Cracked (magazine)

''Cracked'' was an American humor magazine. Founded in 1958, ''Cracked'' proved to be the most durable of the many publications to be launched in the wake of ''Mad'' magazine.

In print, ''Cracked'' conspicuously copied ''Mad''s layouts and style, and even featured a simpleminded, wide-cheeked mascot, a janitor named Sylvester P. Smythe on its covers, in a manner similar to ''Mad''s Alfred E. Neuman. Unlike Neuman, who appears primarily on covers, Smythe sometimes spoke and was frequently seen inside the magazine, interacting with parody subjects and other regular characters. A 1998 reader contest led to Smythe finally getting a full middle name: "Phooey." An article on Cracked.com, the website which adopted ''Crackeds name after the magazine ceased publication, joked that the magazine was "created as a knock-off of ''Mad'' magazine just over 50 years ago", and it "spent nearly half a century with a fan base primarily people who got to the store after ''Mad'' sold out."

''Cracked''s publication frequency was reduced in the 1990s, and was erratic in the 2000s. In 2006, the magazine was revived with a new editorial formula that represented a significant departure from its prior ''Mad'' style. The new format was more akin to "lad" magazines like ''Maxim'' and ''FHM.'' The new formula, however, was unsuccessful and ''Cracked'' again canceled its print magazine in February 2007 after three issues. Later that year, the brand was carried over to a website, Cracked.com, now owned by Literally Media.

Early staff

The magazine's first editor was Sol Brodsky, who was better known as a journeyman artist and later production manager and a publishing vice president at Marvel Comics.

''Cracked''s original publisher, Robert C. Sproul's Major Publications, often imitated other companies' successes in various genres, such as westerns, men's adventure, and the Warren Publications mid-1960s revival of horror comics.

Editor Terry Bisson later recalled, "The whole company was about lowball imitations. The publisher, Robert Sproul, wanted to put out some imitations of western, romance and astrology mags, and I was hired (at about age 27) to put them together because of my romance mag experience... The pseudomags did pretty well (this was a very low end market)." Many of the ''Cracked'' contributors would also work on these titles. A number of monster-themed issues were printed under the ''Cracked'' umbrella, capitalizing on such publications as ''Fangoria'' and ''Famous Monsters of Filmland''. Sproul published ''Cracked'' into the 1980s.

However, even as the company chased publishing trends, its long-running flagship title was ''Cracked Magazine''—or ''Cracked Mazagine'', as its cover often read, deliberately misspelling "magazine". (In the same vein, the magazine's website Cracked.com originally referred to itself as a ".")

Artists

Some notable artists provided art for ''Cracked'', in particular John Severin. Severin was one of the original artists on ''Mad'', and worked heavily on EC Comics' war books. He was also one of the pre-eminent artists in Western comics. He would eventually come to be best known as ''Cracked''s house cartoonist. For almost 40 years, he was the magazine's mainstay artist, frequently illustrating multiple articles in the same issue, and virtually all of its covers. Reacting to his own company's obituary of Severin in 2012, Fantagraphics co-publisher Kim Thompson wrote, "I don't think I'm lonein thinking of ''Cracked'' for most of its run as 'a bunch of crap, and John Severin.

The magazine also regularly featured good girl artist Bill Ward, comic book stalwart Howard Nostrand, and gag cartoonists Don Orehek and Charles Rodrigues. In later years, the magazine was a useful training ground for such future independent comic book creators as Rick Altergott, and Peter Bagge. Clowes would later discuss his childhood ambivalence for the magazine with an interviewer: "No one was ever a fan of ''Cracked''. We would buy ''Mad'' every month, but about two weeks later we would get anxious for new material. We would tell ourselves, 'OK, we are not going to buy ''Cracked''. Never again!' And we'd hold out for a while, but then as the month dragged on it just became, 'OK, I guess I'll buy ''Cracked''.' Then you'd bring it home, and immediately you'd remember, 'Oh yeah, I hate ''Cracked''!And Here's The Kicker: Conversations with 25 Top Humor Writers On Their Craft
, by Mike Sacks, published 2009

Other name artists who contributed at least once to ''Cracked'' include such ''Mad'' veterans as Jack Davis, Will Elder, Al Jaffee, Don Martin, and Basil Wolverton

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