Status | defunct (1994) |
---|---|
Founded | 1958 |
Founder | Robert C. Sproul |
Country of origin | United States of America |
Headquarters location | Long Island |
Key people | Sol Brodsky, John Severin, Terry Bisson |
Publication types | Comic magazines |
Fiction genres | Humor, Horror, Western, Adventure |
Imprints | Humor-Vision Globe Communications |
Major Publications, also known as Major Magazines, was the publisher of the satirical magazine Cracked , the most durable imitator of Mad magazine. Founded by Robert C. Sproul in 1958, the company generally imitated other publishers' successes in various genres, such as Westerns, men's adventure, and the Warren Publications mid-1960s revival of horror comics. [1] Even as the company chased publishing trends, its long-running flagship title was Cracked, which the company published from 1958–1985.
Cracked is a defunct American humor magazine. Founded in 1958, Cracked proved to be the most durable of the many publications to be launched in the wake of Mad magazine.
Mad is an American humor magazine founded in 1952 by editor Harvey Kurtzman and publisher William Gaines, launched as a comic book before it became a magazine. It was widely imitated and influential, affecting satirical media, as well as the cultural landscape of the 20th century, with editor Al Feldstein increasing readership to more than two million during its 1974 circulation peak. From 1952 until 2018, Mad published 550 regular issues, as well as hundreds of reprint "Specials", original-material paperbacks, reprint compilation books and other print projects. The magazine's numbering reverted to 1 with its June 2018 issue, coinciding with the magazine's headquarters move to the West Coast.
Western comics is a comics genre usually depicting the American Old West frontier and typically set during the late nineteenth century. The term is generally associated with an American comic books genre published from the late 1940s through the 1950s. Western comics of the period typically featured dramatic scripts about cowboys, gunfighters, lawmen, bounty hunters, outlaws, and Native Americans. Accompanying artwork depicted a rural America populated with such iconic images as guns, cowboy hats, vests, horses, saloons, ranches, and deserts, contemporaneous with the setting.
The company also published a number of monster-themed magazines, imitating publications like Fangoria and Famous Monsters of Filmland . Editor Terry Bisson recalled:
Famous Monsters of Filmland is an American genre-specific film magazine, started in 1958 by publisher James Warren and editor Forrest J Ackerman.
Terry Ballantine Bisson is an American science fiction and fantasy author. He is best known for his short stories including "Bears Discover Fire", which won the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award and "They're Made Out of Meat".
“ | The whole company was about lowball imitations. The publisher . . . wanted to put out some imitations of Western, romance and astrology mags, and I was hired (at about age 27) to put them together because of my romance mag experience. . . . The pseudomags did pretty well (this was a very low end market). [1] | ” |
Cracked's first editor was Sol Brodsky. Over the years, Bill Ward and John Severin were regular contributors to most of the company's publications. The production manager throughout the 1960s was Charles Foster.
Soloman Brodsky was an American comic book artist who, as Marvel Comics' Silver Age production manager, was one of the key architects of the small company's expansion to a major pop culture conglomerate. He later rose to vice president, operations and vice president, special projects. "Sol was really my right-hand man for years", described Marvel editor and company patriarch Stan Lee.
William Hess Ward, known as Bill Ward, was an American cartoonist notable as a good girl artist and creator of the risqué comics character Torchy.
John Powers Severin was an American comics artist noted for his distinctive work with EC Comics, primarily on the war comics Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat; for Marvel Comics, especially its war and Western comics; and for his 45-year stint with the satiric magazine Cracked. He was one of the founding cartoonists of Mad in 1952.
In addition to the flagship title, Major put out a number of publications under the Cracked umbrella, including Cracked Collector's Edition, Giant Cracked, and Super Cracked. Many Cracked contributors worked on these titles.
The most notable of Major's black-and-white horror magazines was Web of Horror, edited by Bisson, which published three issues from 1969–1970. Bruce Jones made his professional debut in Web of Horror #3, writing and drawing the six-page story "Point of View." Wayne Howard contributed to issue #1. Syd Shores penciled "Blood Thirst!" in #1 and "Strangers!" in #3. Ralph Reese was a regular contributor to Web of Horror. Other contributors included Bernie Wrightson, Michael Kaluta, and Jeff Jones.
Bruce Eliot Jones whose pen names include Philip Roland and Bruce Elliot, is an American comic book writer, novelist, illustrator, and screenwriter whose work included writing Marvel Comics' The Incredible Hulk from 2001 to 2005.
Wayne W. Howard was an African-American comic book artist. He is best known for his 1970s work at Charlton Comics, where he became American comic books' first series creator known to be credited on covers, with the horror anthology Midnight Tales announcing "Created by Wayne Howard" on each issue — "a declaration perhaps unique in the industry at the time".
Sydney Shores was an American comic book artist known for his work on Captain America both during the 1940s, in what fans and historians call the Golden Age of comic books, and during the 1960s Silver Age of comic books.
Bisson left after issue #3, leaving the editorial chores to Wrightson and Bruce Jones. As Wrightson recalls,
“ | Major Magazines just literally packed up and left overnight. . . .Bruce and I put together the whole fourth issue, which had already been assigned. We were working at home! We had to take this incredibly long trip to get [to Major Magazines] — Bruce lived in Flushing at the time and from there we took a train to the end of the line and from there we had to take two buses and then walk about ten blocks to get to the office! It was an all-day thing and we finally get out to the office... and the place was empty. All the desks, all the filing cabinets, everything, was gone! . . . [W]e never learned where the guy went and what happened to him. We had all this stuff for the fourth issue and we were planning issues five and six — Bruce and I were going to take over the magazine and make it like Creepy or EC Comics — but they just left! . . . Whatever had been turned in already, they took with them. I don't think anybody got paid for anything — and Bruce and I took a bath on it. [2] | ” |
In 1985, founder Sproul sold the company's assets to Globe Communications, which moved the operations to Florida and continued to published Cracked and some of its affiliated magazines under the Major Magazines name. Globe sold the assets to American Media in 1994.
Bernard Albert Wrightson, sometimes credited as Berni Wrightson, was an American artist, known for co-creating the Swamp Thing, his adaptation of the novel Frankenstein illustration work, and for his other horror comics and illustrations, which feature his trademark intricate pen and brushwork.
Charlton Comics was an American comic book publishing company that existed from 1945 to 1986, having begun under a different name in 1944. It was based in Derby, Connecticut. The comic-book line was a division of Charlton Publications, which published magazines, puzzle books and, briefly, books. It had its own distribution company.
Plop!, "The New Magazine of Weird Humor!", was a comic book anthology published by DC Comics in the mid-1970s. It falls into the horror / humor genre. There were 24 issues in all and the series ran from Sept./Oct. 1973 to Nov./Dec. 1976.
Warren Publishing was an American magazine company founded by James Warren, who published his first magazines in 1957 and continued in the business for decades. Magazines published by Warren include After Hours, Creepy, Eerie, Famous Monsters of Filmland, Help!, and Vampirella.
Mort Todd is an American writer and media entrepreneur, best known as an editor-in-chief of Cracked magazine, and later, Marvel Music. He is owner of Comicfix, a media company that has developed licensed properties.
Ralph Reese is an American artist who has illustrated for books, magazines, trading cards, comic books and comic strips, including a year drawing the Flash Gordon strip for King Features. Prolific from the 1960s to the 1990s, he is best known for his collaboration with Byron Preiss on the continuing feature "One Year Affair", serialized in the satiric magazine National Lampoon from 1973 to 1975 and then collected into a 1976 book.
Castle of Frankenstein was an American horror, science fiction and fantasy film magazine, published between 1962 and 1975 by Calvin Thomas Beck's Gothic Castle Publishing Company, distributed by Kable News. Larry Ivie - who also was cover artist for several early issues - and Ken Beale edited the first three issues. Writer-artist Bhob Stewart edited the magazine from 1963 into the early 1970s. Although promoted and sold as a "monster magazine," readers were aware that Castle of Frankenstein, at the time, was the only nationally distributed magazine devoted to a legitimate and serious coverage of B movies. In addition to its central focus on classic and current horror films, Castle of Frankenstein also devoted pages to amateur filmmakers and fanzines. Its advertising pages sold full-length silent feature films such as The Lost World and The Golem: How He Came into the World.
Creepy was an American horror-comics magazine launched by Warren Publishing in 1964. Like Mad, it was a black-and-white newsstand publication in a magazine format and thus did not require the approval or seal of the Comics Code Authority. An anthology magazine, it initially was published quarterly but later went bimonthly. Each issue's stories were introduced by the host character, Uncle Creepy. Its sister publications were Eerie and Vampirella.
Twisted Tales was a horror comics anthology published by Pacific Comics and, later, Eclipse Comics, in the early 1980s. The title was edited by Bruce Jones and April Campbell.
Weird Mystery Tales was a mystery horror comics anthology published by DC Comics from July–August 1972 to November 1975.
Chamber of Darkness is a horror/fantasy anthology comic book published by the American company Marvel Comics. Under this and a subsequent name, it ran from 1969 to 1974. It featured work by creators such as writer-editor Stan Lee, writers Gerry Conway, Archie Goodwin, and Roy Thomas, and artists John Buscema, Johnny Craig, Jack Kirby, Tom Sutton, Barry Windsor-Smith, and Bernie Wrightson. Stories were generally hosted by either of the characters Digger, a gravedigger, or Headstone P. Gravely, in undertaker garb, or by one of the artists or writers.
The Monster Times was a horror film fan magazine created in 1972. Published by The Monster Times Publishing Co., it was intended as a competitor to Famous Monsters of Filmland. Although the main editorial focus of the magazine was horror media, it also featured articles and reviews of modern and classic science fiction/fantasy movies and television series, as well as comic books. Each issue featured a fold-out centerfold poster usually based on that particular issue's feature story.
Gregori Arcane, the Patchwork Man, is a fictional DC Comics horror character based upon Frankenstein's monster. He is the brother of Anton Arcane and the father of Abby Holland.
Horror comics are comic books, graphic novels, black-and-white comics magazines, and manga focusing on horror fiction. In the US market, horror comic books reached a peak in the late 1940s through the mid-1950s, when concern over content and the imposition of the self-censorship Comics Code Authority contributed to the demise of many titles and the toning down of others. Black-and-white horror-comics magazines, which did not fall under the Code, flourished from the mid-1960s through the early 1980s from a variety of publishers. Mainstream American color comic books experienced a horror resurgence in the 1970s, following a loosening of the Code. While the genre has had greater and lesser periods of popularity, it occupies a firm niche in comics as of the 2010s.
Heroes for Hope: Starring the X-Men is a 1985 Marvel comic book designed to raise awareness about hunger in Africa. Proceeds from the comic went to the American Friends Service Committee, to assist in their work on behalf of African famine relief and recovery. Published in the form of a "comic jam," or exquisite corpse, the book featured an all-star lineup of comics creators as well as a few notable authors from outside the comic book industry, such as Stephen King, George R. R. Martin, and Edward Bryant. It also saw a rare Alan Moore Marvel Comics credit outside his early Marvel UK work.
Farrell Publications is the name of a series of American comic book publishing companies founded and operated by Robert W. Farrell in the 1940s and 1950s, including Elliot Publishing Company, Farrell Comic Group, and Excellent Publications. Farrell is particularly known for its pre-Comics Code horror comics, mostly produced by the S. M. Iger Studio. Farrell also published romance, Western, adventure, superhero, and funny animal comics. Farrell acted as editor throughout. In addition to packaging art for Farrell from the beginning, Jerry Iger was the company's art director from 1955–1957.
Heroes Against Hunger is a 1986 all-star benefit comic book for African famine relief and recovery. Published by DC Comics in the form of a "comic jam," or exquisite corpse, the book starred Superman and Batman. Spearheaded by Jim Starlin and Bernie Wrightson, all proceeds from the comic went to hunger relief in Africa.
The Grand Comics Database (GCD) is an Internet-based project to build a database of comic book information through user contributions. The GCD project is cataloging information on creator credits, story details, reprints, and other information useful to the comic book reader, comic collector, fan, and scholar. The GCD is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization incorporated in Arkansas.