Editing Max Gaines (section)

==Death and legacy==
On August 20, 1947, at [[Lake Placid, New York]], Gaines, his friend Sam Irwin, and the latter's 8-year-old son William Irwin were aboard a motorboat when it was struck by another boat. Gaines and the elder Irwin died in the accident.<ref name="times"/>

Max Gaines' 25-year-old son, [[William Gaines]], inherited EC and changed the direction of the company.

Although it continued to advertise and sell back issues of the Educational titles, Bill Gaines concentrated on adding new titles to the Entertaining Comics line. He replaced the juvenile humor books with titles pitched to an older audience and strongly influenced by his own love of popular culture. These spanned several genres as he made a transition from romance (''Modern Love'') and Westerns (''Gunslingers'') to science fiction (''[[Weird Science (comic)|Weird Science]]''), horror (''[[Tales from the Crypt (comic)|Tales from the Crypt]]''), and satire ([[Harvey Kurtzman]]'s ''[[Mad (magazine)|Mad]]'').

In 1985, Max Gaines was posthumously named as one of the honorees by DC Comics in the company's 50th anniversary publication ''[[Fifty Who Made DC Great]]''.<ref>{{Cite comic|writer = Marx, Barry|cowriters = [[Joey Cavalieri|Cavalieri, Joey]] and Hill, Thomas|artist = Petruccio, Steven |editor = Marx, Barry|story = M.C. Gaines An Idea Becomes an Industry| title = Fifty Who Made DC Great| date = 1985|publisher = DC Comics| page = 4}}</ref>