When I was in middle school, WIZARD: THE GUIDE TO COMICS was literally my Bible. I read every issues religiously, and still have numerous older issues that I love to thumb through. The book was amazing, and I loved every page of it. Recently, the book had fallen off the wagon, become a series of countdowns and omitting a lot of the fun, fresh content that made Wizard sell.
Now, that’s all a thing of the past.
I am receiving multiple confirmations from across the industry, through none yet from Wizard’s higher ups and PR people yet, that Wizard: The Guide To Comics, the magazine that covered the mainstream comics industry for twenty years and created all manner of careers in the process has closed, effective immediately. Or at least the print version has.
Almost all Wizard magazine staff have been laid off, and all freelance engagements cancelled.
This is pretty big news. Wizard was responsible for a lot of early success of indie companies, focusing on those primarily over Marvel and DC (though that would change as the magazine grew older).
As mentioned in the quote, the higher ups in Wizard haven’t made an official comment, but this wouldn’t be surprising in the slightest. As soon as more pops up, we’ll be sure to post it here.
That’s sad, but not surprising. I was a subscriber for years and still have a stack of issue in the closet you could build a small fortress out of.
Unfortunately, within that stack is the transition from the magazine being a wonderful monthly volume of interesting articles and exclusive info on comics, to a waste of paper whose worthwhile content would barely qualify as a leaflet.
Oddly enough, I think the clincher was when they shifted from the normal-size, perfect bound format, to the “bigger, better” side-stapled format.
After that point, with what ultimately meant less pages to fill, they just seemed to be phoning it in, so I didn’t renew my subscription and haven’t read an issue since.
I’m prone to agree with you; one Wizard dropped the perfect bound format, they fell in quality in my opinion. The last 2 years or so they’ve just been doing a countdown format.
[…] previous reports indicated, WIZARD ENTERTAINMENT is not going under, but instead going digital and becoming a public […]