Conjuring a Phenomenon
It’s not an exaggeration to say that the comics
industry as we know it only exists because of the intense passion of its fans.
Every medium needs fans, obviously, but there are few others for which the fans
have played such an outsized part in how it operates.
The origin of superhero comics is closely intertwined
with the pulp magazines of the 1920s and 1930s; Amazing Stories, Detective Story Magazine, Doc Savage Magazine, and the like. The
origin of superhero comics fandom is also tied up in those pulps. The pulps had
letter pages, and fans writing into the magazine soon began writing to one
another, and this led naturally into the creation of fan-produced news
bulletins sharing reviews, recommendations, news, and classifies. These became
known as fanzines, and in those way pre-Internet days, it was one of the only
ways for fans to connect with one another. Not surprisingly, the first fanzine
was centered on sci-fi.
And superhero comics as we know it grew from there. In 1933 two young men from Cleveland - Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster - introduced nascent version of Superman in their own fanzine, Science Fiction.
And once Superman inspired a superhero boom, comic book fanzines
followed closely after. The first known of these was David Kyle’s The Fantasy World, which began in 1936. For decades following, comic book fanzines were a vital part of driving fandom forward, but they were strictly regional affairs.
It wasn’t until the 1960s that a fanzine got national distribution. Jerry
Bails’s The Comic Reader became the
official publication of the Association of Comic Book Fans and Collectors in 1961. It
started out as a mimeographed booklet with fan art on the cover, by the early
1970s had enough clout to be professionally printed and get Jack Kirby to contribute cover art.
Comic Buyer’s Guide came
along in 1971, but it was mostly ads surrounding with a handful of news and
editorial columns. Other fanzines followed, but the
biggest development was the 1977 debut of The Comics Journal, which aimed to be
more journalistic and serious-minded, covering underground and independent comics, and sharply
criticizing mainstream superhero fare from Marvel and DC (taking up “a niche
that nobody wants” publisher Gary Groth once quipped). The emergence of TCJ (as
it came to be known) highlighted an identity crisis for any fanzine that wished
to be taken seriously: Can you be a fan and a journalist at the same time?
This was further blurred by the fact that many who
worked on fanzines had aspirations to become comic book professionals
themselves. The Comic Reader alone
was once home to Paul Levitz (who at various times worked as writer, editor,
and president at DC), Paul Kupperberg (also an editor at DC), Tony Isablla
(creator of Black Lightning), and Don Rosa (best known for his work with Uncle
Scrooge).
The early 1980s saw a slew of slick new magazines that aimed to walk that thin
line, fueled partially by the success of the 1978 Superman film and the rise of the direct market. In 1981,
Fantagraphics, who also published TCJ, introduced Amazing Heroes as a direct competitor to The Comic Reader. The same year New Media Productions came out with Comics Feature. In 1982 the publishers
of Starlog and Fangoria debuted Comics Scene, which would only last a
year, but then get a revival in 1987. While clearly holding affection for their
subject matter, these publications at least had the veneer of traditional
journalism.
But it wasn’t an easy road. The Comic Reader ceased publishing in 1984. Comics Feature made it to
1987 before folding up. Comics Scene’s
focus was mostly on the TV and film side of comic books. Soon, Amazing Heroes was the only game in town, and this was the vacuum into which Wizard stepped.
Wizard
was initially conceived by Gareb Shamus as a newsletter for his parents’ comic
shop, The Wizard of Cards and Comics, in southeast New York state. Working
with Pat McCollum, he turned that newsletter into a monthly magazine that
debuted in September 1991. It was an instant success, helped largely by an
original cover Spider-Man cover by Todd McFarlane (as well as an interview
with the man himself).
From the get-go Wizard
had a younger “hipper” take on comics than had ever been tried before. And hearkening back to the earliest fanzines, it
didn’t even try to appear journalistic. The magazine didn't aim to just comment on comics culture, but to become an integral part of
it. And in that it succeed wildly. It didn’t just end up reflecting superhero
comics of the 1990s, it helped define them.
*
Looking through Wizard
#11, which had yet another Todd McFarlane cover, it’s amazing to see how quickly the magazine
established its identity. Yes, it would become slicker as the 1990s wore on,
but all of the tone and content the magazine would become known for was there from the start.
In the 1990s when reading comics wasn’t cool (I’d argue
it still isn’t, but at least people understand it more than they used to), one
of ways to explain it to incredulous friends and relatives was to say you were in
it for the investments. I myself used this excuse on more than one occasion in
attempt to fend off embarrassment, though the truth was I always collected them
to read. There were others, however, for whom it wasn’t a front. They really
did buy with the idea of reselling for a profit at some later date. Given the highly
variable nature of comics values, this is somewhat akin to gambling.
 |
| Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson. 1995. |
Wizard consciously fed into that speculator mindset. Nearly half of the magazine was devoted to a
price guide, and its features consistently returned to the idea of comics as
collectibles. Features spotlighted the “hottest” books of the month, new number
one issues due to be published, and a top ten list of comics whose values were
on the rise. This can be pretty humorous with the gift of hindsight. For
example in Wizard #11 “Wizard Comic
Watch” guessed that Captain America Annual
#5 would skyrocket in value because it featured the first appearance of Nomad.
It’s currently a $5 comic at best (now if Jack Monroe appears in an MCU movie or TV show,
all bets are off). Similarly, the three books that Greg Bals recommended in “Wizard’s
Crystal Ball” as becoming hot commodities – Spirits
of Vengeance #1 and #2 and Terror, Inc. #2 – are worth $2 each at most.
Similarly, Wizard
was very concerned with popularity,
or as they deemed it, “hotness.” And not only in comics, but artists (they’d
add writers later) and characters. In Wizard
#11 half of the hot artists on their Top 10 were the Image guys (McFarlane, Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld, Whilce Portacio, and Erik Larsen). The “Top 10 Hottest Heroes
& Villains” were all Marvel characters, and almost all “edgy” (Wolverine, Punisher,
Ghost Rider, Venom, Sabretooth, Archangel). There was also a cringeworthy
feature celebrating sexual hotness, this month highlighting Captain America (“with
blonde hair and blue eyes and buns that won’t quit”) and X-Force’s Boom-Boom (“hmm…wonder
if the Danger Room has a ‘jump rope’ setting”), and featuring pictures of both
in swimsuits. Swimsuit specials were a weird ‘90s trend that served as the
comic book equivalent of MTV’s The Grind.
This, in combination with other aspects of how Wizard approached its operations had the
effect of making it seem like a vehicle for fanboyish marketing. There’s
even an article called “Lunch with Marvel Comics,” in which a Wizard writer
sits down Marvels sales department to talk about upcoming titles (writer Fabian Nicieza, to his credit, tries to ruin the proceedings with smartass answers,
including challenging Wizard to go one issue without using the word “hot.”).
A one-page article about Spawn by editor-in-chief
Patrick McCallum (who would later go on to work in the upper echelons of DC
editorial) is fluffy promotion. So is Gareb Shamus’s interview with McFarlane. One question is prefaced thusly: “You practically rewrote the rules
of drawing comics and have since become one of the biggest names in the field.”
A picture of a grinning Shamus with Liefeld and McFarlane is the cherry on top
of the fawning pie.
In those early days it all seemed just amateurish, but as Wizard grew in
popularity it felt a more nefarious. The magazine had the power to make or
break books and companies by its choices of what to cover. Image books probably
didn’t need the free promotion they got from Wizard, but companies like Valiant
got a huge boost from being declaring "hot" every single month.
*
But in other ways Wizard was a very typical publication
at first. They had a news section (in this particular issue we learn that Youngblood #1 has sold out,
that Eastman and Laird are reuniting on Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles, and that a Star
Wars game is coming for Super Nintendo – I had that game and it was super
fun), a word search, an unscramble-the-word send-away contest, and a quiz (I
got 24 out of 30 of this particular month’s questions).
One way the Wizard staff’s fandom shone through more
positively – and called back to its fanzine roots – was in the
inclusion of fan art. For its first year Wizard’s cover gimmick was to have
artists put a wizard hat and robe on whatever superhero they were doing. Readers
were encouraged to create their own Wizard covers in this manner, and the
magazine printed a couple pages worth of them each month. Wizard #11 happens to
feature a Fantastic Four themed entry from 18-year-old Jason Bone, who would go
by “J. Bone” during a respectable professional career as an inker (largely over
the pencils of the wonderful Darwyn Cooke) and artist. This issue also has a “My
Kind of Hero” wherein readers submitted a Who’s Who type entry for their
self-created characters (this feature did not last long).
*
Wizard also had some worthwhile innovations.
Recognizing how many of their readers were also
aspiring artists, the magazine added a monthly how-to-draw feature,
initially done by DC and Valiant artist Bart Sears but later taken on by a
rotating cast that included Greg Capullo and Art Adams.
The magazine also acknowledged that comic fans
naturally had an interest in films, trading cards, and toys featuring their
beloved characters. So there was “Andy Mangels’ Hollywood Heroes!” (which this
month speculated about details from the then-forthcoming Batman Returns), “Wizard of
Cards,” and “Toying Around” (which this month featured an article on toys from
The Empire Strikes Back). As an avid action figure collector, I particularly
enjoyed the latter. I loved Brian Cunningham’s enthusiasm, and in those
pre-Internet days it was the only place I was going to catch a glimpse of, say,
a Mego Shazam figure. In the mid-'90s Wizard would spin off some of these features into their own separate magazines (Toyfare and Inquest Gamer).
The magazine could also surprise you. The “Palmer’s
Picks” column gave a monthly spotlight to independent and non-superhero titles.
“Brat Pack” was a transcript of an ongoing conversation with teen collectors
that often served up the range of opinions you’d hear at any given comic shop
in the country (in this particular issue during a conversation about gimmick
covers/trading cards/etc. one of teens talks about comics as investing – see, I
told you! – but another says prophetically, “The flashy stuff brings in the new
people, but there is no substance to make them stick around.”).
Similarly, an
editorial by Patrick Daniel O’Neill bemoans DC’s decision to reboot the Impact line. He says it's short-sighted and that the line was an investment in bringing
new young readers that needed more time to play itself out. He writes of DC, “If
a subsidiary of the largest entertainment conglomerate in the world can’t make
a commitment to lose money for a couple of years on a line of eight books – on
the premise that the line will mean greater returns for the entire company down
the line – then I can’t figure out who could afford it.”
*
Unfortunately as the years went on Wizard became even more about the popular aspects
of comics and even less about their depth and range, helping to push the speculator bust that happened in late 1993. Wizard became so popular, it
ended up outselling many of the comics it was covering. The magazine started out including posters and trading cards, but leveled up to sendaways for comics created
exclusively for the magazine. In addition to the spin-off magazines, Gareb
Shamus even expanded his empire by buying the Chicago Comicon in 1997 and
renaming it Wizard World Chicago. Later there'd be Wizard World conventions in cities across the
U.S.
Once you start getting Marvel and DC to produce comics for you and are hosting
your own conventions you aren't reporting the story, you are the story. And for that Wizard got its fare share of deserved criticism. But it was a product of its time and a product of its milieu. In a way that few other mediums can, comic books completely blur the line between the producers and the sellers and the consumers and the marketers and the professionals and the fans and the commentators. Wizard didn't invent that, it only exploited it and took it to its logical lengths.
And with the gift of distance, Wizard is something to be extremely thankful for. Reading each issue is
like taking a time machine directly back to that era. And though it will always be inextricably
tied to the 1990s, Wizard was actually able to weather the darkest days of the
comics industry, and would make it all the way to just short of its 20th birthday, ceasing publication after the January 2011 issue. It outlasted its predecessors (Amazing Heroes ended in 1992 - the same month Wizard #11 hit the stands; Comics Scene called it quits in 1996) and its imitators (Hero Illustrated, Comic Talk, etc.),
and paved the way – for better and worse – for Internet comics fandom as we
know it today.
Comments
Post a Comment