How the anthrax attacks killed Cracked magazine

Well, the anthrax attacks didn't actually kill the old Mad knock-off mag, but they did throw a major wrench into the possibility of reprinting some of Cracked's best stories.

For details, check out this wild tale posted by former Cracked Editor-in-Chief Mort Todd on the Comics Journal message board:

The guy who is alleged to have sent anthrax-laced letters to many media outlets soon after 09/11/01, infecting and killing some, has killed himself. Quoted from the 08/02/08 NY Post: Scientist Bruce Ivins, "a top Army bioweapons expert who killed himself this week as investigators closed in on him for the deadly 2001 wave of anthrax letters had a history of murderous tendencies that dates back decades, according to documents disclosed yesterday... Television-news anchors Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather, along with Sens. Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy, were among the recipients of the missives."

What it doesn't say is that he also is suspected of sending a letter to American Media Inc., publishers of The Star, The Globe, National Examiner, and The Sun and, for a short time, Cracked magazine (way after my reign). This lead to the death of a photo editor and since all the film to print the magazine, from 1958 to 2000, was stored there, it had to be destroyed because of contamination.

Now this may be cheered by some, but there was some great art by John Severin, Jack Davis, Will Elder, All Jaffee, Bill Ward, Steve Ditko, Gene Colan and many other titans of the comics industry!

This means that any future reprint collections of Cracked (and it is warranted) will have to be shot from the actual magazines and resultant loss of quality.

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