I recently discovered, to my horror, that all those video games magazines I bought as a kid are shills.
Until I saw those, I didn't get how magazines work. They rate things high because they get paid to do so. That's why video game magazines never rate anything below 70-80%. Everything's 80% this 90% that.
Anyhow - that's kinda how why I stopped reading Wizard. At first, back in '98, Wizard got me back INTO comics. With their "Dark Book '98" which talked about loads of villains and what they were going to in the year to come. It was pretty cool.
And for a while, it just made me like comics. It was a comic magazine that was written by fans who got you to like the comics.
But... at some point, that faded for me. As the comics industry churned out more and more rubbish, as Bendis kept writing whatever the hell he wanted and it would remain Wizard's #1 writer... my tastes and theirs started to depart. The whole thing started to seem childish. Childish and stupid gags about Power Girl's breasts or something. How Batman's a homosexual. I don't know. But it started to great on me, mainly because, the major titles they were boasting, I couldn't stand. I got more and more annoyed because they never seemed to actually go, "Y'know what? This sucks." They'd sit there with a feature on a mystery in a comic like a whodunnit, come up with lots of ideas, the comic would come out with a dull, stupid answer, and they'd say nothing. They'd focus on all the really merchandisable stuff, but like, maybe a paragraph in one issue about 100 BULLETS (I heard of the title through Wizard after all).
I don't know - maybe it's just the nature of the marketplace. But at some point, I'd look at Wizard and not only were their articles and interviews very shallow and pappy, but they'd continually spend half an issue on huge major crossover events that frankly, were the results of poor writing.
So - I dunno. Wizard ****s me off. It's probably not as bad as I think, because my memory of it is actually quite pleasant. I'm going to read a new issue of Wizard and comment.
But the magazine quality... that's neither here nor there. The BIG problem I have with Wizard (and why I wanted us to NOT go to WizardWorld) was this: Shelton Drum, the friendly chap who runs HeroesCon, sets his dates a year in advance. Wizard went to hold WizardWorld in Atlanta (or some place near to Charlotte, NC where HeroesCon is held) and Shelton said, "These are my dates. Run WizardWorld on another weekend, and I'll gladly help as best as I can."
WizardWorld that year was set to go on
the exact same weekend. WizardWorld, according to other people, continually does this. Sets its con weekend the same weekend as a smaller con, in order to drum them out of business.
It didn't work. LOTS of comic book professionals (like Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch - this was 06, so ULTIMATES was on top) said "**** you, Wizard" and went to HeroesCon. In fact, HeroesCon '06 was the biggest HeroesCon ever because of it! (Shelton was told by Allison that he should send Wizard a fruit basket.) Hell, I should too. I went to '06 and made friends with all my childhood heroes (does a little dance).
But I have a real problem with Wizard for that. For being the Starbucks of the comic convention scene.
'09 - Heroes Con. Start saving *******s.