In its 44-year history, Cracked magazine has survived the vicissitudes of a marketplace that has killed off every other attempt at a humor magazine except Mad. Last year, however, hit by cash-flow and distribution problems and locked out of its own anthrax-contaminated offices, the magazine went into a coma from which it has not yet recovered.

Cracked #356 shipped in June of 2001. More than eight months later, readers are still waiting for the next issue, and contributors are still waiting to be paid. In his POV Online column, pop-culture commentator Mark Evanier asked, "Have we reached the end of the great publishing practice of Mad Magazine knock-offs? ... The two likeliest indicators of Death in magazine publishing are a suspension of publication and not paying your contributors. If [Cracked]'s history, it will be a sad end to a glorious tradition."

"We owe people money," Dick Kulpa, Cracked's owner since 2000, told the Journal. "I will fix it."

In fact, Kulpa has plans to fix, not only the cash deficit but the magazine itself. He assured the Journal that the long-awaited issue #357 will ship May 14 and contributors will be paid what they are owed soon after. Kulpa, who took charge of the magazine as it was stumbling and rode it into a full-blown collapse, has received much of the blame from Cracked followers. Threads on the Mad website message board have referred to him as Cracked's killer. He is seen as the man who cut pay rates for creators and dropped legendary longtime contributor John Severin from the magazine. In the final stages before taking Cracked out of circulation, he had cut pay rates for contributors to literally nothing. By the time a deadly anthrax-infected letter was delivered to the building Cracked shared with The Sun, The National Enquirer, Weekly World News and other publications, the magazine was already in critical condition.

But if Kulpa's detractors were aware of circumstances behind the scenes, he said, they would understand that he has been and remains Cracked's savior, not its ruination. He likes to say that he has saved Cracked three times.

An animated speaker, in spite of a bronchial infection at the time of his conversation with the Journal, Kulpa exuded optimism and confidence that Cracked would soon be back on track toward a successful future. Kulpa is a self-promoting freelance cartoonist who has also worked on staff at Weekly World News for the past 14 years. He grew up reading Marvel comics and Mad Magazine and yearned to work in the comics field, despite making a comfortable living as senior editor/art director for the popular tabloid, which sold luridly headlined reports to shoppers in grocery-store checkout lanes and browsers of newsstands. Weekly World News was owned by American Media Inc., which had just acquired The Globe and, with it, Cracked magazine. In January of 2000, Kulpa approached American Media CEO David Pecker, explained his enthusiasm for comics and asked if he might contribute some of his cartoon work to the humor magazine. The magnanimity of Pecker's response surprised him. "I requested to do some freelance work for the magazine," he told the Journal, "and they offered me a chance to head it up."

Cracked had been awkwardly dropped into AMI's lap as a result of the Globe acquisition, and the tabloid publisher didn't immediately have any idea what to do with a low-circulation humor magazine for kids. Cracked Associate Editor Bobbie Bender told the Journal, "Cracked just came along for the ride with The Globe. [The Cracked editorial staff] didn't want to make the move. We're in Florida and they were in Manhattan."

Barry Dutter, who had been writing freelance for Cracked since 1996, told the Journal, "One thing you have to realize is that AMI never wanted Cracked; it was just part of a package they bought from Globe Commnications. ... So they said, 'We've got this Dick Kulpa guy working for Weekly World News; he's a cartoonist, he's wacky, let's give it to him. If it doesn't work in six months, we'll kill it and put Kulpa back at Weekly World News.' That's exactly what happened."

Such an offer should've, perhaps, set off alarm bells for Kulpa, but he was more elated than suspicious. Cracked, after all, was a magazine he had known since his youth. Though generally regarded as one of a pack of inferior Mad imitators, Cracked went on from its launch in 1958 to outlast all of its fellow imitators. And the roll call of contributors to Cracked over the years features several names not readily associated with inferiority, including: Charles Rodrigues, Bill Ward, Bill Wray, Mad alumni John Severin, Will Elder and Don Martin, Marvel artists Steve Ditko and Gene Colan and Fantagraphics creators Dan Clowes, Peter Bagge and Bob Fingerman.

This was the proud tradition Kulpa happily agreed to take up by becoming the magazine's new editor. He anticipated difficulties of adjustment as he moved from a publication that routinely sold 300,000 copies a week, a million a month, into the fringes of the comics industry, where such numbers are distant dreams, but he was not prepared for the environment that confronted him.

[To read the rest of this news story, please see The Comics Journal #242.]

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