Since the 1940s, crime and horror comics had been drawing fire from those worried about a rise in juvenile delinquency. The Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency brought pressure on such comic books in 1954, and EC, one of the major purveyors of such fare, found their wares being refused by their distributor. Gaines brought those titles to an end and tried to replace them with the New Direction line, but by autumn 1955 the only remaining EC title was "Mad". Gaines had just allowed Kurtzman to change "Mad"s format to a magazine in July, in order to keep him at EC after Kurtzman had received an offer of employment from "Pageant" magazine.