Comedy blog The Apiary publishes a letter from editor Jay Pinkerton that reveals that the CRACKED revival is folding as a magazine — it continues as a website however. There’s a joke to be made here somewhere, but we’ll leave it to others to find. You’ll recall that CRACKED was once a serious competitor to MAD magazine in the satirical cartoon category, but was relaunched, after some hiccups, as a more general magazine covering the comedy biz.Print ain’t easy, brother.

Hi, everybody. I have some bad news. Some of you already know this. Some of you probably already suspect. Others might have had no idea that anything was amiss. But the deal is: Cracked Magazine is gone as of Issue #3.

Cracked the company, I should point out, is still alive and well. We’re currently all working exclusively on book projects and our website at Cracked.com right now, which pays for submissions so there will still be freelance opportunities for you in the future. But unfortunately,
distribution issues and the publishing industry as a whole made publishing a bi-monthly comedy magazine unviable. Will we revisit it in the future? Ya never know. But for now, no more Cracked magazine.

I also want to thank you for your hard work in making the three issues that did see print. As I mentioned, distribution challenges made it increasingly difficult to get the magazine into readers’ hands. However, those readers who did buy the issue were consistently blown away by the caliber of humor they found. I’m very proud to have worked with all of you. I thought you delivered hilarious, smart work, and it’s sad to have to email you this sort of news.

Please don’t hesitate to email me if you have any questions. Please also email me with any updated address information if you’ve moved recently, so your check will arrive at the right place. And don’t forget about freelance opportunities available through Cracked book projects and Cracked.com. If you’re still producing comedy, we’d still love to look at it.

Yours,

Jay Pinkerton

1 COMMENT

  1. As a contributor to CRACKED Magazine for 15 years (mid ’80’s to early 2000) I think it’s a shame that it’s gone. I know magazine sales have lowered over the years, but it was a good mag with lots of talented writers and cartoonists and a LONG history. I also think it was a good thing that MAD wasn’t the only humor mag on the stands. I will miss it!!

  2. I don’t mean to correct Mr. Fields, but the Cracked that just announced that it was closing its doors isn’t the same Cracked he worked on in the past. That incarnation of the magazine ended prior to 2005. This version was more a humor magazine in the tradition of National Lampoon than Mad.

    And why did it fail? Not that anybody asked, but, in my opinion, it was because it wasn’t funny. I bought all three issues and while they emulated the meaness of the classic National Lampoon but had none of the wit. It tried to be the humor magazine for the people who read Maxim, while not realizing that Maxim has more than its fair share of humor itself.

    The only bright spot of the magazine was the profiles of and interviews with of comedians. They offered an insight to their creative process, which I found interesting.

    So we really shouldn’t be mourning this Cracked’s passing. We should be glad it is not sullying the Cracked name in print form anymore.

  3. I took a look at the Cracked website last year, and what I saw was so unfunny, and often offensive, that I can only applaud it’s passing.

  4. Rrreow. Well, if I may fall into the camp of the esteemed Mr. Fields (or is that Mr. Meadows, hmmm?), I was generally quite pleased with what I saw of the formerly current CRACKED, and I was quite the fan of the “mazagine” back in the day, always preferring it to MAD, especially since they were instrumental in launching the career of Dan Clowes and resurrecting that of John Severin. Which brings me to the problem in this case, which was, I feel, that it was altogether TOO different than its namesake, not in tone, because that was right on, but in format. I realize comics have become so cool now that the only way to be a true hipster now is to eschew them, but, well, no, actually, they should have still be in there. I will continue to visit the site so long as there’s new content, and I hope they’ll try the print experiment with better results again soon.