R.I.P. Wizard Magazine

So apparently the print edition of Wizard: The Guide to Comics is going to cease publication. It's been a long time coming, but man, for about 10 years, one of my major life goals was to draw a cover for that magazine, and now I'm a little sad to see it go away.

I had such a love/hate relationship with Wizard. While I enjoyed the creator interviews and articles, the blatant commercialism of 'must-buy' lists and the useless price guides always bothered me. I haven't been a reader for about 2 years, and I'm not going to miss what the magazine devolved into by the end, but I do have a lot of good memories associated with Wizard.

For one, my all-time favorite single issue comic, Astro City 1/2 (about a man whose wife was written out of the timeline during a Crisis-like cosmic event), was originally a Wizard publication. And their drawing tutorial columns were invaluable to me as a young artist. No real replacement for stuff like that, so yeah, sorry to see the magazine fold.

I always preferred to spend my paper route money on comics and not price guides.

I had a mostly hate relationship with it when I ran my store. People would literally beg me to open a copy when it came in, so they could check their newest Image book's "value". I mean... ugh.

But, it had its place. And who am I to argue when I got a write up in Todd's little "what do you say" (or whatever it was called) page, when a customer (sadly now deceased) talked about me at length for why he shopped at my store.

Many features were awesome, Twisted Mego Theater for instance, and the little one-panel gags scattered through the book. As far as a price guide went, meh. But the features were often quite fun to read.

I basically never wasted my money on Wizard. I bought comics to read. Not as some goofy "investment".

I got to see first-hand what the build-up of and subsequent implosion of the "investment/collectible market" did to the comics industry as a whole.

Yes, Wizard has tried over the last 20 years to be more than "just" a price guide. So they probably deserve SOME kudos. But I'm a curmudgeonly sort who has vast problems with forgiveness, and a problem with forgetting things like this that dwarfs my inability to forgive by several orders of magnitude.

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Wasn't too into it, picked it up now and then for everything but the price guide, but it is something I am so used to seeing in comic shops. I dunno, feels like the end of an era.

For me, Wizard was like the old dog that I loved, but had lived way past it's time and needed to be put down. I enjoyed it in it's early years and it was fun to read at times, if not entirely timely or relevant. The later years were just kind of sad though.

I bought Wizard until last year when my comic shop closed. I never really got the hate for it, but then I didn't get it for the price guide and as for the commercialism.... eh, I just figured "well, yeah; that's how most businesses are".

I only really read it for the previews of upcoming stuff and the humor (though Toyfare was better for that. Hey, does that mean Toyfare is going too? ). And it even turned me onto a few books that I probably woulda never even heard of otherwise. Most notably Richard Moore's 'Boneyard', which remains in my top 10 list of favorite comics ever.

I'll miss ya Wizard. Here's hoping your business can still flourish on the interwebz.

I loved reading Wizard. Not for the price guide, but the articles, interviews and humor.

As Cowman said, it pointed out some new books and creators I may not have heard of otherwise.

It's not too surprising. Magazines (especially ones that are for a specialized group) are really losing any purpouse. Actually they haven't had a purpouse in about 10 years. The Internet allows us to get alot of info we used to need magazines for. Comics haven't fallen because collectors want a physical copy, and some people just prefer the comic in their hands. Not really the same for magazines.

I've never really read an issue of wizard.

Wow, that is sort of sad. My favorite Wizard magazine was from way back in the 90's and it came with an X-man 0 issue, something about Xavior's son going back in time and changing stuff; don't really know cause I did not care about x-men at the time. I bought it because it explained the Crisis on Infinite Earth story arc. Probably read that article 20 times or more.

Later, when I worked in a collector's store, we would laugh at all price guides in general. Beckett are also a joke as far as pricing goes. We could never figure out where they came up with their going prices.

Any time some brought up a comic, baseball card, or other item and state that Wizard, Beckett, Overstreet had it listed at x price, we would have to explain that just because it was listed like that does not mean it can actually sell for that price. There are a few instances where they were right on the money, but those were usually original prints and 1st runs, silver age. As for comics, if it said it went for $4.00 he would divide that number by 8, then offer to buy it from them for $.15 and sell it for $.50, and guess what. That item would sit for years without selling. Usually people would laugh at us and leave only to return a few weeks later to sell it to us once they found out that nobody wanted to pay $4.00 for it.

Really sad to hear this...

I was an avid Wizard fan and had every issue from 13 to (I think) 178ish. I loved the articles, the interviews, and the drawing lessons they had. Couldnt care less about the price guide tho.

I stopped buying them about 4 years ago when I moved and no longer had a comic book shop within walking distance... And I just recently threw out the copies I did have earlier this year...

Really sad to see them go...

Stopped reading Wizard about 3 years ago, but it's still sad to see them go.

Well, this is a shame. I'm in your camp, David....there were certainly things you could criticise it for (and their fanboyish attitudes about things where there seemed to be no criticism for anything, it seemed), but at the same time, you got previews of upcoming storylines for comics, lots of 'hey, isn't this toy/comic/movie/whatever cool?' articles, and the madly funny Mego stuff.

Being a tabletop gamer, seeing the venerable Dragon and Dungeon magazines just shut up shop made me very very sad. It feels like niche interests and hobbies are becoming homogenised and 'cleaned up' for mass consumption. I kind of like the rough around the edges feel these things had.


S.

Very sad day indeed--- another one bites the dust.

[QUOTE=SuperOz;3450746]...seeing the venerable Dragon and Dungeon magazines just shut up shop made me very very sad. It feels like niche interests and hobbies are becoming homogenised and 'cleaned up' for mass consumption. I kind of like the rough around the edges feel these things had. [QUOTE]

Yup. Feels like we're truly and completely in an online era now.

At this point, I'm so uncaring about Wizard, that I'm not gonna miss it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Noble Savage I had such a love/hate relationship with Wizard. While I enjoyed the creator interviews and articles, the blatant commercialism of 'must-buy' lists and the useless price guides always bothered me. I haven't been a reader for about 2 years, and I'm not going to miss what the magazine devolved into by the end, but I do have a lot of good memories associated with Wizard.

And that's the main reason why.

About the only things to come out of Wizard that I have fond memories of/enjoy are the Big Shots, and Twisted Mego Theater.

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With what Wizard devolved into, not really sad to see it go.

I'm not gonna MISS Wizard, but I do remember it fondly from the late 80s into the late 90s, when it was a magazine for fan boys written by fan boys.

Wizard had a lot to do with me getting into comics in the first place. The issues with "Top 10/100 [blank]" lists were always informative for someone just starting to read comics. The Dark Knight Returns was my first graphic novel, and I wouldn't have even known about it if I hadn't seen it featured as #1 of the Top 100 Comic Book Stories article.

My best friend in high school collected Wizard magazine. I getting pretty big into anime and manga at the time, so I didn't really care much for most of the content, but I loved the David Letterman-esque top ten lists they did.

My favorite of all time was "Top Ten Rejected Batman Action Figures," which included things such as:

• Intestinal Distress Batman (with action Bat-Tapeworm!)
• "Sweet Jesus, Where's the Bathroom!?!" Batman, with Fear-of-God Bat-Expression
• Bullet Riddled Thomas and Martha Wayne Inaction Figures
• Pantsless Alfred

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nethergoat it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!

I worked in a comic book store back in my college days (and, yes, I'm really dating myself with this) but I remember that Wizard had "PITT #1" listed as having a value of $5 (over double the cover price!) well before the comic book even released. And we're talking at least 9 months here because Dale Keown couldn't pull himself together enough to draw 22 pages of "art."

Needless to say, because of this, every person under the age of 15 would come in the store EVERY SINGLE WEEK and ask if PITT #1 was out yet. Going on 6 months of the book being late, the owner of the store kept inventing stuff to say like, "It came out 3 weeks ago, actually, and it sold out in 5 minutes so Wizard should list it at $20 next month" or "It's been canceled."

Wizard had a couple of cool features here and there, but as a "price guide" it was relatively worthless. I also really disliked their deification of some creators, particularly the original Image guys. Their hype machine for garbage like "Youngblood" (one of the most poorly written and drawn comic books I've ever seen) was absolutely nauseating.

I used to buy Wizard because people were talking about comics in it. lol I enjoyed the letter columns, and would always hope for news about a Psylocke action figure...twisted Mego theater was awesome.

If not for Toyfare, we probably wouldn't have gotten Robot Chicken, or the very first Kitty Pryde action figure, too.

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