I didn't pay much attention to Cracked when it was being published but recently I've been indexing many of the issues for the Grand Comics Database. The most interesting thing I discovered about Cracked was that it originated under the guidance of Sol Brodsky. Cracked was born in the wake of Marvel Comics' late 50s implosion, which put a lot of Marvel staffers like Brodsky out of work. Although Brodsky only edited the first few issues of the magazine (Marvel rehired him), those early issues are full of unusual creators who were more commonly seen in 1950s Marvel comics: Joe Maneely, Bill Everett, Carl Burgos, Jack Davis. There was genuine talent behind the launch of the magazine.
Above all else, the magazine had John Severin. Severin was with Cracked from 1958-2000. He drew more covers than anyone else and for much of the 70s he was the title's go-to person for satirical stories. As the magazine delved more into satirizing film and television programs in the 70s, Severin's ability to caricature famous faces was invaluable to the magazine. Severin's art was far and away the best thing in the magazine. Up until the late 80s, he and Bill Ward were probably the two artists most associated with the magazine. In time other notables stayed for long durations like Vic Martin, Don Orehek and Mike Ricigliano.
Cracked's parodies came in two flavours: "barely trying" and "trying too hard." In the former, many of their satirical stories maintained the actual name of the product they were mocking. Properties like Mork and Mindy and The Simpsons appeared under their own names. Surely Cracked would have been sued out of existence if anyone had been paying attention. In the latter, they would alter so many words in the property's original title that it only vaguely suggested what they were satirizing. For instance, 'Third Rock from the Sun' became 'Tired Crock Far from Fun.'
From around 1985-1990, Cracked had an interesting renaissance spearheaded by their new editor Mort Todd. Todd was perhaps the magazine's best editor - he continued to employ many of the Cracked veterans and would give them special recognition (Cracked's writers were usually unidentified prior to Todd). He also hired unusual creators for Cracked such as Peter Bagge, Daniel Clowes, Milton Knight and Steve Ditko! It was also under his reign that Don Martin was hired away from Mad magazine. I have no idea how that was accomplished since Cracked apparently paid quite a bit less than Mad; Martin's Cracked work looked identical to his Mad work and I'm sure it helped the magazine's profile.
But after Todd left the magazine just seemed to be marking time. There was a sense in Mad and the other imitators of the 1950s that - even though surely the vast majority of their readers were little kids - that they were attempting to write for a sophisticated audience. By the 1990s Cracked was pretty much done with 'sophistication.' The magazine seemed to narrow its focus on its junior high readers with plenty of fart and booger jokes. The magazine switched owners and became the property of the people publishing Weekly World News, which seemed to accelerate its demise. Severin quit when they tried to slash his salary. Many of the rank of file artists who had been at Cracked for a decade or more left, replaced mainly by nobodies. Barry Dutter, best-known as the man who was so obsessed with She-Hulk that even John Byrne thought he needed to chill, took over most of the magazine's writing.
But in the end it wasn't the lowbrow humour, the exit of all the talented creators or even Dutter who drove Cracked out of business. In 2001, the offices of American Media - Cracked's owners - were hit by an anthrax attack. The magazine never really recovered from that and petered to a slow end.
Yet in an outcome so original that no satirical writer could have conceived of it, Cracked left the comics business to become a popular humour website and is today arguably much better respected than the dwindling Mad!
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