CRACKED'S FOR MONSTERS ONLY
Vol. 1 No. 2
September 1966
Major Magazines, Inc.
Publisher: Robert C. Sproul
Editor: Joe Kiernan
Art Director: Charles Foster
Cover: John Severin ("The Greatest Monster Battle of All Time")
Pages: 64
Cover price: 35 cents
Mixing the serious with the silly, CRACKED magazine's long-running monster themed series began with FOR MONSTERS ONLY and then morphed into CRACKED'S MONSTER PARTY thereafter (with a side-trip of MONSTER HOWLS. This issue has the text article, "The Bela Lugosi Story" by Richard Bojarski, who also contributed to Calvin T. Beck's very serious monster mag, CASTLE OF FRANKENSTEIN. The rest of the issue is, of course, overflowing with goofy monster jokes and spoofs. As always, the highlights are the pages with the late great John Severin's art.
One can't get everything, but I wish I'd bought more Cracked magazines. I really enjoyed the ones I did get and these side projects were of great interest. That John Severin cover is amazing.
ReplyDeleteCracked might have been the best of the Mad imitators. Severin was awesome. He and Jack Davis are my two favorite monster humor artists.
ReplyDeleteI agree that CRACKED was the best MAD imitator by longevity alone. Whenever I find a bin of used comics I keep an eye out for reader copies of CRACKED with contributions from either Severin or Bill Ward.
ReplyDeleteBill Ward's another fave of mine. Very unique style. With a great bullpen of artists and some writers who were actually good at humor, Cracked was right up there.
ReplyDeleteI don't know--I always thought CRAZY was kinda underrated, primarily because of its "mid-level" status: Content too off-color for MAD and CRACKED. Not off-color enough for NATIONAL LAMPOON.
ReplyDeleteAnd then there's Joe Simons' Sick magazine -- a horse of an entirely different color. I've got a few of these left and may post one under "A Pop Culture Moment" one of these days. Mark Arnold's "If Your'e Cracked, You're Happy" is a fun, two-volume romp through Cracked's history and includes lots of checklists and minutia, enough for any Cracked individual.
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