We're sitting in his somewhat disorderly Madison Avenue office, which is decorated with paintings of monsters, huge models of King Kong, and a collection of toy zeppelins suspended from the ceiling. When Gaines is asked about lawsuits, his eyes sparkle with glee. "We have been sued many times. We've never been beaten. We had two cases that went to the U.S. Supreme Court. The first was on Alfred E. Newman (the gap-toothed, moronic-looking character who appears on the magazine cover). Two different people claimed it was theirs -- a woman by the name of Stuff and a man by the name of Schmeck. Neither one knew about the other one, and we didn't tell them. It was pretty fun when they all got to court and found that both of them were claiming to own Alfred. Through a series of decisions, the Supreme Court decided that neither one of them owned Alfred, and we were free to use him. "The other case was when Irving Berlin and a number of other songwriters sued _Mad_, because we used to publish a lot of articles of song parodies which we'd say were sung to the tune of so-and-so. And they took umbrage to that. They said that when people would read the words, they were singing their music in their heads. The judge ruled that Irving Berlin did not own iambic pentameter." The son of a prominent comic book publisher named M.C. Gaines, William planned to become a chemistry teacher when he returned to college after World War II. Then his father was killed in an accident, and Gaines decided to enter the comic business himself. "I started putting out some very undistinguished, dreadful stuff, because I didn't know where I was going. After three years, Albert Feldstein (_Mad's_ editor) joined me, and we just had a rapport right away. We started putting out stuff that we had a feeling for -- science fiction, horror, crime." These comics, known as E.C. Publications, are today worth up to $200 each. Classics of their genre, they became the target of a Senate subcommittee on juvenile delinquency. Largely because of public pressure, Gaines dropped all of them except _Mad_, which he changed from a 10 cent comic into a 25-cent, more adult magazine. The complete E.C. works have recently been reprinted in bound volumes. A divorced father of three, Bill Gaines hates exercise, and drives the 18 blocks each day from his Eastside apartment to the _Mad_ office. His favorite hobbies are attending wine and food tastings, and visiting Haiti. "I've been there about 20 times. It's a wild, untamed place. Something in my nature is appealed to by that kind of thing. ... They have no maliciousness toward tourists. I was almost shot there twice, but it was by mistake."