The Mad World of William M. Gaines

by Frank Jacobs

Side-Splitting story of man who runs his business like a private circus, filling the water cooler with wine; wearing an artificial scar to convince people he has a mean twin brother; and on and on.....

Genres: Biography, Humor, Comics

271 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 23, 2013

Reviews

[Phillip Fuller]

I am a huge fan of Mad magazine and other works published by Bill Gaines from the EC comics to every issue of Mad he was involved with. Mad magazine went downhill when he died because Mad became part of the DC comics offices with their more corporate culture. When Mad had it's own office building with Gaines at the helm there was a more free atmosphere for creative artists like Dave Berg and Jack Davis. The book covers the days of those great EC horror comics that got him in trouble with groups that blamed his comics for juvenile crime to his best known work as publisher of Mad magazine. My brother had a huge box of Mad magazines and reprint books and I had the complete EC horror hardcover reprints. William M Gaines lived a remarkable life that included a good relationship with his usual gang of idiots as they created a magazine well above their lame imitators like Cracked and Crazy. I really enjoyed reading this book and I think other fans will too.

[Abbie]

Will Gaines is my ultimate hero.

[Richard Guion]

Earlier this year, I read Bill Schelly’s biography of Harvey Kurtzman, the EC writer/artist who created MAD magazine. Kurtzman had an intense love/hate relationship with his boss, William Gaines. This book does a bio from Gaines POV. It is a very humorous book, describing what life was like working in the MAD magazine offices of 1971. It is 2/3 a bio of Gaines and 1/3 a look at the MAD crew of writers/artists. Fans of EC Comics won’t be disappointed, there’s a good section on that here. I think Schelly’s book went much more into detail about how Kurtzman’s comics were made and how he worked with different artists. I don’t usually laugh out loud reading a book but I did here several times. The way that Gaines lived his life and dealt with his mother, wife, friends and employees was something else. Not PC at all. To read this book, you have to buy the paperback on eBay, but for this comics aficionado, it was totally worth it.

[Chris]

I grew up reading MAD but had no idea the lunatic genius of the staff of writers and artists that created it. Nor did I know anything of the brilliant Bill Gaines that helmed the whole operation. This man literally changed the world of comics, not just with MAD, but also his horror titles like Tales from the Crypt which challenged society and lead to the foundation of the Comics Code Authority. He was the son of the man who created the first comic book and his place in the history of the medium is as solid as Bob Kane or Stan Lee. An uncompromising individualist, a social jester, a man with a big beard, big belly, and big heart, I think I've found a new hero in William Gaines.

[Dave]

The story of a large and complex man who liked things the way he wanted written by one of the Mad magazine writers at the time.

Gaines inherited the comics company from his father and founded Mad magazine surrounding himself with very creative and funny writers and artists taking them on "business" vacations around the world in order to spark their creativity often being compared to unfilmed Marx Brothers films with antics and one liners flying left and right.

Gaines himself owned specific clothing depending upon his weight loss or gain at the time and was a neat freak to the point of being obsessive compulsive. Married twice he had three children. His loves were wine, zeppelins, and a hotel shaped like an elephant.

[Peter Derk]

A good book about a true original, a maverick, if you will. It does make me wish for a bygone era of office nonsense, the type that occurred in the Mad offices. Not like "Sexual harassment ain't so bad!" kind of stuff, stuff like keeping a list of everyone who pissed you off or was annoying over the year and then inviting them to your annual party where you just bring the worst, ladder-climbing, jerkoff self-promoted people together to enjoy each other's company and see what it's like. And you feed them. Sure, the finger sandwiches have cigarette ash in them, and the "wine" is mostly grape soda that was opened a week ago so it's good and flat, but food is food.

The Fyre Festival guy should've claimed that's what he was doing, that he was mocking rich kids who would pay all that money to go to a concert. He could've swung into being a cultural hero if he'd gone that route. "It was a big joke that only I was in on, and it DID get a bit out of control..."

The sad thing is that this book is VERY out of print. It's pretty hard to get a copy, they go for $50-$70 bucks on ebay, and there's no current digital edition, it looks like someone put one out a big back, but that was not a legit thing?

Which I can understand!

I've emailed two different publishers to try and inquire about the rights to this title. I'm not really an indie press, but I COULD be, I have the DESIRE to put out a few books, mostly because I'm personally interested and (foolishly) believe that others will be interested, too.

The first publisher sent me to a second publisher. The second publisher sent me to a third publisher. Now I'll try that third publisher and see what happens. The problem is that The Mad World of William Gaines was published, that publisher was bought out, then THAT publisher was bought out, but it's not like these publishers were saying, "I must have the Mad World of William Gaines in my roster of books!" Instead, it was a mass buyout where Publisher A sold their entire catalog to Publisher B, so Publisher B had a lot of stuff they wanted to reprint and distribute, I'm sure, and a lot of "other" that they just kind of...have.

I tried to get the rights to another book, Campfires of the Dead by Peter Christopher, in early 2021. At that time, most publishing folks weren't in the office, and apparently couldn't access their records (which I guess means these were either only in print or were stored digitally on a non-networked server?), so it wasn't until December of the same year, nearly 12 months later, that I got an email that the rights had reverted back to the deceased author's wife.

HOWEVER, I don't think I got this news in time because on September 22 of 2022 (9 months after I heard about the rights) 11:11 Press put out a collection of Peter Christopher's work that included Campfires as well as some unpublished stories. My suspicion is that this would take longer than a year to put together, edit, get an intro from Chuck Palahiniuk, and publish, but maybe I'm wrong on that one...

I'm not angry about that or anything, I mostly thought Campfires should be more widely available for a reasonable price (it's another one that was super expensive due to being out of print and not having a gigantic original print run, also in the $50 to $75 dollar range). It seems possible, if it came out in late 2022, that I was already too late in inquiring in early 2021.

I've since learned a little something about the rights to stuff like this: The problem with acquiring the rights to reprint something like this is that it's such small potatoes for the publisher. While they're not making anything from it currently, they don't stand to make much by selling the rights, either. The time and energy it takes them to do this would probably result in something approaching a break even.

It's not that publishers are hoarding rights and stuff, it seems more that publishers don't have simple mechanisms for small sales.

Which is, in my opinion, one of the problems of big publishing. It's like the film industry, there's not really a middle class of publishers. There are indies who strive to not lose TOO MUCH money on their passion projects, and there are the huge boys who try and make their nut on 4-5 titles, huge tentpole books that keep things afloat.

"Nut." "Tentpole." So sexual.

I would like to make a suggestion to big publishers out there, who almost certainly read my Goodreads reviews as they are an excellent window into a certain audience of readers, sometimes referred to as idiots.

Guys, make it simple: Pull together your out of print shit, and sell the rights on eBay. You don't NEED to make $10,000 on this. Have your attorney draft up fill-in-the-blank paperwork, make this super easy, make it super clear which rights are eligible for this type of sale, have one of your interns, who you don't pay because you don't need to because the ONLY way you could be an intern working for a publisher in Manhattan is to be super rich going in, run this.

Hell, make the criteria super simple: Has it been out of print for 10+ years? Did it fail to crest a certain dollar amount or number of copies in sales? Is there no digital edition available?

You might as well sell the shit.

I don't know that you'll make billions, but maybe that's the thing about publishing in 2024: You need to stop looking for the big payday and start looking for the steady paycheck, know what I'm saying? You're not sitting on a gold mine, but you are sitting on a modest amount of cash that's very illiquid and not doing you any good.

I'll keep trying to get the rights to the Mad World and update you all. Let's see what happens!

[Allison Roy]

Decent read. WAY too many names in this (I struggle with remembering names) and lots of references to people/celebs that went totally over my head. ⁣
⁣
A little background on comic books, which is something I know nothing about was interesting (plus Gaines is tied to “Tales from the Crypt”?! 😱) This book reads as glorifying this “boys club” of the dudes working for “Mad”. This book mentioned Gaines “quirks”, which while reading seems pretty obvious he has some pretty serious OCD. ⁣
⁣
So it’s a combo of the stress of the comic book/magazine world, dudes being dudes, and tales of traveling. ⁣
⁣
It was aight’

[Keith2314]

Made available in 2013 for Kindle. Originally published in 1972.

I originally ran across The Mad World of William Gaines in Mad Magazine in about 1999.
At the time, the book was out of print. As a result, Mad decided to serialize it over several issues. I bought one issue and really enjoyed the excerpt - both the text and the artwork. I put it on my to read list.

I wasn't able to locate a copy of the book. When I looked for it again a few years ago, I was delighted that I could download it. I read the text of the book and enjoyed the story of William Gaines. However, there was a problem with the artwork.

I couldn't see any of the art since the book hadn't been formatted properly. As a result, the book wasn't nearly as appealing as it would have been with drawings and features in tact. I remember some of the cartoons from the serialized edition of the book being very funny and crude - typical Mad Magazine.

The book itself is mainly a biography of Mad founder and longtime editor William Gaines. The author, Frank Jacobs, worked for Gaines at Mad for years. His take on Gaines is overwhelmingly positive, bordering on fandom at times. We learn of Gaines history with comic books and eventual transition to humor. Gaines personal life - two marriages, a bachelor lifestyle, and slovenly existence, are described with gusto and humor.

I recommend The Mad World of William Gaines. But, to really enjoy it, get a paper copy, if you can find one.

[Daniel]

I ran an edition that was published in 1972 and is hardcover. It cost 7.95 new. Its a 50 year old book this year. One of the oldest books I have read that is for sure.

I have read a few issues of mad magazine years ago. Now I hope to read more issues.

I first learned about Bill Gains from the book good days and mad by Dick DeBartolo and ever since then I wanted to read the mad world of William M. Gains.

I enjoyed reading the Mad World of William M. Gaines. I learned a lot about him that I did not know. His father was killed in a boating accident. And William took over EC.

I also learned that Gaines had a sister named Elaine. He was married 2 times. Hazel was his first wife and Nancy was his second. From reading good days and mad I thought Annie Gaines was Bills only wife.

I had no idea EC did horror comics and that there was a hearing in Washington about them in Washington D.C about horror comics at which Bill testified. And that pretty much Bill was forced to stop publishing horror comics.

I learned that Mad was published starting in 1952. The book also talks about how Alfred E. Neuman, law suites mad has been faced with, mad trips, Gaines fashion, his love for food, his driving. Oh, I did not know that Gains was such a stickler for having things organized.

I thought The Mad World Of William M. Gaines was a 4 because I thought it was a very through portrait of the man and at times it made me laugh.

[Calvin]

I read this when I was just starting high school. Got it as a Scholastic Book Club selection, and devoured it enthusiastically. I was a lover of the magazine and was fascinated by the real story behind all those funny artists and the editor who made "the usual gang of idiots" work so well, for so many years. I think it was my introduction to some of the history I would encounter as I learned about comic books: EC Comics made an appearance, as (I think) did Will Eisner. In any case, it was a precious book in my collection for a long while. I truly don't know where it ended up, however - maybe I just plain wore it out! Or gave it away to a friend who was in for a really great reading experience. Frank Jacobs did an outstanding job.

[Michael Norwitz]

Jacob's account has the slightest hint of a biography, but really is a paean to the comics impresario who gave us EC Comics in the 1950s and who then made millions as the publisher of Mad Magazine. The book was written in the 1970s and has the boggle-eyed silliness one would expect of the era, with more time spent on being impressed by the practical jokes played in the office than on serious history. But if you're interested in the subject and willing to simply be amused, the book is an easy read.

[Cheryl Gatling]

Don't judge a book by its cover. At first glance, the hairy, bespectacled man on the dull-colored cover of this book looks more like a street person than a comic genius. But my husband brought it home for me to read, and I read it. My guess is that the more you read and loved Mad as a kid, the more you will love this behind-the-scenes look at all the artists and writers you knew, and the man who made it all possible. I had dipped into a copy of Mad now and then when I was young, but was hardly steeped in it. Still, I found it much more entertaining than it looks.

I became most interested when I read that William Gaines's father (a domineering, and borderline abusive man) was one of the pioneers of the comic book. He enjoyed reading comic strips in old newspapers so much that he was one of the first to say, "Hey, let's publish a bunch of these in booklet form, and sell it on newsstands." He did, and was making a success of it, but he lost all his superheroes to other publishers, and got left with educational comics about Bible stories and woodland creatures.

Then he died, and his son took over. William didn't plan to take over. He planned to finish college and become a teacher, but in the meantime someone had to sit in the head office. Gradually Bill got into it, especially into the horror stories that became so famously gruesome that they were banned in a famous court case. I remembered reading about that before. But I hadn't known it was the same guy who later did Mad.

After all the horror comics were shut down, one little satire mag was all Gaines had left. He ran with it, and built a whole new success. Mad would skewer anything, as long as they thought it was funny. They did this partly through the office culture that Gaines created: tightly-knit, free of corporate control (at least during his lifetime), with parties, and trips around the world, and lots of hijinks and practical jokes.

Gaines himself was quite a character. He was OCD, making lists of his lists, alphabetizing his spices at home, and unable to tolerate having a cleaning lady because she might move things. He was a lover of food and wine. He hated all physical exertion, and had the physique to show it. He was a sloppy dresser, and a reckless driver. Mad was his baby. He wanted it to be as good as he could make it, and he wanted nothing else. He didn't want to move up the corporate ladder. He didn't want to take on other projects (unless they were outgrowths of Mad, such as The Mad Show).

One of the most interesting parts of the history of Mad is the history of its lawsuits. That parody is free speech-- thank Mad for that, in a court case that went all the way to the Supreme Court. Mad was also accused of being Communist, in a case that was settled out of court. It was true that Mad made fun of government leaders. But they also made fun of government protesters, and everybody else. Gaines was on the side of free speech, and free thought, that most American of American values.

And did he change the face of the country by raising up a whole generation of young people to not take things too seriously, to not swallow what they were being told hook, line, and sinker? Probably yes, Probably yes.

[Bill Doughty]

More anecdotal than the sort of straight biography approach I was actually kinda hoping for. Far more time is spent on "Oh, that Bill Gaines... what a character!" sorts of moments than on "here's the story of his life" stuff, and that's when the focus of the particular chapter isn't Mad Magazine itself. And while all of that was certainly interesting, particularly the Mad bits, some of the info I was most curious about is passed over a little too quickly. I mean, the EC Comics horror, crime, and war titles are some of the most influential and infamous comics of all time, and the company was almost single-handedly responsible for the creation of the Comics Code Authority, and all that gets maybe a chapter. Prioritize, man!

Still, a good read, even if the author, a Mad staffer, seems to celebrate his boss a little too much. I think Frank here was angling for a raise.

[Bob Mckay]

Anyone who read MAD Magazine as a kid or as an adult should really read this quick, entertaining story about the birth and growth of Alfred E. Newman's MADmania. I just wish the book didn't end in 1972, I understand Bill's daughter Wendy runs the empire now.

[Russell Johnson]

Once again, you'd need to love MAD Magazine to love this, but if you do, you will. This is a great look at a guy who persevered through comic book witch hunts of the 50s, losing an empire and building another right behind it.. all while gaining a lot of good and interesting friends.

[Brent]

I loved this book, my first peek behind the scenes of MAD, EC Comics, Harvey Kurtzman, Al Feldstein, the Usual Gang of Idiots, and the unique gifts of Mr. Gaines. Read it!

Delete it...| Edit it...

[Adam Sohmer]

A must-read for anybody who enjoys biographies about pop culture icons.

[Steve]

Lots of tales of marvelous pranks, a full recounting of the EC trials and ample Madness.

[Sarah]

not on overdrive