Wizard Magazine

The early '90s were an exciting time to be a comic book reader. Don't get me wrong, the comics themselves sucked. Not all of them, but enough so that if you were to grab ten issues at random of pretty much anything being published during that time, at least seven of them would likely make you cringe.

By and large, they fell into one of the following categories:

1) Barely readable dreck.

2) Convoluted storylines based heavily on old continuity that, for new readers, must have been like trying to read Aramaic.

3) T&A. Like, ridiculous T&A, even for the comic book industry, which has always happily embraced T&A.

So why look back on that period with such fondness? Because as crappy as those comics were, Wizard made them...if not actually fun, at least seem like fun. When you opened one of those early Wizards, it was like a pep squad, whose sole purpose in life was to make you EXCITED AS ABOUT COMICS AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE, leapt out at you.

Is Cable the son of Cyclops and Jean Gray? MAYBE! WOULDN'T THAT BE COOL?!?!?! HERE'S A FIVE-PAGE FEATURE ON WHY IT MAKES SENSE!

Do you like Superman and Wonder Woman? THEN YOU SHOULD BE READING SUPREME AND GLORY! THEY'RE JUST LIKE SUPERMAN AND WONDER WOMAN, BUT WRITTEN BY ROB LIEFELD, SO BETTER AND MORE ORIGINAL!!!

Which superheroine is the hottest? HERE'S OUR TOP TEN LIST! AND JUST TO SPICE THINGS UP, WE GOT ADAM HUGHES TO DRAW THEM IN BIKINIS!!!

I'm not saying Gareb Shamus and company always had pure motives. Sure, they wanted people to dig comics. But as collectibles, and trends that could be easily broken down and replicated, not necessarily examples of great writing and art. Wizard clearly benefited from the speculator boom, and it was in their interest for people to think of comics as commodities. After all, all those people buying and selling comics needed a price guide, which Wizard helpfully provided each month. Comics would go up in price, comics would go down in price, and the really lucky comics would be deemed to be "red hot," which was the nicest thing Wizard could possibly say about something.

These determinations mainly appeared to be arbitrary. The price of a comic often seemed to change simply because Wizard said it did. Why would Crisis on Infinite Earths #8 be worth thirty cents less than it was the month before? Just because, I guess.

Sometimes, Wizard would employ reasoning, and it was hilarious. Not long before DC "killed off" Superman, there was a totally forgettable storyline in the Superman comics called "Panic in the Sky," where at one point, Braniac makes a reference to a secret weapon or something. Fast forward a couple of years, Doomsday shows up, and some Wizard staffer thinks, "Hey, wait a second! What if that secret weapon was Doomsday?!" And that earlier Superman comic ended up on the "Ten Hottest Comics" list, or whatever it was called.

They also had a lot of features that could charitably be called "fluff." Casting suggestions for hypothetical comic book movies. Detailed musings on what would happen if a DC character and a Marvel character were to fight. "Babe of the Month." It was fluff, but it was often fun fluff.

And it should be pointed out that comic books would have sucked regardless of whether or not Wizard existed, so by pushing the idea that comics could and should be bought and sold for a profit (sadly, at one point, I owned all those variant covers of X-Force #1, under the belief that I'd one day be able to sell them and buy a new car), they at least gave readers something to do while they waited for comics to get good again.

This week, Wizard announced it was ending. Not even a last issue. Just ending. The magazine, anyway. It'll continue as a website. But it's existed as a website for a while now, and no one's really seemed to care, so who knows how this'll go?

Honestly, it's not really a great loss. I haven't bought it in years, and whatever role Wizard once filled in the pre-Internet age has been more than filled by Newsarama, Comic Book Resources, and dozens of other comic book websites and blogs. Even the price guide is mostly irrelevant, as a comic's worth is now determined by whatever you can get for it on eBay. And the people who never saw the charm in Wizard's fluff are dancing on its grave. But it somehow made comics fun back when they were anything but, and I'm kind of going to miss it.