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John Landis Is Ghoulishly Yours

He may have lost out on directing The Wolfman — and who knows if he was even really “in,” stupid internet rumors — but John Landis has an actual film on his plate now. He’ll be directing Ghoulishly Yours, a biopic on the late William C. Gaines. Gaines isn’t really a household name, but most people will remember him as the big cheese behind Mad magazine in the ’70s. This biopic won’t be about that part of Gaines’ life.

Instead, Landis will focus on when Gaines was the publisher of EC Comics back in the ’50s, which published a great line of over-the-top horror comics, most notably Tales From the Crypt. EC also published great war, science fiction and crime comics as well as a comic book version of Mad (as opposed to the magazine format we know it today). But it was the horror comics that came under the scrutiny of child psychiatrist Frederick Wertham, who claimed the comics were poisoning the minds of the youth of America. Wertham published the book Seduction of the Innocent, which led to Senate hearings on the issue on the cause of juvenile delinquency.

Gaines very famously testified to Congress on behalf of the First Amendment. However, the Senate hearings led to the creation of the self-censorship organization the Comics Code of America, which effectively put EC out of business. (It’s a little more complicated than that, but that’s the gist.) The only thing that survived was Mad and that was only because it became a magazine instead of a comic book and was thus out of the CCA’s jurisdiction. Very smart on Gaines’ part.

So, it should be a hell of a fun movie. While it’ll be interesting to see who Landis casts as Gaines, as a lifelong comics fan I can’t wait to see who’s going to play Wertham. Somebody who can really play oily and despicable yet seemingly respectable, I hope.

© 2008 Cinema Snark.