My Note from William Gaines

I was a funny kid.

When Russ Cochran published the large hardcover reprint volumes of EC Comics starting in the late 1970s, I voraciously gobbled them up. There's nothing funny about that. Those books are great! The crisp black and white reproduction was perfect because Mr. Cochran was shooting directly from the original artwork (which was auctioned off after the publication of the reprint volumes).

In the 1950s, the EC Fan Addict Club was run in-house by publisher William Gaines and editor Al Feldstein. The house ad that appeared in the EC Comics said to send in twenty-five cents and you would receive a Fan Addict Kit by return mail. I'm certain that many kids in the 1950s sent in their quarter and received their Kit.

I wasn't around back then but I saw the reproduction of the ad in one of the Cochran volumes (it must have been a Tales from the Crypt). And do you know what bright idea I had? I decided to send a check for twenty-five cents to William Gaines at the offices of Mad Magazine (it being sole publication of EC Comics that escaped the 1950s alive) and ask him to send me a copy of the EC Fan Addict Kit. I told you I was a funny kid!

Down below I show you the envelope that Mr. Gaines addressed to me, and over here you can see the note that he wrote. He was a very nice man to take the time to write that humorous message to me. I guess he was a bit of a funny kid himself!