How so? Question to author and artist Daniel Clowes during a recent interview: "Will there ever be a reprint of your work on The Uggly Family for Cracked Magazine?" Answer: No. The archive of "Cracked" magazine was destroyed during the Anthrax scare. - Stephen Mack #TeamMomo

Full quote -- from an interview with Daniel Clowes on KQED radio's "Forum" program on May 30th (http://www.kqed.org/a... from embedded audio around 42:40): "Q. Are there plans to compile and reprint those strips?" "A. The Uggly Family can't really be reprinted because, do you remember when there were the Anthrax scares in the post-911 era? One of the places that was sent Anthrax was The Globe, you know, which was a tabloid in Florida. The Globe actually had recently bought Cracked magazine, including all its archives, which included all of the film, which is what we have left of our artwork, and actually all my original artwork was in that archive. And so after the anthrax scare, they had to actually burn the entire Cracked archive, so there's no record of it at all. You would have to scan it directly from the printed magazines and that looks horrible. So I don't think we would ever be able to do an Uggly Family reprint." - Stephen Mack #TeamMomo

(Daniel Clowes is an alternative comic book artist, best-known for creating, writing, and drawing "Ghost World," which he later adapted into a 2001 movie with Terry Zwigoff. For more, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... or http://danielclowes.com/ .) - Stephen Mack #TeamMomo

Today, some people just know Cracked as a humor web site, but for more than 40 years, it was a print ripoff of Mad Magazine. Some of its artists, however, like Clowes, went on to create well-known work. Probably the peak of Cracked's success was in the late 80s, after Mad's best-known artist, Don Martin, began working at Cracked instead following a business dispute. Later, in 2000, Cracked's circulation dropped following an acquisition and move to Florida. Already on hard times, the Anthrax scare was the final blow, and only four issues were published in 2001. In 2005 it was relaunched as a lads-mag ripoff, but failed to sell, and the print portion died for good; the move to online snark was complete. (More at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...) - Stephen Mack #TeamMomo

In 2008, following accusations that Bruce Ivins was behind the Anthrax attacks, the new Cracked themselves wrote about the destruction of their previous incarnation's archives: http://www.cracked.com/blog... - Stephen Mack #TeamMomo

Certainly much of it was juvenile dreck, but the original Cracked was capable of some insightful satire from time to time. It saddens me that all of the artwork from over 40 years was destroyed with no backup. - Stephen Mack #TeamMomo

Maybe nobody else will care, but this story hits me as strange and fascinating all at once. - Stephen Mack #TeamMomo

Oh, I didn't know that the print version of Cracked was dead. I did know it as that before it became a website. - Kamilah Reed (K. Gill)

Wow, I knew their stuff was destroyed, just didn't know that it was that way. So sad, especially since all of the paper in the Hart Building more or less made it through (the mail was destroyed, but they were able to sanitize the rest of the building well enough that files and archives were retained as is.) Gives me one more thing to hate about that whole episode. - Jennifer Dittrich

Jennifer, I agree. It seems like such a weird overreaction to just burn every piece of paper in the whole area, no matter how irreplaceable. Why not just quarantine for a bit? Would these old films really have a chance of being contaminated? - Stephen Mack #TeamMomo

I know they had to burn all of the mail at the contaminated post office (also my post office, so both my office and personal mail got destroyed,) so I wonder the volume, or a lack of confidence in the spread radius played into it. Could also be the medium - the Hart building had to have the heat and humidity raised really high for a sustained period of time to kills the spoors. I wonder if that, by itself, would've just destroyed the films anyway. - Jennifer Dittrich

It is strange and fascinating. - Spidra Webster

Jennifer, I'm sorry that event hit you so close to home. That must have been harrowing. - Stephen Mack #TeamMomo from iPhone