Cracked (magazine) - Sale and Rebirth As Cracked.com

Sale and Rebirth As Cracked.com

In early 2005, Kulpa sold Cracked to Teshkeel Media Group, a federation of Arab, Asian, and American investors, who announced plans to revive Cracked with a new editorial focus and redesign. Its first steps included naming entrepreneur Monty Sarhan as both CEO and publisher. Writer Neal Pollack was named "editor-at-large," and former editor Mort Todd was named a contributing editor. However, Todd quickly departed, complaining to The Comics Journal about low pay rates and work-for-hire issues of copyright. Todd complained, "With each visit to the offices I got more dispirited as I saw the direction the magazine was taking. As has been well publicized, Cracked was, instead of ripping off MAD, going to rip off Maxim... A lot of 'revolutionary' humor ideas they've come up with are ones that have been overplayed for decades and ones I rejected for good reason 20 years ago ".

Publisher Sarhan responded: "My impression of Mort was that he was stuck in a time warp, wanted to relive his personal 'glory days' when he edited CRACKED and didn’t get what we were trying to do.... A Contributing Editor is a freelancer with whom we have a relationship with. That is all that the title means here at CRACKED. He's a person who is a regular contributor to the magazine, but he is not on staff.... Mort decided to quit as a Contributing Editor because, he said, he had a few TV projects in development. My personal opinion is that he was stuck in the CRACKED of the past and that he didn't like being a freelancer, answering to editors far younger than him here at CRACKED and having his ideas regularly rejected. If your work isn't going to get published, it makes no sense to stay.... Anyone who has spent five minutes on this website knows that we are not a MAXIM clone. It's a ridiculous assertion. We focus on comedy and humor, not women in bikinis. Yes, it's true that we look to MAXIM as a guide for some things. After all, since it's launch over eight years ago, it has gone on to become one of the most successful magazine titles ever. Who wouldn't want to emulate that success?"

On August 15, 2006, the revamped Cracked Magazine finally appeared. The first issue was a significant departure from Cracked's previous incarnation, notably in its sharp reduction of comics and illustrated content. The new format was more text-heavy, and was overtly indebted to modern "lad mags" like Maxim, Stuff and FHM, although the media website Gawker.com wrote, "Very little remains of the old Cracked – a Mad ripoff that had tread water in various incarnations for almost half a century. Much was made of the new direction now ripping off Maxim instead, but aside from a "look and feel" resemblance in terms of layout, the much more obvious (attempted) homage runs to Spy."

The Washington Post's Peter Carlson harshly reviewed the debut, listing some of the issue's contents and then adding, "Are you chuckling yet? Me neither." Later, Carlson quoted Cracked's Michael J. Nelson, who'd contributed a short guide to the worst comedy movies ever. Wrote Nelson in his article, "Bad comedies are worse than anything else in the whole of human history." Added Carlson, "Reading Cracked, you understand exactly what he means."

After just three poor-selling issues, the failing magazine was canceled in February 2007. Citing distribution problems for its demise, editor Jay Pinkerton claimed that the remaining staff would be focusing its energies toward the Cracked website, as well as unspecified book projects. The company's website, Cracked.com, continued on and has become known for its humorous lists and compilations, for example, "The 9 Most Obnoxious Memes to Ever Escape the Web" and "6 Bizarre Forms of Discrimination That Can Lose You a Job". A book collection in that vein, You Might be a Zombie, and Other Bad News, was published in 2010.

A two-volume history of the magazine, If You're Cracked, You're Happy, written by Mark Arnold, was published in June 2011.