MattBrady
02-23-2003, 11:35 AM
<img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/cracked.jpg" width="300" height="407" align="right">by Mike Sangiacomo
The first reaction by many to the mention of Cracked Magazine is: “That still being published?”
Yep.
The magazine that first premiered in 1958, aping the much more successful Mad Magazine, just reached issue No. 359 and is selling in respectable numbers of more than 50,000 a month.
But what people would find even more interesting is that the owner of Cracked ($3.00, Mega Media) is the editor-in-chief of another of America’s favorite fake and funny periodical: Weekly World News.
Yes, the same guy responsible for stories like “Giant Cockroaches Invade Cleveland;” “Abe Was a Babe: Abraham Lincoln Was A Woman;” and anything involving Bigfoot, Bat Boy and various alien invasions also is responsible for a magazine with articles like “Magazines for Dogs;” and “Hopping Mad Mom Wants to Ban the Insane Clown Posse.”
In case you can’t tell which article appeared in which publication, which is understandable, the last two are in Cracked. The others are from editions of the Weekly World News.
By the way, the report about dog-sized cockroaches in Cleveland story was not true. I checked.
Now for the really headscratching stuff: WWN sells a half-million copies a week. That’s almost five times X-Men and Spider-Man numbers. Who buys this stuff?
Dick Kulpa, owner of Cracked and editor-in-chief at the WWN, doesn’t know, he’s just happy they do.
You won’t get Kulpa to admit that the flights of fantasy in the WWN come strictly from the minds of his staff, but he is happy to talk about Cracked.
“I remembered it as a kid and I heard that it was for sale,” he said. “I figured it might be fun, so I bought it in November, 2000. It was pretty easy to turn it around and make a profit. The former owners printed a quarter-million copies and only sold 44,000.
“It doesn’t take a genius to figure out where all the money was going,” he said. “So I cut the run back to 100,000, improved the quality of the writing with some new people, including folks from Spumco (Ren and Stimpy) and soon it was selling more than 50,000 a month. Nothing to it.”
Whether Cracked is turning a profit yet is a matter for Kulpa and the IRS, but it certainly is no longer the money pit it used to be.
The magazine is aimed at 10-to-16 year old boys, a little young than the Mad audience. From the perspective of a slightly middle-aged man, it’s pretty weak, but then I am not the target audience. I am the father of their target audience who they hope reads the Weekly World News instead.
The illustrated articles are parodies of music, television and film like “Insane Cracked Posse Raps Eminem,” “Scenes We’ll Never See on the Anne Nicole Show” and “007 vs. XXX.”
The pieces are quick, 2 or 3 pages, and get the point across.
Kulpa is still trying to get the magazine on a monthly schedule. It’s as erratic as a Rob Liefeld series, nine issues in a little more than two years. Kulpa said he was working on that, but doesn’t think that a new issue of the magazine has to be on the stands every four weeks. Since they stay on the newsstand longer than comics, an issue can stay alive for a few months.
“I picked up Cracked before I bought it and I didn’t understand it,” he said. “It was too focused on comic book parodies and didn’t make sense to anyone who was not immersed in that culture. I wanted to be able to read the articles and laugh, this is basic.”
He now relies on his 12-year-old daughter to tell him what’s hot and what’s not. She’s his barometer of popular taste.
Kulpa doesn’t back down when asked about Mad magazine, but insists that there is room for both on the newsstands.
“Mad does things differently than we do, we don’t compete with them,” he said. “We’re glad they are around. If anything, the big difference is that we are the little guys, less structured. We are removed from the New York centered arrogance that Mad represents, down here in Florida we're more down to Earth, less citified.”
Kulpa figures there’s enough goofiness to go around.
Michael Sangiacomo is a statewide news reporter for the Plain Dealer newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio. His syndicated "Journey Into Comics" weekly column on the state of the comic book business, can be found in newspapers and at the Newsarama website. His monthly comic book column appears the first Saturday of each month in the Plain Dealer Arts page and is syndicated through Newhouse Newspapers. He also writes a twice-monthly audiobooks review column covering crime thrillers and mysteries that can be seen at <a href="http://www.audiobookstoday.com" target="_blank">www.audiobookstoday.com</a>
The first reaction by many to the mention of Cracked Magazine is: “That still being published?”
Yep.
The magazine that first premiered in 1958, aping the much more successful Mad Magazine, just reached issue No. 359 and is selling in respectable numbers of more than 50,000 a month.
But what people would find even more interesting is that the owner of Cracked ($3.00, Mega Media) is the editor-in-chief of another of America’s favorite fake and funny periodical: Weekly World News.
Yes, the same guy responsible for stories like “Giant Cockroaches Invade Cleveland;” “Abe Was a Babe: Abraham Lincoln Was A Woman;” and anything involving Bigfoot, Bat Boy and various alien invasions also is responsible for a magazine with articles like “Magazines for Dogs;” and “Hopping Mad Mom Wants to Ban the Insane Clown Posse.”
In case you can’t tell which article appeared in which publication, which is understandable, the last two are in Cracked. The others are from editions of the Weekly World News.
By the way, the report about dog-sized cockroaches in Cleveland story was not true. I checked.
Now for the really headscratching stuff: WWN sells a half-million copies a week. That’s almost five times X-Men and Spider-Man numbers. Who buys this stuff?
Dick Kulpa, owner of Cracked and editor-in-chief at the WWN, doesn’t know, he’s just happy they do.
You won’t get Kulpa to admit that the flights of fantasy in the WWN come strictly from the minds of his staff, but he is happy to talk about Cracked.
“I remembered it as a kid and I heard that it was for sale,” he said. “I figured it might be fun, so I bought it in November, 2000. It was pretty easy to turn it around and make a profit. The former owners printed a quarter-million copies and only sold 44,000.
“It doesn’t take a genius to figure out where all the money was going,” he said. “So I cut the run back to 100,000, improved the quality of the writing with some new people, including folks from Spumco (Ren and Stimpy) and soon it was selling more than 50,000 a month. Nothing to it.”
Whether Cracked is turning a profit yet is a matter for Kulpa and the IRS, but it certainly is no longer the money pit it used to be.
The magazine is aimed at 10-to-16 year old boys, a little young than the Mad audience. From the perspective of a slightly middle-aged man, it’s pretty weak, but then I am not the target audience. I am the father of their target audience who they hope reads the Weekly World News instead.
The illustrated articles are parodies of music, television and film like “Insane Cracked Posse Raps Eminem,” “Scenes We’ll Never See on the Anne Nicole Show” and “007 vs. XXX.”
The pieces are quick, 2 or 3 pages, and get the point across.
Kulpa is still trying to get the magazine on a monthly schedule. It’s as erratic as a Rob Liefeld series, nine issues in a little more than two years. Kulpa said he was working on that, but doesn’t think that a new issue of the magazine has to be on the stands every four weeks. Since they stay on the newsstand longer than comics, an issue can stay alive for a few months.
“I picked up Cracked before I bought it and I didn’t understand it,” he said. “It was too focused on comic book parodies and didn’t make sense to anyone who was not immersed in that culture. I wanted to be able to read the articles and laugh, this is basic.”
He now relies on his 12-year-old daughter to tell him what’s hot and what’s not. She’s his barometer of popular taste.
Kulpa doesn’t back down when asked about Mad magazine, but insists that there is room for both on the newsstands.
“Mad does things differently than we do, we don’t compete with them,” he said. “We’re glad they are around. If anything, the big difference is that we are the little guys, less structured. We are removed from the New York centered arrogance that Mad represents, down here in Florida we're more down to Earth, less citified.”
Kulpa figures there’s enough goofiness to go around.
Michael Sangiacomo is a statewide news reporter for the Plain Dealer newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio. His syndicated "Journey Into Comics" weekly column on the state of the comic book business, can be found in newspapers and at the Newsarama website. His monthly comic book column appears the first Saturday of each month in the Plain Dealer Arts page and is syndicated through Newhouse Newspapers. He also writes a twice-monthly audiobooks review column covering crime thrillers and mysteries that can be seen at <a href="http://www.audiobookstoday.com" target="_blank">www.audiobookstoday.com</a>