Cracked #167: Still Milking that Mork Thing!

March 1980
by Pierre L.

Well, Mork is back and he is crackin' up! You see what they're doing there with the cracking up. Looks like a pretty comfy couch. I wonder why there's no background to the drawing. Just the couch & Mork & Sylvester. Are they in an otherworldly void?

POSTER: "Warning! The earth is tilting to the right. Please move to the left side of the room. Thank you." I don't know. That pee yellow color must sap all the comedy out of them.

TABLE OF CONTENTS: Same pfrer rErDrr as last issue. (Hey, Emmett!) No page numbers in this one. They've added a bit more verve...

If Mork Appeared In Other TV Shows & Movies - 1+2+3
The Cracked History of Automobiles - One Dozen
Test Tube Products of the Future - 7x4
G.I. Donut Boy - 30ATE
More Celebrity Nightmares - XX
SHUT-UPS - 1/2 of 100

Stuff like that. Pretty good. Someone's on the ball.

LETTUCE FROM OUR READERS: There is another "Statement of Ownership, Management & Circulation" dated 10/1/79. Looks like the current number of copies per month is around 886,017. Looks like the subscription amount is at 488,293. One of the letters says "Dear CRACKED, Not only was your MOONWRECKER script funnier than the original but yours made sense! -Marge Velasquez, Syracuse NY" "Dear Marge, Yes, but if a magazine is to survive, it has to make DOLLARS too, so if you really like us, why not subscribe to CRACKED today." Next issue - January 29th. The first official issue released in 1980.

IF MORK APPEARED IN OTHER T.V. SHOWS AND MOVIES: Odd...The title is just big black letters with a white background. It almost looks like a mock-up title that they never got around to sprucing up. Where's the write-up? Where's the blurbage? Hmmm... Well, we see Mork in "Fantasy Island", "Hawaii 5-0", "Star Wars", "Family Feud" and "Dracula". Mork as C3P0 looks a lot like the Bicentennial Man. There's a Karl Malden joke! Godspeed, Karl! A lt of corny jokes and a lot of jumping from show to movie to show. It's a fun opener to the issue. Somehow I prefer seeing Gary Coleman in these but Mork is fun. I do get the feeling that Mork is going to pass out of pop culture soon. Enjoy him while we can.

THE CRACKED HISTORY OF THE AUTOMOBILE: Jokes about Henry Ford and assembly lines and high gas prices. Traffic jams in 1916 and new roads being built through people's homes. Lot of text in this one but it's definitely worth at least one read. After the breeziness of the Mork article, this one is a little thick. But, some of the satire is sharp and some of the drawings are good. Read it, would ya please?

ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY, THE VERY LAST OF THE CRACKED LENS: 4 pages including a still from The Alligator People. This is really becoming a very great feature of these issues. Well done, Cracked. I have that Collector's Edition around here somewhere. Even if the joke isn't funny, it's fun to guess where the stills might be from.

MORE CELEBRITY NIGHTMARES: Seeing Farrah Fawcett dreaming of losing all her hair has a bit of a chill to it. But, seeing Gary Coleman dreaming about being 3'2" at the age of 83 is worth a 1,001 yuks. John Travolta asking for the negatives of "Moment By Moment" to be burnt is good, too. Chewbaka [sic] as a Wookie-skin rug is another yukfest. And...Sylvester P. Smythe is replaced by a robot! Oh no!

There's also a "Hello Larry" joke.

THE CRACKED FACT PACK; CHRISTMAS CARDS: I do love Christmas but it is July 6th so my mind is elsewhere. I do wish that CRACKED would have done more Xmas-stuff. Some of my favorite moments of MAD are their Christmas bits. What about Alfred E. Neuman staring in through the door during a snowstorm from the late 50's? One of the best. Ahh...Oh, CRACKED. Great illustrations. Gags about old Christmas cards and the evolution of Santa Claus.

"Here's wishing you Great Gorkles
during the Holiday Gezongas.
-Robin Williams"

That's probably the best joke in here. It just sounds like it might be filthy, rather than fun-loving. There's a Dracula joke, and a Julia Child gag and a Henry the VIII thing. Some guy with a big mustache rips the card from The Klongs in half. "Look, Wilma. The Klongs sent us a card saying "Have a Happy New...""

It's fun. It does, however, have the same sort of feel as the automobile article. A little more variety wouldn't hurt anyone. Would it? Well, this was late 1979. Maybe it would.

TEST TUBE PRODUCTS OF THE FUTURE: Test tube blood for vampires. Test tube fortunes will move gypsies into the atomic age. Test tube clothes and dinners. And, get this, test tube test tubes! At the end of the day, I prefer the clone gags. This bit is harmless.

THE CRACKED GUIDE TO GYMNASTICS: Hmm...another one of these. Nadia Comaneci jokes abound. A lady does a gymnastic routine while vacuuming. A lot of crazy leaping around and a lot of text-heavy jokes about the gymnastic competitions. To be honest, having three articles like this in quick succession is a little tiring. I'm going to need that variety to kick in...now!

CAREER DREAMS THAT CAME TRUE: Oh, but I really wasn't after this sort of variety. Someone says that they're going to travel all around the world - they become a stewardess! Another guy watches girls screaming at a band and says one day he will be surrounded by gals - He becomes a security guard. A writer wants to change the world with his work. - We see him begging Bob Sproul to print his article, this article. I do like the woman leaning out the window at 125 St & Lenox Ave saying that "Mr. Right" will move her up to Park Avenue. Then, we see her living at Park Ave. & 125 St.

There's that CRACKED reporter again.

G.I. DONUT BOYS: All about the soldiers who bring donuts to the front line during WWII. It's an OK army film parody with some good donut jokes but it's very one-note. At 7 pages, I began to sort of wander around near the end. It's not bad, though. Don't get me wrong. I always applaud them when they try something a little outside of the standard parodies. It's just that this one doesn't have a whole lot to it. The donut jokes even wear thin by the end. Of course, I'd rather see them fail while trying something new than when doing the same old junk. So, keep cookin', CRACKED! I'm right here.

CRACKED INTERVIEWS THE ENERGY CONSERVATION KING: Nanny at her most voluptuous! She goes to see the Average family. They use no electricity. They wash clothes down by the old stream. His wife's name is Below. In the end, they go to their next door neighbor's house to watch the football game and play some computer games. This one doesn't seem to quite be satire, apart from the closing panels. Their daughter dries her hair by having birds in a cage flap their wings. Most of the jokes are like that. Lacking the kick of MAD, the gags are far more good hearted but there's still the zing in the end. Maybe they should have gone whole hog with the satire here? It falls kind of in the middle of the road.

SHUT-UPS

1 - 2 - 3
KOMEDY!!!

Why bother with a total? These are always beautiful.

BACK COVER: The Beanstalk...Pretty good closer. This one has a kick to it that the issue was kind of missing.

You know, this issue is not a bad one. It's high quality throughout and it tries some new things. It's just "joke wise" -- we're a bit hit and miss. It was different when we were in the doldrums of a year-or-so ago. But, now they're trying a little harder and so the bits that go on too long or the completely repetitive format of several of the articles hurts a bit. I want to see them hit it out of the ballpark again and again. Unfortunately, this one starts strong and becomes just OK by the end. Let's see what they do next time.

Next issue - One of my all-time favorite CRACKED covers. But, how is the issue, I wonder?