Back in the aughts, Cracked magazine was owned by the same company that owned the Weekly World News. During the rocky final years of Cracked, our editor (the long time editor of WWN), in an attempt to give the Cracked writers a pay check, had us contribute articles to WWN ("the humor magazine that nobody knows is a humor magazine.") It took me a while to get my footing but soon I was working on some straight-forward fake news stories.
This was the end of the line for me. Back in May 2005, the paper decided to go "Bolder+Bigger+Better" and they started making a lot of editorial changes (as well as editors). This would be Jerome Howard's last byline in the paper. Post-Katrina (and after declaring war on weather) the only logical move would be to bring in every home improvement reality show and have them rebuild the city. Is it that far-fetched, really? I'm surprised some producer wasn't pitching it at the time.
But like I said, new blood had been pumped in. They ditched Dear Dottie for another fake advice columnist. They attempted to introduce new "recurring" characters. And the story process got altered. They didn't want any story, willy-nilly. They were looking for continuity from issue to issue. No longer could the paper say the hellmouth was discovered in Portland and then a few issues later say the hellmouth was located under a Pizza Hut in New Jersey. A lot of us stringers got cut loose. Sure, they allowed us to submit new stories, but they didn't allow themselves to buy any of them. It was a kick in the teeth for me at the time, too. I went into this, reluctantly, embarrassed by it and in the end I started to get a kick out of the whole set up. I'm glad Google has the issues stored online and that I had the chance to post them here (grabbing the Google screen caps, which were much better than my attempts to scan my issues). Long live Bat-boy!
But like I said, new blood had been pumped in. They ditched Dear Dottie for another fake advice columnist. They attempted to introduce new "recurring" characters. And the story process got altered. They didn't want any story, willy-nilly. They were looking for continuity from issue to issue. No longer could the paper say the hellmouth was discovered in Portland and then a few issues later say the hellmouth was located under a Pizza Hut in New Jersey. A lot of us stringers got cut loose. Sure, they allowed us to submit new stories, but they didn't allow themselves to buy any of them. It was a kick in the teeth for me at the time, too. I went into this, reluctantly, embarrassed by it and in the end I started to get a kick out of the whole set up. I'm glad Google has the issues stored online and that I had the chance to post them here (grabbing the Google screen caps, which were much better than my attempts to scan my issues). Long live Bat-boy!
