Cracked (magazine) - Mad Raid

Mad Raid

In 1985, Mort Todd became editor of Cracked magazine at age 23. In 1987, Cracked made waves in the comic industry by seemingly raiding cartoonist Don Martin from rival Mad, after Martin's 32-year career there. Martin had already left Mad due to a business dispute months earlier.

Martin worked for Cracked for about six years, and the magazine, in a tweak at its rival, billed him as "Cracked's Crackedest Artist". Cracked's concurrent attempt to sign Mad's caricaturist Mort Drucker was unsuccessful, but the magazine did acquire longtime Mad contributor Lou Silverstone as editor and writer. Former Mad associate editor Jerry DeFuccio also worked at Cracked for a short period.

Though sales of Cracked always lagged far behind those of Mad, Cracked endured for more than four decades through low pay rates and overhead, and by being part of large publishing groups that could bundle Cracked in with its other magazines as a package arrangement for distributors. Cracked also appeared monthly during the period when Mad was being published just 8 times a year, thus picking up readership from Mad fans that couldn't wait out the six weeks for their next "comedy fix." The magazine would sometimes include attention-grabbing giveaways inside its pages, such as iron-ons, stickers or postcards.

In the 1990s, Cracked also benefited from the collapse of the National Lampoon, picking up Andy Simmons as an editor, as well as such former Lampoon contributors as Ron Barrett, Randy Jones and Ed Subitzky. In 1995, Greg Grabianski began his career as a writer and associate editor at Cracked (occasionally writing under the pseudonym Judd Stomp) before going on to write for TV and film projects like the Scary Movie franchise and Beavis & Butthead.