1922-1992
Magazine Publisher

Growth in Circulation.

The publisher of the most unlikely magazine success story of the 1950s, William M. Gaines made Mad magazine a household name and an icon for American youth. The magazine, a compendium of satire and humor aimed at the high-school and college market, grew from a circulation of 195,000 in 1953 to a level of 1.3 million in 1958. In 1959 Mad was chosen as the favorite magazine by 58 percent of college students and 43 percent of high-school students. The editorial rationale is that "anything, even death and destruction, can have a humorous side."

Background.

Gaines began his publishing career when he inherited a comic-book publishing firm, Educational Comics, from his father in 1947. EC, as the firm was called, published a weak line of children's comics and by 1948 was one hundred thousand dollars in debt. In 1950 Gaines developed a new line of horror comics, the first...