"Bill Gaines was the publisher, and Al Feldstein the editor, of EC Comics, a legendary but short-lived publisher (circa 1950-55) of some of the greatest science-fiction, crime, war, humor and horror comics ever created, that featured artwork by some of the greatest comic-book illustrators to grace the field, and is considered a high-water mark for the medium. The stories that Gaines and Feldstein co-wrote were not the typical comic-book fare of the previous decade. Coming of age in the same postwar era that began to examine the darker underbelly of American society, producing new cinematic genres like film noir, Gaines and Feldstein’s eight-page stories (four to an issue) took a similar darker and more adult turn: EC’s horror comics were more horrible than any before (or since). Their war comics were anti-war comics. Their science-fiction stories had ironic endings that predated The Twilight Zone’s. And their crime and suspense titles featured stories steeped in social and moral issues that had never before been tackled in comics (or most of the larger popular culture) — bigotry, racism and anti-Semitism — which reflected the traditional social and moral aspects of the Judaism of Gaines’ and Feldstein’s upbringing. These were the seeds that would grow into both the underground and overground comics revolutions of the 1960s."
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Horror authorsScience fiction authors from the United StatesHumorists from the United StatesComics authorsPublishers from the United States
Original Language: English
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Sources
Schumer, Arlen. "The 13 Most Influential Jewish Creators and Execs, PART 3". 13th Dimension.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Gaines
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William Gaines
William Maxwell Gaines; (March 1, 1922 – June 3, 1992), was an American publisher and co-editor of EC Comics. Following a shift in EC's direction in 1950, Gaines presided over what became an artistically influential and historically important line of mature-audience comics. He published the satirical magazine Mad for over 40 years. He was posthumously inducted into the comic book industry's Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame (1993) and the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame (1997). In 2012, he was inducte
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