Megalowmatt-
While cracking isn't necessarily common, it's not necessarily uncommon as well.
Wanderer asked if you are running them under pressure, which is the 1st question we ask when someone experiences this with one of our tires. A sidewall that is "overflexed" is much more prone to sidewall cracking. Always a good idea to check inflation levels at least once a week (if you are not doing this already).
As unsightly as sidewall cracks are, they generally are not of too great a concern. So long as the fabric carcass is intact the tire should be fine. Sheldon Brown covered this in the article that he wrote on tire wear and tire replacement.
Tire Wear-When should you replace your tires?
Many cyclists waste money replacing perfectly functional tires simply because they're old, or may have discolored sidewalls. If you just want new tires because the old ones look grotty, it's your money, but if you are mainly concerned with safety/function, there are only two reasons for replacing old tires: - When the tread is worn so thin that you start getting a lot of flats from small pieces of glass and the like, or the fabric shows through the rubber.
- When the tire's fabric has been damaged, so that the tire has a lumpy, irregular appearance somewhere, or the tube bulges through the tire.
Cracks in the tread are harmless. Small punctures in the tire such as are typically caused by nails, tacks, thorns or glass slivers are also harmless to the tire, since the tire doesn't need to be air-tight. Gumwall tires sometimes get unsightly blistering on the sidewalls from ozone damage. (This is frequently caused by storing the bike near a furnace--the powerful electric motors in typical furnaces can put a fair amount of ozone into the air.) This blistering is ugly, but doesn't actually compromise the safety/reliability of the tire in the least.