WACKO - Sept 1980 #1 - Oct 1981 #3 Ideal Publishing Co.
After Paul Laikin moved on from his involvement with CRAZY he and a number of CRAZY artists started this magazine which is virtually indistinguishable from earlier CRAZY magazines. Artists such as my buddy Kent Gamble, Murad Gumen (who did this great cover), Al Scaduto, Charles Nicholas, Tony Tallarico, Arnoldo Franchioni, Bill Burke, Vic Martin and writer Andy Lamberti had all contributed to CRAZY and many of them would continue their working relationship with Laikin when he moved to CRACKED later in the mid 80's.
Wacko would be the only new addition to the humor magazine field in the 80's. I believe that all 3 issues were 80 pages at $1.25 and may have been more than folks were willing to pay for a humor magazine as MAD was still .75c at this time.
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You are quite right that Wacko is almost identical to the Laikin-edited issues of Crazy. Laikin had a habit of reusing the same jokes and ideas over and over, until they lost all ability to entertain. By the time Wacko came along, and long before, his ideas were running very thin. One of the lesser humor mags in my opinion, as it's quite dull if you have read Laikin's earlier mags.
ReplyDeleteForgot to mention that there were two other humor magazines, that I know of, launched in the '80's. Their format is different than that of the Mad-Cracked-Crazy school (although Laugh Factory has similarities in parts), but they are humor magazines nonetheless. One was Laugh Factory, which featured comics, jokes, humor articles, and some Mad humor-type features. Paul Laikin even contributed to it at least once with one of his stock articles. It was printed on slick, color paper and lasted for 3 local issues, and 5 national issues, all published between 1983 and 1986. One more national issue was published in 1994. The other magazine was Mole, which I do not have any copies of, but appears to be more of a text-based adult humor magazine. I think it only lasted for 2 issues (one pilot issue in 1983 and an official #1).
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