When they first asked me to write for Cracked I said, “The Mad magazine rip-off from 1960?” and they said, “Yes, but it’ll be different.” I was skeptical, but they were right, it is different, and pretty much only the mascot and the name have remained. There’s celebrity-mocking, satire, parody and comedy-relevant information. And it’s glossy, whereas the old magazine looked like a comic and smelled funny after a month.
Issue #2 is out and it’s chock full of sheer genius. Then there’s my contribution, a piece on page 17 called Nostradamus: The Lost Episodes wherein you’ll find this quatrain on George Michael getting a hummer in the woods:
Whispers in the dark, not careless but planned
Men of different stature, camouflaged, strike their swords
The battle over, a victor emerges, the darkness dissipates with a flash
The Sun comes out; a star, having more than once fallen, falls more.
If you don’t subscribe already, you should, because then they make more money and a terribly small portion of that finds its way to me.
Brian Sack
I started Banterist in 2003 after this conversation with my cat. It led to all sorts of good things.
You would be willing to write for a paper with an egregious apostrophe misuse on the cover of their magazine? And you admit it? I might be willing to sink so low if I were strapped for cash, but I’d definately [sic] use some kind of pseudonym.
[ Actually the apostrophe is in the print version. Not sure why it’s not on the digital one. -B. ]