John Landis to Direct Biopic on Comics Legend Bill Gaines called GHOULISHLY YOURS, WILLIAM M GAINES

Director John Landis, who hasn't made a film in over yen years is out promoting his next movie, the true murderous story of Burke and Hare. And while promoting the film he's revealed that he has yet another film project that he is working on getting off the ground.

He is currently developing a biopic based on EC Comics publisher and co-creator Bill Gaines called Ghoulishly Yours, William M Gaines. Who is this guy you ask? He was driven out of the comic book business by morality policers after his unapologetic testimony before a U.S. Senate subcommittee investigating juvenile delinquency in the 1950's .This is the man that brought us the classic satirical MAD Magazine, that we have all come to know and love. Gaines led a very interesting life and it was his experiences he went through that led him to creating MAD.

This guy's vision and experience changed comics forever. John Landis is the prefect director to bring this story to life.

Here are a some points of interest about this man that you will find interesting. 

• His father 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.
• He originally wanted to be a chemistry teacher, but after his father died in a motorboat accident, he took over the family business, EC Comics.
• The EC initials stood for both Educational Comics and Entertaining Comics, and the company was at that point best known for its adaptations of Bible stories.
• He found his niche in publishing horror, science fiction and fantasy comics, as well as realistic war comics and two satirical titles, Mad and Panic. His other books included Tales from the Crypt, The Vault of Horror, Shock SuspenStories, Weird Science and Two-Fisted Tales featured stories with content above the level of the typical comic.
• EC Comic had higher-quality material, and it soon assembled the best artists in the industry ever. Regular contributors included Wally Wood, Jack Davis, Will Elder, George Evans, Harry Harrison, Graham Ingels, Al Williamson, Johnny Craig, Reed Crandall, Jack Kamen, Bernard Krigstein, John Severin, Joe Orlando, and Frank Frazetta, Harvey Kurtzman and Al Feldstein.
• The company also treated its illustrators as selling points, profiling them in full-page biographies and permitting them to sign their work, a rarity in 1950s comic books.
• EC was notable for its lack of a "house style," as the artists were encouraged to pursue their own distinctive techniques.
• With the publication of Dr. Fredric Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent, comic books in the Gaines style drew the attention of the U.S. Congress and the moralizing classes in general.
• Gaines had to testify before the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency in 1954, and achieved notoriety for his unapologetic, matter-of-fact tone, and Gaines became a boogeyman for those wishing to censor the product. 
• By 1955, EC was effectively driven out of business by the backlash, and by the Comics Magazine Association of America.
• The Comics that was approved and adopted by most of the country's prominent publishers contained restrictions specifically targeted at Gaines' line of horror and crime comic books. Although he had already ceased publishing his line of horror comics, Gaines refused to subscribe to the code, considering it in many details to be hypocritical, and not applicable to the new, clean line of realistic comics he was at the time promoting. 
• Gaines soon relented and accepted the code, distributors refused to pass his titles along to newsstands. The damage was done, and Gaines abandoned comic books completely.
• MAD Magazine was born. Gaines converted Mad to a magazine in 1955 in order to retain the services of its talented editor Harvey Kurtzman, who had received offers from elsewhere. The change enabled Mad to escape the strictures of the Comics Code. 

Here's a little excerpt from from the Senate Subcommittee investigation testimony that I found interesting. It never ceases to amaze me of how people thought back then.

Chief Counsel Herbert Beaser: Let me get the limits as far as what you put into your magazine. Is the sole test of what you would put into your magazine whether it sells? Is there any limit you can think of that you would not put in a magazine because you thought a child should not see or read about it?

Bill Gaines: No, I wouldn't say that there is any limit for the reason you outlined. My only limits are the bounds of good taste, what I consider good taste.

Beaser: Then you think a child cannot in any way, in any way, shape, or manner, be hurt by anything that a child reads or sees?

Gaines: I don't believe so.

Beaser: There would be no limit actually to what you put in the magazines?

Gaines: Only within the bounds of good taste.

Beaser: Your own good taste and saleability?

Gaines: Yes.

Senator Estes Kefauver: Here is your May 22 issue. [Kefauver is mistakenly referring to Crime Suspenstories #22, cover date May] This seems to be a man with a bloody axe holding a woman's head up which has been severed from her body. Do you think that is in good taste?

Gaines: Yes sir, I do, for the cover of a horror comic. A cover in bad taste, for example, might be defined as holding the head a little higher so that the neck could be seen dripping blood from it, and moving the body over a little further so that the neck of the body could be seen to be bloody.

Kefauver: You have blood coming out of her mouth.

Gaines: A little.

Kefauver: Here is blood on the axe. I think most adults are shocked by that.