William Gaines

William Maxwell Gaines (March 1, 1922 – June 3, 1992) was an American publisher and co-editor who inherited and reoriented his father's comic book company into Entertaining Comics (EC), spearheading the "New Trend" of genre titles focused on horror, science fiction, crime, and suspense from 1950 onward, and co-founding the enduring satirical publication Mad in 1952.

Gaines was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a Jewish household.

After Max Gaines's death in a boating accident in 1947, the 25-year-old William Gaines assumed control of Educational Comics and, with editor Al Feldstein, shifted away from didactic "pre-trend" material toward more provocative anthologies such as Tales from the Crypt, The Vault of Horror, Weird Science, and Crime SuspenStories, which emphasized graphic storytelling, moral twists, and social commentary illustrated by top artists including Wally Wood and Jack Davis. These titles achieved commercial success but drew scrutiny for their violent and lurid content, culminating in Gaines's April 1954 testimony before the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, where he defended comic books as harmless entertainment while controversially asserting that depictions of severed heads could be rendered in "good taste."