Cracked

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 named Sylvester P. Smythe on its covers (see Alfred E. Neuman). The Smythe character was referred to as Cracked’s janitor. 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 companion website, 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 comprised of 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 E.W. Scripps.

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 “wesbite.”)

Some notable artists have appeared in Cracked’s pages, in particular John Severin. Severin was one of the original artists on Mad and worked heavily on EC Comics’ war books, as well as being one of the pre-eminent artists in western comics. But 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 [alone] in thinking of Cracked for most of its run as ‘a bunch of crap, and John Severin.'”

A typical issue of Cracked included two TV or movie parodies illustrated by Severin. The magazine also published “interview” articles featuring the recurring character Nanny Dickering (Nancy Dickerson was then an investigative newscaster).

One of the magazine’s longest-running features was “Shut-Ups,” which were two-panel gags in which a character would make an observation or excuse in the first panel, and then be told to “SHUT UP” in the second, as the true situation was visually revealed. “Hudd & Dini” by Vic Martin, a gag strip about two convicts’ failed schemes to escape prison, also ran frequently, as did John Severin’s Western strip “Sagebrush.” Other recurring features included “Ye Hang-Ups”, “The Talking Blob”, “Spies vs. Sabs” (originally “Saboteurs & Investigators”) and, in the 1980s, “the Uggly Family” by Daniel Clowes.

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UPDATE 2022-11

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