Happy Mutant Hall of Fame - William M. Gaines

"There are certain Americans, dead or alive, who are regarded as National Treasures: John Wayne, Katharine Hepburn, Louis Armstrong, Walter Cronkite, Joe Louis, Babe Ruth, and of course, Alfred E. Neuman, this fictional face that launched 35 years of Mad Magazine. You might have thought with all the electronic diversions available to kids today, you would think something like Mad would be, if not already dead, then certainly dying. But nope, Mad is alive and kicking. Kicking at everything sacred. Still the brainchild, if that's the right word, of this man: Bill Gaines." Helluva intro by Morley Safer for 60 Minutes in 1987, opening this clip:

Carla Sinclair notes that William Gaines was the son of Max Gaines, a pioneer in the comics industry. Where his father's company, Education Comics, focused on syndicated funnies, as well as stories of science, history, and the Bible, Bill re-branded EC as Entertainment Comics and turned to horror, suspense, and crime fiction. As Sinclair notes, "EC's grisly tales clutched the imaginations of American youth, and comic book sales boomed at an astounding rate. Unfortunately, the media was already worshiping a name-calling, finger-pointing morphine junkie by the name of Joe McCarthy,
who flew into a fanatic rage over these grisly tales."

William pivoted from horror back to funnies, but with a satirical slant, and Mad was born. First as a comic, but then to side-step the Comics Code, Mad became Mad Magazine, giving birth to the satire magazine. Carla credits Gaines' magazine with having a "dramatic impact on American humor [that] influenced bigwigs such as Saturday Night Live, '60s cartoonist Robert Crumb, satirical films like Airplane and Naked Gun, and my own bOING
bOING magazine."

Bill Gaines "left this planet in 1992," and in 2019, Mad was also dead ... mostly. Instead of publishing new issues, it would be a re-issue magazine, with sporadic new content specials, as reported via bOING bOING (the website, not the zine).