244 GAINES, WILLIAM
novels, including Coraline (2002), Th e Wolves in the Walls (2003), and Th e Graveyard
Book (2008), many of which focus on the heroism of children as they mature. Gaiman
has also written for television ( Neverwhere , 1996), and several screenplays, including
MirrorMask (2005) with Dave McKean, and Beowulf (2007) with Roger Avary, as well
as fi lm adaptations of his own works.
Gaiman lives near Minneapolis, Minnesota, in a home that he has described as an
“Addams-Family” house. Since 2000, he has kept a blog at http://www.neilgaiman.com,
in which he tracks his writing projects, book tours, home life, occasional beekeeping,
and other ephemera.
Jacob Lewis
GAINES, WILLIAM (1922–92). Born in New York City, William “Bill” Gaines was the
son of the comics entrepreneur M. C. Gaines, founder of Educational Comics , whose
publications included history and science lessons, as well as Bible stories for children.
When his father died in a boating accident in 1947, William assumed responsibility for
the failing fi rm at the age of 25 and changed both the focus of the fi rm and its name.
Educational Comics became Entertaining Comics, later referred to by its long-standing
acronym EC Comics.
EC Comics’ horror -themed titles, such as Tales from the Crypt , were infl uential
in their time and remain Gaines’s best-remembered legacy. Storylines were typically
tales of poetic justice, the dead often rising to take bloody revenge upon those who
had wronged them. One of the most controversial storylines was “Th e Whipping,” from
Shock SuspenStories #13, in which a Ku Klux Klansman’s virulent racism causes him
to kill his own daughter unintentionally. Although criticized for employing graphic
violence and engaging with unsavory topics, Gaines believed that the morals of such
stories promoted a positive social message.
Gaines was outspoken in his defense of comics as a valid art form against charges
made by Dr. Fredric Wertham that comics were corrupting the nation’s youth. Although
Gaines’s claim that “nobody has ever been ruined by a comic” countered Wertham’s charges
of psychological damage caused by reading comics, Gaines was not entirely successful in
supporting this point during Wertham’s U.S. Senate hearings of 1954. Asked if the May,
1954 cover of EC Comics, which featured the image of a woman’s severed head, was in
good taste, Gaines replied that it was in good taste for a horror comic. He elaborated
that it would have been less tasteful if the image had included more blood as well as the
neck from which the head had been severed. Such distinctions failed to persuade the
sensibilities of McCarthy-era politicians.
Subsequently, industry leaders moved to self-regulation with the formation of the
Comics Magazine Association of America (CMAA). Gaines initially resisted joining
the CMAA, whose Comics Code Authority prohibited depictions of various off ensive
images (including vampires ) for which EC Comics’ horror comics remain infamous, as
well as extremely valuable, to this day. Subsequently, when Gaines eventually joined the
CMAA, he had already been blackballed by distributors. After a brief attempt to switch
