Humor Magazines - WACKO

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.

THWAK magazine #4

Always wanting to try something different, my friend John Hett (Journal of MADness publisher) and I decided to take a new approach to our magazines and combined forces for this "special double issue".

One side was THWAK #4 - flip it over and you've got the Journal of MADness #15! This issue came out in Fall/Winter '02 and also included an article on a "Brief History of Humor Magazines" which included a listing of over 40 titles!

I was thrilled that Kent Gamble painted this cover which is by far my favorite. It is also the 1st time that all previous humor magazine mascots have appeared together on one cover. Here Stupid Cupid lights the "candle" to a cake celebrating 50 years of satire in honor of MAD magazine. Boy are those mascots gonna be in for a suprise! Do you think you can name them all? I actually got to handle the original painting while scanning a transparency to print from and the colors were so vibrant. It was stunning! I ended up printing a large poster that now hangs in my office.

Another small tidbit of info was that this cover had a small change to one of our tag lines. Up until this issue we had always had the phrase "Steal Me!" $3.99 on the cover to the right of the logo. I was informed by some store owners that they were having problems with people actually trying to steal the magazines, as if taking us up on the dare. Issue #4 & 5 sported the new and improved "A steal at" $3.99.

Backcover to the THWAK Bonfire of Insanity Collection