Wizard Magazine Closes Doors and Plans Digital Rebirth

This morning, Wizard Magazine, the long-running industry leader in popular print commentary on comics, announced the cancellation of their magazine (and its sister publication Toyfare) effective immediately.

[At left, the delightful cover of the magazine's fiftieth issue from 1995.]

The magazine will live on as a larger online news presence called Wizard World, to strengthen branding connections with the comics-convention circuit of the same name Wizard's publisher Gareb Shamus started in 1997. The new online push is scheduled for next month, February 2o11.

Shamus himself says in his press release: "The new digital magazine Wizard World will give consumers the content they want in a magazine format with which they are familiar, but distributed in a form that is always available at any time on any device. It is a natural evolution for us in this market."

[via @bleedingcool via Robot6 via Wizard World press release]

The truth is Wizard, which began publishing in 1991, hasn't been very relevant as a source of comics news for some time. Other comics news sites have mentioned the effect of the 'instant news' ability of websites and blogs (such as ours of course) in eroding the need/desire for the comics fan to purchase a monthly print magazine about comics. Why pay for nearly the same material you already got for free? But commenters are being polite and leaving out an important truth:

Many came to think of Wizard as a joke. Partially because the magazine was full of jokes. Dick, fart, poop, tits, and monkey jokes to be exact.

The saddest part is that Wizard's industry dominance killed off the excellent and sophisticated magazine called Comic Foundry [cover of the final issue at right] published by Tim Leong (@timleong) and Laura Hudson (@laura_hudson) from 2oo6 to 2oo9. (Their blog is still up here.)

Wizard Magazine was my favorite magazine for a period of my childhood. Comics industry people talking about comics with humor and irreverence. Truthfully part of why I do what I do was inspired by Gareb Shamus and Wizard. It was my generation's MAD Magazine.

This writer is hoping that if Wizard World (@WizardWorld) is making this big a change in format, it can also make the effort to make a change in tone to match the change in tone the rest of the industry has made. We can have humor and serious art commentary in the same place without dipping so deep into the vulgar stuff ten-year-old boys like.

Bring us all up a bit, Mr. Shamus.

~@JonGorga

A Convention By Any Other Promoter Would Smell As...

This past weekend was the Big Apple ComicCon, a Wizard Magazine sponsored con, and I must tell you -looks left- -looks right- I didn't expect to have as much fun as I did! 

There was some disparaging talk about this con on the net (I'm looking at you @rickmarshall) and I feel the need to say up front and honestly: this con was not polished, this con was not slick. But this con was small enough to allow me to get one-on-one time with several industry giants and many talented unknowns. That's what I care about: comics people. 

Yeah, there were guys dressed as vampires running around making fools of themselves. There were industry creators getting drunk and blowing off steam. There were overweight men in their forties dressed ridiculously. But you know what? All of that is going to be at the bigger polished cons too. It's all in good fun and done by people who love to do it. More importantly, I didn't see even the smallest maliciousness or misogyny. Everybody was having a nice time. 

There was a nice mix of big names like Ethan Van Scriver (who was hilarious), Mark Millar (@mrmarkmillar - who was equally hilarious), J.G. Jones, Leinil Yu, Joe Madureira, guys you may not know like Rodney Ramos, Michael Golden, and Javier Cruz Winnik and some new faces: I met some very excellent and talented young comicsmiths like Brendan Leach (@iknowashortcut - who you WILL be hearing more about from us), Jungyeon Roh (@JungyeonRoh), the team at Pronto Comics (@prontocomics) and ShapeShifter Comics! 

I got really excited when I read Jungyeon's pre-press example of "Miss Eggplant's American Boys" and since it isn't really published yet and I can't review it or link somewhere you can buy it, I took a photo of her with it! 

It's a really cool piece combining the lyrics of the song "American Boy" with the immigrant experience and Jungyeon's character Miss Eggplant, a representation of veganism! It sounds ridiculous and... well it is, but it works thanks to her gorgeous illustration style and sense of fun. She has a site where you can see more here. 

Most importantly all of this meeting and greeting was done at an event of the perfect size! It really wasn't much bigger than MoCCA Fest, but with a few big names mixed in. 

ALERT -- ALERT -- soapbox moment! 

In the con wars, bigger is not necessarily better. I don't want to have to push through a crowd of Twilight fans to have multiple quality one-on-one conversations with a comicsmith. That said, I also believe there's room for everybody and every passion with proper planning. Big Apple Comic Con was well planned in this respect: the film/TV celebrities were on one floor, the comics dealers/artists/writers/comicsmiths were on the other one, and they shared the panel space on the third. SMART. 

Soapbox moment over. Thanks be to the spaghetti monster. Amen. (Can you tell I went to Catholic school?) 

One of those big names was Shane Davis, and I got a chance to speak to him quickly about "Superman: Earth One", the upcoming Superman graphic novel drawn by him and written by J. Michael Straczynski. Hopefully we will have much more for you about that after next weekend! 

I wrote about this project a long time ago on this blog when it was first announced so it's really exciting to see it so near fruition now. 

Wow. A children's book-style comic about a sentient traveling eggplant and an action graphic novel about Superman. Can I get a HELL YEAH for the diversity of material in the medium? 

You know, as weird as this sounds, I think a big part of why this con was so good for me is because this is the first big comics event I've been to since joining Twitter. Being able to immediately THAT NIGHT on an iPhone before even getting off the train home(!) connect with the people I'd met during the day was great. 

Next weekend will be another of these things: the huge New York ComicCon! 

~ @JonGorga 

Also... the batmobile was there! tee hee!