and said, "Yeah, I can make

that work."

Feldstein would then write the story

himself, laying it out directly onto the

illustration board, which the artist

would use to draw the panels.

Each horror book had four stories, and

it was up to Gaines and Feldstein to

create one new tale every day.

Scrounging for plots, Gaines read

everything he could get his hands on,

liberally borrowing from some of the

best writers in the field.

Bill would come in with these

springboards. He wouldn't tell me what

source they were because he didn't want

me to steal the story. And he brought in

a couple of

springboards for science fiction

stories, and I liked two of them,

and I combined them into something

called Home to Stay.

But Gaines' springboards turned out to

be two existing stories by Ray Bradbury,

then a best-selling author.

Bradbury noticed the unauthorized

adaptation and wrote to Gaines.

We got a letter

from Ray Bradbury, "Hey you guys, you

neglected uh to pay me my royalties for

the two stories you swiped." And Bill

said, "Oh, you know, we didn't know how

to get in touch with you."

And he said, "But we'd love to pay you

for it, and uh

how about letting us adapt your stories

into comics?" With Bradbury's blessing,

Feldstein would go on to adapt 26 of the

author's short stories.

Each one became an instant comic book

classic.

Because he is our premier short story

writer,

uh his stories were made to order for

EC.

Every time you think of one of these

stories, you tend to rank it as a

masterpiece.

Doing the Bradbury adaptations inspired

me to be a better writer. And I think

that's what you see he's really noted

for was that we kind of elevated the

level of storytelling

to a

greater height than it had been attained

prior in comic books.

EC's stable of artists included some of

the most talented men ever to work in

the field.

Gaines gave them top billing allowing

them to sign their pages and even

publishing their biographies inside the

front cover.

More importantly, he gave them creative

freedom.

Early on I I said to Bill, you know,

most comic books have a kind of a

sameness to them. I said, "What we've

got to do is encourage our artists to

write in their own handwriting,

not to imitate, but to each have their

own style."

The styles ran the gamut from squeaky

clean to gothically grotesque.

Into the latter category fell Graham

Ingels.

A painter by training, Ingels developed

a special knack for horror which earned

him the nickname Ghastly.

Graham Ingels was the greatest guy at

drawing walking dead, pieces of flesh

falling from bodies. Uh he had this way

of getting a texture on the on the

people he was drawing that no one else

ever got with this rotten color

reproduction. Somehow you just felt

things oozing out of pores when he drew

things. Graham Ingels had this way of of

drawing people

and he made them look like melting wax.

There was a feeling of decay about his

drawings that that was just so so

appealing in a very kind of under the

skin way.

I remember looking at his drawings when

I was a kid and imagining I could smell

it.

At the opposite end of the terror

spectrum was Jack Kamen.

Jack Kamen was an illustrator, a very

straight kind of illustrator, and he did

very pretty girls.

Everybody was nice and handsome. I

called him the Father Knows Best artist.

Kamen's style was best suited for EC's

crime stories, which typically involved

love triangles.

EC often borrowed plot elements from

James M. Cain, whose novels Double

Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings

Twice were made into very successful

movies.

>> do that.

Fix everything for us. What? Brave is

something to happen to Nick?

Something like that.

Both Postman and Double Indemnity

featured a gorgeous wife who plotted

with her boyfriend to kill her husband.

Kamen's stories usually included both of

these elements.

I'm going to kill her, Jean, just like

you want. I've made up my mind.

It's the only way, darling. The only

way. I knew you'd finally see it.

Of course, in EC's world, as in Cain's,

the wife and boyfriend would usually get

it themselves in the end.

Somewhere in between in the styles of

Ingels and Kamen fell EC's other main

artists, Johnny Craig and Jack Davis.

Craig, the senior member of the staff,

was one of the few artists who also

wrote his stories.

He became the man behind the

Vault-Keeper, illustrating all of the

covers for The Vault of Horror.

Johnny Craig's characters had these

severe perspiration problems whenever

anything bad happened around them, and

you could kind of feel that through the

page. You you almost felt the page would

get damp from all that sweat dripping on

it.

Unlike Feldstein and Gaines, who often

poured on the gore, Craig focused on the

terrors of the mind, the psychological

aspects of horror.

Considered EC's most popular artist,

Jack Davis specialized in physical

horror.

But Davis, who would later become a

highly successful humorist and

commercial artist, also had an inherent

comic style.

He imparted a light touch on even the

most horrifying scene.

I love to draw cartoons and I'm not an

illustrator. I think sometimes you

illustrators draw just you know, the

stock thing right there. But but if I

see something, I'll put a cartoon

movement on it, an action movement that

that I would put on a cartoon and

exaggerate maybe the hands and the feet

and the expression, you know, and really

go at it. That guy just makes me laugh.

Uh even when he's drawn the a gross-out,

he just makes me laugh. There's just

something about Jack Davis's stuff that

that really

blows me away.

Probably all of the artists

who drew for EC did their best work of

their careers

during that short time that they were at

EC. And that was no accident. That was

because Bill found out what they liked

to do and they built the stories around

that.

Two years into their reign of horror,

Gaines and Feldstein continued to blaze

new trails.

In 1952, they launched a new title,

Shock SuspenStories,

which featured a series of stories they

called preachies,

moralistic tales which took on some of

the most explosive issues of the day.

What does it say, Dave?

It it says,

"Don't move in, Jew.

You'll be sorry.

We don't want Jews in this

neighborhood."

Hate was the story of a group of

neighborhood vigilantes who tried to

scare a Jewish family out of town.

The situation spirals out of control and

the family is killed.

The leader of the vigilantes, John,

later makes a shocking discovery.

I never intended to tell you, John. I

never had to. Yes, you're adopted.

Ma!

Your pa-

We're Jewish.

Suddenly, the roles were reversed and

the hater becomes the hated. John gets

to experience his bigotry first hand.

Can't you see how wrong we've been?

Scram, Jew!

I think Dad liked to be cutting edge. I

believed that by touching on areas such

as anti-Semitism was just his way of

pushing the envelope a little, seeing

how far he could go.

I was stunned by the implications of

many of the stories they did. These were

adult themes.

And in a way, they were more shocking

than the horror stories because they

dealt with reality in a very direct way.

Gaines and Feldstein also turned the

spotlight on race relations, a topic

which in the early 1950s was just

beginning to bubble to the surface of

public discussion.

He's come home, Andrew. Our Joey's come

home a hero.

The whole town's proud of him, Arthur.

The whole town, look at them.

But Joey learns that Hank, the soldier

who saved his life by jumping on a live

grenade, was not good enough to be

buried in the town cemetery.

In the story's final page, Joey

confronts the people of his hometown.

I had a buddy in Korea.

We fought for democracy together.

He gave his life for that cause.

But when his body was sent back here,

it wasn't good enough to be buried in

Fair Lawn Cemetery.

It wasn't good enough because its skin

wasn't the right color.

What did he die for?

What did I give my arm for?

You say you're proud of me?

Well, I'm not proud of you.

I'm ashamed.

I'm ashamed of you and for you.

We were kind of

appealing to better our society, and

there were people out that didn't want

to better our society. They wanted the

status quo.

In 1952, EC launched a new kind of comic

book that would tackle the status quo

head-on. Its title was simply Mad.

Masterfully written and edited by Harvey

Kurtzman, Mad initially spoofed EC's own

comics.

Kurtzman soon turned his sights to other

targets, and Mad became a runaway hit.

I think the third issue or so I did the

Lone Stranger, and then the one that

where Mad really took off was

Superduperman. He did a take off of

Superman, and it was hysterical, and and

that was the beginning of Mad.

By 1953,

Bill Gaines had become one of the most

successful publishers in the comic book

industry, disproving his father's

prophecy that he would never amount to

anything.

He was very, very proud that he was able

to prove his dad wrong, and you know,

turn a business that was

suffering into an enormous financial and

creative success.

EC's success did not go unnoticed by the

other publishers, who soon flooded the

newsstands with imitations.

By 1953, nearly a quarter of all comic

books sold dealt with horror.

Gaines, once the trend follower, was now

the trend setter.

The other companies did try to copy EC,

but I think that they missed the point.

They made the mistake of thinking that

it was the gore and the sensational

element that made these comic books

successful. So, of course, they upped

the ante on the gore.

This constant competition and

one-upmanship forced Gaines and

Feldstein to raise the level of violence

in their stories.

Frankly, as they reached deeper and

deeper into the springboard barrel, the

stories got bloodier and bloodier. Did

it go overboard? Yeah, I think so in a

couple of spots. One spot was Foul Play,

the story of a baseball team which exact

grizzly revenge against an opponent who

has murdered one of their teammates.

There's no doubt about it. Satin's a

murderer.

Traces of poison are still on his

spikes.

This is a job for the police.

No way.

Let's take care of him ourselves, all

way.

On the last page, the killer is

dismembered and his body parts used as

baseball equipment.

I think it's kind of a natural

phenomenon to try and top yourself. And

yeah, we did step into

what might be called extremes in some of

the stuff we did where we became a

little gorier than we should have. I

didn't write it, but I drew it.

And I feel very bad about that. And of

course, uh

everybody really jumped on that because

it was awful. But nowadays, it would be

nothing.

Those days, I guess it was really

something and it

mothers and fathers say, "I don't want

my kid to read that."

Stories like Foul Play encouraged

critics to step up their attacks.

The most vocal critic was Fredric

Wertham, a New York psychiatrist who had

worked with troubled teens.

Wertham's attack on comic books began in

1948 when he called the medium pollution

from which children had to be protected.

In the spring of 1954, Wertham's book

Seduction of the Innocent was published.

Promoted as the most shocking book of

the year, it was a scathing indictment

of all comic books.

Wertham, of course, as a psychiatrist

read everything into these comic books

he could possibly could. Uh he talked

about a homoerotic relationship between

Batman and Robin. He talked about the

lesbian tendencies of Wonder Woman. It

was preposterous.

Wertham saved his harshest attacks for

horror and crime comics, which he

alleged were a direct cause of juvenile

delinquency.

These claims touched off a firestorm of

criticism against the comics industry.

PTA and church groups organized

boycotts. Others took even more drastic

measures. There were comic book burnings

that were of course reminiscent of the

Nazi years.

Nobody intended that precisely, but when

you saw some of these ugly scenes of

towns where they would get all the comic

books together and just burn them up, it

was quite frightening.

The controversy quickly drew the

attention of political leaders, and the

US Senate Subcommittee to investigate

juvenile delinquency agreed to look into

the matter.

Led by Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver,

the panel held hearings in New York City

on April 21st, 1954.

The star witness was none other than Dr.

Fredric Wertham.

It is my opinion

without any reasonable doubt

and without any reservation

that comic books

are an important

contributing factor

in many cases of juvenile delinquency.

Wertham worked from an improper premise.

That is, he decided that the troubled

children that he was analyzing read

comic books. Therefore, that was a

source of their trouble. And of course,

there were plenty of children reading

comic books who were leading perfectly

normal lives, and in fact most of them

were very happy. As adults, we get to a

certain age that all of a sudden we stop

being

inside, we stop wanting to take chances.

We start being more afraid of the world

and we start protecting our children. We

don't realize what it was like to be a

kid. And so, here comes Seduction of the

Innocent.

Claims that these comic books are going

to turn

us kids into juvenile delinquents. Well,

poor guy, I have news for him. They

turned me into a movie director.

I didn't become a juvenile delinquent.

This guy is dead wrong.

Dead wrong. My name is William

>> Although many of the attacks were

directed at other publishers, Bill

Gaines asked for and was granted

permission to testify before the

committee.

I was the first publisher in these

United States to publish horror comics.

I'm responsible. I started them.

Some may not like them.

That's a matter of personal taste.

It would be just as difficult to explain

the harmless thrill of a horror story to

a Dr. Wertham

as it would be to explain the sublimity

of love to a frigid old maid.

My father was proud of the comics he

published and I'm proud of the comics I

publish.

Gaines defended his books on the grounds

of free speech.

He told the committee that he felt

constrained only by the limits of good

taste.

What happened was, of course, Bill was

not a a student of

or experienced enough

to be able to parry some of the

"When did you stop beating your wife?"

questions that came flying at him after

his testimony.

One of those questions concerned a

recent issue of EC's Crime

SuspenStories.

Do you think that this cover is in bad

taste? And Bill said, "No, I don't think

so. How would it be in bad taste?" And

he said, "Well, if you showed the gore

drop dripping from it." And they nailed

him with that.

The exchange made front-page news and

turned public opinion decisively against

Gaines.

Bill's mistake was by volunteering to

testify, he focused all the negativity

on

on himself and EC Comics. So, now the

villain, the evil comic book publisher,

now had a face and a name and that name

was William M. Gaines.

The Senate hearings quickly turned up

the heat on EC. Wholesalers began

refusing to handle Gaines' comics.

Bundles were returned to the office

unopened.

Attempting to rally the other comic book

publishers, Gaines proposed an

association to fight the growing witch

hunt.

So, he called a meeting to say, "Let's

fight this censorship as a group." And

the other publishers had a wonderful

idea about how to fight the censorship.

"Let's get rid of the violence. Let's

get rid of the horror. Let's wipe out

all of the stuff that EC does and then

we'll all be very happy."

Gaines stormed out of the meeting

leaving the other publishers to form the

Comics Magazine Association of America.

The group immediately outlawed the use

of the words crime, horror, terror, and

weird.

All of which had figured prominently in

EC's biggest sellers.

The publishers also established a code

of ethics which forbade all scenes of

horror, excessive bloodshed, and gory or

gruesome crimes.

All comics which complied with the code

would receive the association's seal of

approval.

Judge Charles Murphy, a New York City

magistrate, was appointed the first code

administrator, the comics czar.

Ostracized by the other publishers and

with no wholesalers willing to handle

his comics, Gaines was forced to

surrender.

On September 14th, 1954, he announced

that he was discontinuing his line of

horror and crime comics.

I for one do not believe

I never have believed that comics are

the cause of juvenile delinquency.

I've taken this action

based on a premise which has never been

proven.

However, I feel that the public

must be served. If this is the way the

public wants it, this is the way it'll

have to be as far as I'm concerned.

I was too young to pay attention to the

the Kefauver hearings. All I knew is

that

one day I couldn't find my EC Comics

anymore. And I was left with, you know,

Superman and and Batman and you know,

just you know, whatever whatever was

left. Uh you know, they were good, but

it wasn't the same.

The new Comics Code put a dozen

publishers out of business overnight.

Gaines, however, was not ready to throw

in the towel.

Instead, he and Feldstein created a new

clean line of comics, which they called,

appropriately, their new direction.

Although they refused to join the

association, EC's new comics stuck to

the letter of the code.

Gaines tried putting out comics without

the Comics Code symbol, and he didn't

get on a newsstand. The books would be

printed, they'd be shipped out to

wholesalers, the wholesalers would just

take them and ship them right back for

credit, and Gaines was suddenly now

uh unable to get his comics to the

customers.

Gaines had no choice but to swallow his

pride and join the association.

He had a difficult time, however,

winning approval for any of his stories.

Initially, when the Comics Code was

started, its mission was to prove it was

necessary. So, they started ripping

stories apart, deleting things which in

hindsight seem ridiculous. Most

censorship drives seem ridiculous in

hindsight, but these seemed especially

ridiculous even at the time.

I think that his his mission

was to put us out of business

or at least make it so impossible for us

to publish that Bill would quit.

Gaines quickly became frustrated with

the code censorship.

"This is what our forefathers came to

America to escape." He told his

distributors.

Dad was a very good Indian chief, but he

wasn't a good [ __ ] He didn't follow

really well and to be in a position

where he had to present his material and

have someone else decide whether it was

appropriate or not was very difficult

for him.

After a year of working under the code

censors, EC finally headed out with

Judge Murphy.

We had a science fiction story about

mutants

that he completely refused to let us

run. And so I brought a replacement

story. The replacement story was called

Judgment Day and had run 3 years earlier

in Weird Fantasy.

The story was one of Gaines and

Feldstein's preachies, an allegory about

racial tolerance.

In it, a space investigator visits a

planet inhabited by orange and blue

robots to determine if they were

advanced enough to join the Galactic

Empire.

You differentiate between blue robots

and orange robots? Of course. Otherwise,

there'd be trouble. Have to keep them in

their place, you know.

After determining that prejudice existed

among the robots based on the color of

their armor, the investigator concluded

they were not yet ready to join the

Empire.

Upon returning to his spaceship, the

investigator removed his helmet

revealing African-American features.

Well, Judge Murphy said, "No, you can't

have that."

I said, "You can't have what?" He said

you can't have a black man.

I said that's the point of the whole

story.

He said you can't have a black man. I

said, "Where in the code does it say I

can't have a black man?"

Can't have a black man. He wouldn't let

it go.

Feldstein returned to the EC offices and

informed Gaines of Murphy's edict. And

Bill called up Judge Murphy and he said,

"What's going on?" And Judge Murphy

said, "You can't have a black man." I

said and Bill said, "I'm calling a press

conference and I'm going to

make a big stink about the bigotry of

the code." And he said, "All right.

He can be a black man, but you've got to

take the perspiration off of skin." Bill

said,

the four-letter word you and hung up on

him and ran the story and I think that

was the end of our

science fiction

comic book.

Gaines had had enough.

Judgment Day became the last story in

the last comic book that EC ever

published. The whole thing kind of

crashed and burned. It slowly wound

down. Unfortunately for Bill, he had an

ace in the hole with Mad Magazine.

Although Mad had started slowly when it

was launched in 1952,

3 years later it was selling like

hotcakes.

In the summer of 1955,

editor Harvey Kurtzman convinced Gaines

to change the 10-cent comic book into a

25-cent black and white magazine.

One year later, after a falling out over

ownership of the magazine, Gaines fired

Kurtzman and replaced him with Al

Feldstein.

Mad didn't miss a beat. Over the next 25

years, it became one of the most popular

and successful magazines in America.

In the mid-1980s, the Cochran reprints

caught the attention of several

Hollywood producers, including Joel

Silver, who had produced such hits as

Lethal Weapon and Die Hard. I remember

as a kid I would devour these comic

books. I mean, they were scary, they

were funny, they were just so special.

There was nothing else like them. So, we

pursued Bill Gaines and we said we'd

like to get the rights to Tales from the

Crypt.

Silver, together with partners David

Giler and Walter Hill, optioned the

rights with the idea of producing an

anthology film.

Directors Richard Donner and Robert

Zemeckis eventually became partners in

the project.

In the late 1980s, the group abandoned

the idea of a feature film and decided

to turn Tales from the Crypt into a

television series.

The pilot episode, directed by Robert

Zemeckis, was based on a story in which

a homicidal maniac, dressed as Santa

Claus, terrorizes a woman who has just

killed her husband.

During production, Silver and Zemeckis

sought advice from Bill Gaines. When we

showed the kind of the the rough cut to

to Bill, he said at the end of the show

she should be screaming her head off.

Oh, Carrie.

Thank goodness. See, Mommy?

I told you Santa would come. And he

didn't even have to come down the

chimney.

I'm out of men.

NAUGHTY

OR NICE.

HE WAS ABSOLUTELY involved in the

creation of the first episode. And and

we always looked at that episode as a

template for all future episodes. The

series producers, all of the comic

books, remained faithful to the EC

spirit.

If you read the stories in

the comic book and then you see our

versions of the stories, they're very

true to them. I mean, we really didn't

take a lot of liberties and we tried to

to kind of capture,

you know, the images from the comic book

and use those images almost like a

storyboard for for the shows.

The series also brought to life Gaines

and Feldstein's horror host, the

Cryptkeeper.

We all felt it was very important that

the Cryptkeeper be a part of the show

and cuz we loved the notion of this

little weird guy who was funny and

scary. You know, he could make you

laugh, but he could kill you.

Although he bore little physical

resemblance to his comic book

counterpart, the animatronic Cryptkeeper

did speak in the same punning patter.

Greetings, infesters.

I'll be with you in a moment. I was just

putting these gross profits away for

safekeeping.

You see, boils and ghouls, at

Cryptkeeper Financial, we can help you

get morgue for your money. Whether it's

mutual fiends you want or cold, horrid

cash, we can guarantee you'll corner the

market.

The key to the Cryptkeeper is that he's

comedy relief.

He sometimes can get a little ghoulish,

but never really over the top. He's

there to ease

the pain of being scared, perhaps.

Jack Wall is the president of Tales from

the Crypt Productions and is the

marketing mastermind behind the flood of

Cryptkeeper merchandise.

And I said there's no reason in the

world that the Cryptkeeper can't be for

Halloween what Santa Claus is for

Christmas? That was a tall order.

We're gaining on it. He is slowly but

surely becoming what I like to call

uh the world's undisputed icon of ghoul,

horror, and spooktacular fun. It was

just exciting that we were able to

create this

this kind of whole, you know, world out

of these

very secret, special, magical comic

books.

Once banished by parents and

politicians, Tales from the Crypt and

the other EC horror comics of the 1950s

have taken on the air of legitimacy and

earned their rightful place as a piece

of treasured Americana.

What's amazing is how much the EC books

are remembered. There were hundreds and

hundreds of comic books coming out every

month in the '50s that no one remembers,

that no one collects, that no one bases

current fiction on inspirations of. Uh

and yet these EC books seem to have

crept into the sensibilities of a whole

generation or two. They were so smart

and they were so interesting. And the

the art was so great and it was so well

done and the and and

they really were were so pure in what

they were. These EC horror comics are

classic. They're classic horror stories.

They're still wonderful today. And I

think this is why people love them. They

haven't dated at all. I think EC comics

are the greatest comics ever invented

because they dared to be appalling and

funny and crazy and witty all in one big

wild ball of human commentary.

Al Feldstein is considered to be one of

the most talented writers and editors

ever to work in comic books.

He retired from Mad Magazine in 1984 and

now lives on a ranch in Montana where he

paints wildlife scenes and recreations

of his famous horror and science fiction

covers.

I consider myself a very fortunate human

being in having had a career that I

loved, that I enjoyed doing. I'm

fortunate that I had the opportunities

presented to me

by Bill and his open creative

publishing.

He had a great

capacity

for letting people with talent shine.

And for that I'm eternally grateful.

William M. Gaines died in 1992.

To the general public, he is perhaps

best remembered as the colorful and

iconoclastic publisher of Mad.

But to fans around the world, he is

considered the heart and soul of the

company that forever changed the face of

comic books. Bill Gaines just didn't

give a damn. He liked his comics the way

they did them.

And uh if you wanted to go along for the

ride, great. And if you didn't, screw

it. He was absolutely thrilled with the

support from EC fans. You know, he came

into the business not knowing anything

about the comic book industry. And he

just did what he liked. And he was

amazed to find that everyone else liked

it, too.

Like her father before her, Wendy Gaines

Bucci has taken over the family business

and has become the guardian of the EC

legacy.

When I was younger, EC didn't really

mean a whole lot to me. I just knew it

was something that my dad had done at

one time. And as I grew older and

started to become familiar with the

material and read the old comic books, I

realized he was a genius and I never

knew it. He was way ahead of his time

and created something that he was very

proud of and we were all very proud of,

as well.