RIP, Wizard magazine

[TheSportsPredictor]

Used to be one of my faves. Been utter crap the last year or so. Now it's dead. At least the print version. The website continues.

http://www.bigshinyrobot.com/reviews/archives/20819

 

[Batman]

Hate it for the folks who lost their jobs, but from a content standpoint it's no big loss. Wizard lost its fastball a long time ago. If I had to pinpoint it, I'd say it was sometime around 2003 or 2004 when they transitioned from a magazine that wasn't afraid to poke fun at the truly lame ideas in comics to a shameless promoter of the industry. Fun quick-hit features like the Mort of the Month gave way to yet another slobbering profile of Joe Quesada.
I think it was part of their stated goal of becoming "an Entertainment Weekly for the comic book industry," but it should have turned off anyone with half a brain.

I suppose this means the end of ToyFare, too, which is a bit sadder if only for the loss of "Twisted ToyFare Theatre," which was always entertaining. At least the spirit of that lives on with Robot Chicken.

 

[MonsterLobster]

I used to treasure issues of this when I was a kid and subscribed from probably 1990-1998. That they made every caption funny (at least to a 10 year old) was a big selling point for me, and the fact that I used to sit down and chart the two-cent changes in the value of every last one of my nearly worthless comics every month meant I got some extended use out of them every month.

 

[outofplace]

Sorry for the people who lost their jobs, but they lost me as a reader a long time ago. Batman is right. They became far too interested in kissing the collective ass of the comic industry to be good any more.

 

[TheSportsPredictor]

Dear Darkseid was always one of my faves.

 

[BYH]

Beckett's Baseball Card Monthly just began sweating.

 

[HanSenSE]

I thought this was going to be about the publication formerly known as Bullets.