History
EC Comics: the publisher the Comics Code destroyed
EC Comics was founded in 1944 by M. C. Gaines as Educational Comics and turned by his son William Gaines, who took over after his father's death in 1947, into Entertaining Comics: the 1950 “New Trend” horror, crime and science-fiction line, and Mad (1952). Its artists — Wally Wood, Jack Davis, Graham Ingels, Al Williamson, Harvey Kurtzman and others — made it the most admired publisher of the Golden Age. The 1954 Comics Code made its horror and crime titles unpublishable, and by 1956 only Mad, converted to a magazine, remained.
Updated Oct 9, 2026




