A Cracked Look at Cracked

Cracked magazine was a satirical publication which was published 1958-2004. It was very much an imitator of Mad, but proved to be the most successful of all the imitators, enduring far past the initial 'Mad fad.'

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!

RIP John Severin

If you're familiar with this blog, then you've noticed my increasingly hostile reaction to the comic book industry. Certainly these past few weeks have been enough to try anyone's optimism; first DC announces Beyond Watchmen; then Marvel sues Gary Friedrich; now word is in about John Severin having died two days ago.

It amazes me that Severin was ninety years old... not that he should have lived so long, but that he could be such a vital talent at his age! His art was simply forever young; with so many artists there's a definite peak in their energy - you might, for example, find the Gene Colan of the 1970s to be his peak and the Gene Colan of the 1990s far from it; Severin seemed to hit his peak in the 1950s then stayed there for sixty years.

As an enormous fan of Atlas Comics, it's sad to have lost yet another of those talents, Severin ranking amongst the most prolific and beautiful of the Atlas artists, easily a peer to Atlas' Joe Maneely and Bill Everett. I love the detail Severin brought to his western and war comics; he composed his pages with such great detail and designed such expressive characters that a Severin feature is always a welcome diversion while rifling through the Atlas catalogue.

I love that Severin had the chops to draw stark and realistic, lush and colourful or cartoonish. I suppose he'd be better-known in today's fandom if he'd spent more time on the super heroes. For years I've thought he deserved more recognition for his work on Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. in the 1960s; I loved how his S.H.I.E.L.D. technology was a shade more believeable than Kirby's; check out the design of the I.B.P. for an example of what I mean.

There was only one John Severin; this fan misses him.

What a difference 300,000 readers make!

Back in 2006, Marvel announced delays for their top-ranked series Civil War:

Over the next few weeks, the Civil War proper title and a few of the tie in books that are closely related to the story in the main book will be shipping later than originally planned. In an attempt to accommodate the creative team of Millar and McNiven and keep the artistic integrity and high standards of the event, we will be shifting the following titles...

Artist Bryan Hitch - whose series Ultimates followed an erratic schedule - defended the decision:

Two of my favourite re-reads in collections are Dark Knight and Watchmen. Nobody now remembers that each was late at the time of the original periodicals but that was a blip, a couple of years in each's 25 year publication history and these will STILL be published 25 years from now. I love these books but how awful would it have been if the otherwise brilliant Jim Aparo had drawn issue 3 of DK, or that DC had Alan Davis do an issue of Watchmen. Both brilliant guys but you would have hated the blip in the collections for the short term gain.

And there was generally much hand-holding and back-patting going on as Civil War was done by Mark Millar and Steve McNiven from start to finish, placing artistic integrity ahead of the bottom line. Sales on Civil War ranged from 250,000 to 350,000 copies per issue.

In 2008, DC published a Bat Lash mini-series by Peter Brandvold and Sergio Aargones. Bat Lash was an unusual western hero, created by Aargones in the 1960s as a trouble-making, incorrigible scoundrel who pretends to be afraid of violence when he's actually an immensely dangerous individual. The 2008 mini-series kind of misses the mark on Bat Lash's character (strange, considering Aargones' involvement), instead casting him as a typical western hero with a tragic past. It's missing a lot of the humour I expect to find in Bat Lash, but it does have one huge mark in its favour: the artwork of John Severin!

Severin has been in comics for what, 60 years? He is still an amazing talent, able to render gorgeous scenes with incredible realism. It's bold, it's dynamic, and it puts a lot of younger artists to shame.

However, for whatever reason, Severin did not complete all of the six issue mini-series. Six pages of issue #6 were drawn instead by Javi Pina and Steve Lieber. They're certainly good artists, but it's more than a little jarring to go from this:

To this:

One page you're being entertained by this:

...And suddenly it's this:

Sales of Bat Lash fell to about 8,000 copies by the final issue.

DC and Marvel are different companies and I don't have any larger point to make about their practices (especially being a Marvel freelancer), I just find it interesting that this still happens - that when a book must come out, the power that be will find a replacement artist, even if only for a few pages. The only observation I want to make is that it's a lot easier to stall for time when you've got 300,000 hungry fans, as opposed to a lowly 8,000.

I Love Atlas Comics #3: "Trench War!"

Time for another look at why I love Atlas Comics; this time it's a war comic - Battle#28 (1954) and the story "Trench War!" by John Severin.

The opening two pages tell a brief history of warfare so it takes a while to get to the main plot. Then again, it's illustrated by Severin, so who's complaining?

Eventually we meet our mysterious narrator, who turns out to be an inanimate object.

That's right, the trench itself tells the story of World War I. It's a very French trench at that, as it has no love for the Germans who wind up occupying it late in the story.

Finally, the arrival of the US forces to drive the Germans from the trenches and the establishment of tanks brings an end to World War I.

So, it's a happy ending...? Happy in that trench warfare is no more, but I don't know how pleased those missile-filled skies with a mushroom cloud make me feel...