Cracked #228
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeCracked #228 (July 1987) is a snapshot of the most creatively fertile — and historically improbable — moment in the magazine's long history: the brief window when editor Mort Todd (Michael DelleFemine) turned the perennial Mad also-ran into a genuine proving ground for alternative comics. The issue features early professional work by Daniel Clowes (under his pseudonym 'Stosh Gillespie') and scripting by Peter Bagge, two artists then simultaneously building careers in the Fantagraphics underground who would go on to become central figures in the American alternative-comics movement of the late 1980s and 1990s. As a document of that improbable crossroads — where a tabloid-owned parody magazine hosted the nascent work of future Eisner and Harvey Award winners — it occupies an unexpectedly meaningful place in the lineage of American alternative cartooning. The issue also arrives squarely within the same calendar year that Cracked made industry-wide news by landing Don Martin from Mad, capturing the competitive energy that defined Todd's editorship.
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By mid-1987, Cracked had been operating under Globe Communications — the tabloid publisher that had acquired it from Major Publications in 1985 — with Mort Todd, born Michael DelleFemine, serving as editor-in-chief since age 23. Todd had a personal connection to several of the young alternative cartoonists he recruited: he, Clowes, and Rick Altergott had self-published together as students at Pratt Institute in the early 1980s, which is how Clowes landed at Cracked in the first place. When a new publisher briefly asserted authority and rejected Clowes's submissions by name, Clowes famously resubmitted the identical work under the pseudonym 'Stosh Gillespie' — combining his middle name with a name his father had favored — and was accepted without question; that alias appeared in #228 and throughout his Cracked tenure. John Severin, the magazine's decades-long house cover artist and editorial backbone, provided the Star Trek IV–themed cover and substantial interior art, anchoring an otherwise eclectic roster.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Published July 1987 by Globe Communications (under the Major Magazines imprint), cover-dated Vol. 1 #228.
- Cover art and substantial interior illustrations by John Severin, who served as Cracked's primary cover artist for nearly four decades; this issue features his Star Trek IV movie-spoof cover.
- Daniel Clowes contributed art under his pseudonym 'Stosh Gillespie' — the alias he used throughout his 1985–1989 Cracked tenure after a publisher rejected his work by name and accepted the identical pages when resubmitted under the invented byline.
- Peter Bagge supplied scripts for the issue, representing some of his earliest mainstream-adjacent professional work, concurrent with his Fantagraphics title Neat Stuff (1985–1989).
- Additional art contributors included Gray Morrow, Don Orehek, Vic Martin, Bill Wray, and Bob Fingerman — a roster that mixed veteran magazine cartoonists with emerging underground talents.
- Content included parodies of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, The Equalizer (with Edward Woodward), Pee-Wee's Playhouse, ALF, Max Headroom, and Crocodile Dundee, reflecting the peak of mid-1980s pop-culture satire.
- The issue appeared during the same year (1987) that editor Mort Todd orchestrated Cracked's high-profile recruitment of Don Martin from Mad — the industry event that generated the most press attention Cracked had received in years.
- Cracked #228 sits within the historically significant Todd-era run (roughly 1985–1990) that Wikipedia, The Comics Journal, and multiple comics historians have identified as the period when the magazine briefly functioned as 'a useful training ground for future independent comic book creators.'
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Reprinted in Cracked Collectors' Edition #75 (1988), Cracked Party Pack #2 (1988), Cracked Collectors' Edition #86 (1991), Cracked Monster Party #13 (1991), Cracked Collectors' Edition #90 (1992), Cracked Collectors' Edition #95 (1993), Cracked Spaced Out #2 (1993), Cracked Collectors' Edition #110 (1997), Cracked Collectors' Edition #111 (1997)
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