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William Maxwell "Bill" Gaines (March 1, 1922 – June 3, 1992) was the publisher and co-editor of EC...

William Maxwell "Bill" Gaines (March 1, 1922 – June 3, 1992) was the publisher and co-editor of EC Comics, and publisher of Mad for over 40 years. Following a shift in EC's direction in 1950, Gaines was arguably the first publisher to oversee a line of comic books with sufficient artistic quality and interest to appeal to adults. Bill Gaines was the son of Max Gaines, who as publisher of the All-American Comics division of DC Comics was also an influential figure in the history of comics. The elder Gaines tested the idea of packaging and selling comics on newsstands in 1933. In 1941, he accepted William Moulton Marston's proposal for the first successful female superhero, Wonder Woman. As World War II began, Bill Gaines was rejected by the United States Army, United States Coast Guard and United States Navy, so he went to his draft board and requested to be drafted. He trained as an Army Air Corps photographer at Lowry Field in Denver. However, when he was assigned to an Oklahoma City field minus any photographic facility, he wound up on permanent KP duty. As he explained in 1976 to Bill Craig of Stars and Stripes, "Being an eater, this assignment was a real pleasure for me. There