Being Cracked- Part 1

Since I am sharing my work with MAD chronologically every Monday, I think it’s only fair I also go back and take a look at my short time with Cracked Magazine. I’ve been thinking about that lately since the publisher of Cracked during the time I was there, Dick Kulpa, recently passed away. Anyway here’s the first part of the story of how I started working with Cracked.

The year was 1999, and I had started setting my sights on breaking into MAD. At the time I was president of the National Caricaturists Network (now the International Society of Caricature Artists), and we were planning a mini-convention in New Britain, CT, that was centered around the debut of a travelling exhibit of the work of Al Hirschfeld. The plan was to have a guest speaker, do some group drawing fun, and go see the exhibit.

Being the devious character that I was, I figured out how to get in touch with newly minted MAD art director Sam Viviano, and somehow booked him as our guest speaker despite our shoestring budget. My plan was to get plenty of time with Sam to show him my work, hopefully getting a chance to get considered for some jobs for MAD. To that end, I wrote and drew a parody of the horrific 1998 Matthew Broderick “Godzilla” movie as a sample to show Sam. He was unimpressed, although he encouraged me to keep sending him work.

In the meantime there was a call online via some caricaturist mailing lists for cartoonist submissions for longtime MAD clone Cracked Magazine. Cracked had just been purchased by American Media Inc. (who published the tabloids The National Enquirer and Weekly World News) as part of a larger deal acquiring Global Communications, another tabloid publisher that owned some other publications including Cracked. AMI had taken one look at Cracked‘s bottom line and was going to kill the magazine. It was saved from the scrapheap by AMI and Weekly World News editor Dick Kulpa, who told AMI he could turn Cracked around and make it profitable. Dick was looking for cartoonists to contribute to the “new” Cracked. As it turned out, Dick wasn’t just looking for new cartoonists, but for new cartoonists willing to work for a fraction of the old page rates, as he was constrained by a tiny budget. Not surprisingly the old Cracked guard, including cartooning legend John Severin and longtime contributors like Wally Brogan, were not willing to work for so little, so they left the magazine along with almost all the current contributors and staff. Dick replaced them with unproven, young and often rough talent and began his remake of Cracked.

Responding to that call for submissions, I sent Dick the parody of Godzilla I had done to show Sam. Dick immediately offered to publish it! So, my first published movie parody appeared in Cracked #344, June 2000, which was the first issue of the Dick Kulpa/AMI Cracked era. Splash page above, story pages here:

I actually had not finished the entire parody I showed to Sam, I was missing the last page. I finished it for Cracked, adding the Hillary Clinton cameo at the end and changing the title from “God-Awful” to “God-Hilla”. This was of course a gag about how, at that time, Clinton had moved to New York state to run for the U.S. Senate.

I was very excited for the issue to come out and see my first movie spoof in print. Yes, it was Cracked and not MAD, and I got paid (if I remember right) a measly $100 a page despite my writing, drawing and doing all the layouts and text. I’d agreed to that page rate, as I was much more interested in seeing it in print. I delivered complete “camera ready” art that was able to go right to into the publication.

Sadly, when the issue did come out it was the first of many disappointments with Cracked and its new staff that ultimately led to my only contributing to four issues.

I had done the art as seen above as full MAD sized pages with bleeds on both vertical edges, not taking space for Sergio Aragonés style “Marginals” into account. Dick and Cracked wanted to have gutters along the edges of each page, which would mean the pages were the right height to allow for spaces at the top and bottom, but too wide. Rather than crop the pages, or better yet come to me to reformat them to allow for the outside and gutter spaces, Dick just squeezed the pages vertically to make room, WITHOUT keeping the aspect ratio locked. This resulted in my art being distorted, with longer, skinny faces and panels. So, I got paid peanuts for the job AND I didn’t get a printed piece I was happy with, either. I was not very happy about that.

Dick’s heart was in the right place, and he really believed he could make Cracked succeed. You could not deny he had passion… unfortunately what he did not have was any idea of how to run a humor magazine and especially how to art direct. He tried to apply formulas that may have worked well in the tabloid world, but ended up making Cracked hard to read and devoid of any focus or identity. It was filled with content that ranged from the somewhat professional to the downright REALLY bad. Dick seemed unable to tell the difference. Squeezing and distorting my art was just one example. He tried his best, but simply did not have the skills for what he was taking on. I harbored no animosity toward Dick or anyone else with Cracked, although I did take exception to Dick’s claim that he was responsible for my getting into MAD. More on that later.

Thursday I will post my second Cracked job, another parody I wrote of a major TV series featuring a bunch of wise guys from Jeresy!