That's a photo of William M. Gaines, who became justly famous as the publisher of MAD magazine. But MAD was still probably just a promising comic book back when this picture was taken. Gaines was then the publisher of the EC line of comics which included Tales from the Crypt, Shock SuspenStories and other horror and crime titles. They sold well but Gaines was condemned as a seller of filth that would corrupt children. There were articles and books and TV discussions about perhaps banning the kind of things Gaines did…and in April and June of 1954, the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency held public hearings in New York to determine what, if anything, Congress should do about "those awful books."
The hearings were led by Senator Estes Kefauver (D-Tenn) and historians suggest that Senator Kefauver was quite certain that the public exposure would pave the way for him to secure the nomination of his party to run for president in 1956. There was a time when it looked like this would happen. He won many early primaries that year but eventually, Adlai Stevenson won more. In a move which no candidate has tried since and no candidate ever will, Stevenson decided to let the delegates to that year's Democratic Convention select a running mate for him and they chose Kefauver. The ticket lost to Eisenhower and Nixon in a landslide.
Kefauver lined up a slate of witnesses that would prove, he expected, that comic books were harmful and that they had to be banned, lest they contaminate the children of America. He also sought to prove — and he was somewhat right about this part — that it was a dirty business with organized crime very much involved in the distribution end of things.
A friend of Gaines urged him to ask to testify and defend his business. I hope I never have a friend who gives me advice that rotten. Gaines gave poor answers and allowed his inquisitors to hammer him. He later blamed his poor performance on a diet drug he was taking that left him loopy when he needed to be sharp. He did more harm than good to his cause and also painted a large bullseye on his tochis, making himself as much a poster boy as Alfred E. Neuman. When most of the other publishers rallied together to announce they'd "cleaned up" their industry, it became imperative to oust Bill Gaines from it. Lucky for him, he had MAD to fall back on.
The archives of New York radio station WNYC are online and they've got some audio from the hearings. This link will take you to a page where you can hear around two and a half hours of it. First up is Dr. Frederic Wertham, author of many a book and article about how crime and horror comics were corrupting an entire generation. Then comes Gaines with an insufficient rebuttal, which is not to suggest a sufficient one was possible in that setting.
Gaines is followed by a trio: Newspaper comic strip artists Milton Caniff, Walt Kelly and Joe Musial who are basically there to explain that what the Senate is investigating has nothing to do with them. The audio of this is especially frustrating since one cannot see the demonstration of how comics are drawn, nor understand why the Senators needed to see this.
This link will take you to a page which has just the Wertham and Gaines testimony. If you go there, beware of the text which has some factual errors, like referring to the EC comic book Panic as Prank, and stating that Gaines turned MAD from a comic book into a magazine to "…escape the new strictures imposed on comics." Actually, he made the change to keep his first editor, Harvey Kurtzman, from leaving.
And this page will play you some of the other testimony in the hearings. I haven't waded through it yet but it doesn't seem to be of great interest.
Nice to know that even back then, our Senate had the capacity to waste time and money doing nothing to fix trivial problems which they didn't understand in the first place.