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 Wizard Magazine. The name sends chills of nostalgia and terror down the spines of any that have had the experience of reading an issue of the infamous magazine. A magazine that helped a growing and naive fanbase keep touch with the goings on of the comic world before the internet was what it is now. Also, if it was not the direct cause it surely was a big part of why the industry collapsed after it's short boom. It fueled a speculator market that still holds the industry underfoot even today. But it wasn't all bad was it? Well it mostly was. It was the best and worst of what comic fans would talk about in private amongst each other but out in the open for everyone to see. Full of childish 'humor' that wouldn't fly in 2012 let alone 2022 (and probably never should have flown at all). A true time-capsule of an age that we look on with nostalgia but probably shouldn't. I would imagine it formed and molded a lot of the young minds that were reading it in ways that are still causing problems for the industry today. It's full of content that one would hope would be laughed at by what we consider a modern comic fan. But most of us bought into that poo poo as a kid. One of my many failings as a human being is that I unabashedly loved Wizard Magazine with its giant warts and all. I still love it. In a different way. To me as a child it was a way to keep up with an industry that I didn't have the means to waste my money on. My parents bought me plenty of comics sure, but there's no way you can try and really keep up with the industry reading 8-10 books a month. We didn't have other means of knowing what was out there. We'd read our few books we followed and then we'd rely on Wizard to fill us in on the rest. I couldn't, nor wouldn't, ask my parents to buy some of the really low quality and sometimes really crass poo poo that was on the market then. But I was aware of it because I was able to get Wizard. That's probably not a good thing. But it is what it is. So sometime last year I came across a couple boxes in a dusty attic that had a lot of my old books. Including my Wizard Magazine collection. I have just about the entire thing. Wizard ran for 234 regular monthly issues from 1991 to 2011. I had issues 1-222 and about 30 or so special issues in that box. I decided it was up to me to both make society a better place and a much worse place. I have started scanning every issue front to back, excluding the useless price guides. This includes all the terrible ads that are somewhat insane at times, all the articles that still hold of nugget of value as sources of history and historical perspective, and of course all the regular features that everyone always wanted to argue about. We're talking about Casting Calls, Top 10 Heroes/Villains, Last Man Standing, Wizard Fan Art, Bart Sears' Brutes and Babes art tutorials that are both informative and completely ridiculous, Top 10 comics, Hunk & Babe of the month (a weird relic of the time), Todd McFarlane's opinion piece titled EGO that ended every issue starting about 15 issues in, and all the bullshit in between. And those are just a few of the things I've encountered while scanning the first 45 issues. I know there are other scans floating around out there. And a big part of this project is probably for nothing. I've checked them out. There's no complete set out there. And the ones that are out there an inconsistent in quality and contents. Some of them have ads. Some don't. I think the ads are important though. Not just in a crazy 'look at this '90s poo poo' way but in more of a small look into the window of what people were buying and what people were pushing on a young audience that suddenly had access to this crazy world. Not gonna lie though, a lot are gonna be posted in a crazy 'look at this '90s poo poo' way too. Because we all remember how fuckin' dumb a lot of that stuff was. Scan quality is also inconsistent on the copies in the wild. I'm scanning every page of this myself. I'm not some expert scanner so don't expect immaculate reproductions but every page I post in this thread will be a page I personally scanned. Most of these issues are my original issues I bought at the time they were on sale. A lot of the earlier issues are issues I bought second hand straight from the boxes of my LCS when I was trying to fill out my back issues in the '90s. Some of the later ones are from my subscription that kept going even though I'd somewhat fallen out of comics. When I found the box there was about 30 issues still wrapped in plastic that I never opened. I'd gotten them in the mail and just tossed them in with the others. Kinda makes me mad I apparently stopped so short of finishing the series at the time. I did order several of the 12 back issues I was missing from Lone Star Comics for super cheap. Apparently nobody wants old Wizards anymore, for some strange reason. So I have an almost complete collection for scanning and will probably get the last few before I get to the end. I'm going to use this thread to post about Wizard from time to time. Covering the issues chronologically and also just posting random out of context poo poo I find amusing. Every time I post about a specific issue I'll post the cover, contents, and a rundown of what's in it. I'll post anything I want to point out specifically as well as post anything that anybody requests. I will not post whole issues full stop but if I post a contents page and there's something on there I don't post that you want to see let me know and I'll put it up. So before I get to the first issue I leave you with this. If this doesn't scream '90s comics I don't know what will. This comes to us from Wizard #19 in March of 1993. This in ad for Epic Comics. I think a relaunch of the Marvel Imprint? I don't remember any of these books. But they bought a 10 page ad in this magazine. And not 10 consecutive pages. We're talking about 10 pages that are interspersed between the text of three consecutive articles. This is the '90s. This is Wizard.           All full issues posted in thread are now available on Archive.org! https://archive.org/search?query=creator%3A%22Wizard+Magazine%22&sort=title X-O fucked around with this message at 18:40 on Sep 15, 2023 |
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May 31, 2022 17:35
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Wizard Magazine Issue #1 September 1991 Cover  Contents  Intro  Article of Note   Article of Note  The Top 10  Random Ads   
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May 31, 2022 17:38
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Wizard got me into comics for the most part. It basically went: X-Men cartoon > collecting cards > checking Wizard because the X-Men were on it. I had a ton of issues of Wizard. None of my friends really cared about comics - still don't! - so it was an outlet for that nerdery. I had a subscription and I got some of the specials and I read them all cover to cover. I remember I think it was Darkbook 98 and the cover literally hanging on by a staple because I read it so much. I had a book that was mostly price guide - I wish I could remember the name of it - but it covered everything back to the golden age and every so often comics would get a short description. I even read that over and over. Wizard had some dumb humor. It was definitely irresponsible financially. But there was lots of good, at least from the perspective of a poor kid who couldn't afford the comics each month but could drop a fiver on Wizard.
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Jun 2, 2022 17:16
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I don't quite have the spoons at the moment for a real effort-post, but you can lay a lot of Garth Ennis's later career arc on Wizard. He was never exactly going to be a calm, middle-of-the-road writer, to go by his earlier projects (i.e. most of his Judge Dredd work), but Preacher really got Wizard's attention. Every month, that magazine took at least a couple of pages to remind the reader that it thought Preacher was dope, and the crazier the book got, the more fevered Wizard's praise became. I'm convinced that, to some extent, that coverage shaped the comic in turn. Subsequently, every so often, Ennis tries and/or is encouraged to go back to that level of deliberately inflammatory shock humor. The Boys, famously, was initially pitched to readers as Ennis trying to "out-Preacher Preacher"; you can also point to more recent work like Jimmy's Bastards and Marjorie Finnegan, Temporal Criminal as Ennis going back to that well. I'm not sure where Ennis or Preacher would be without that monthly rave from WIzard, in the days when it was the comics tastemaker, but it always strikes me as one of the magazine's primary impacts on comics. It's basically the '90s and early '00s in a nutshell.
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Jun 2, 2022 19:05
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goddamned bookmarked! Thank you for your service, I didn't have too many issues because I stopped collecting comics in fall of 94 when I went to college and no longer had a job or spending money, so this is gonna be interesting. I also appreciate that you're including the ads. I really wish classic comic scanners included those.
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Jun 2, 2022 22:25
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Wizard Magazine Issue #2 October 1991 Cover  Contents  Article of Note    Article of Note    Article of Note   The Top 10 (Yes the paper on these pages is different. Wizard went a through a weird transition over its first year where they used several different paper types in every issue before moving to the standard glossy magazine type most remember.)   Random Ads    
X-O fucked around with this message at 17:04 on Jun 3, 2022 |
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Jun 3, 2022 16:59
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I genuinely wouldn't have been excited for Image if not for Wizard, and them being monthly in a way made up for the actual Image comics that never were, but boy howdy Wetworks #1 is coming some day! Also looking forward to when we get to what felt like essentially rigging the back issue market when it comes to the low print run Valiant stuff.
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Jun 3, 2022 17:29
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Dawgstar posted:I genuinely wouldn't have been excited for Image if not for Wizard, and them being monthly in a way made up for the actual Image comics that never were, but boy howdy Wetworks #1 is coming some day! Also looking forward to when we get to what felt like essentially rigging the back issue market when it comes to the low print run Valiant stuff. Oh yeah lots of that coming up. And pushing the "Bad Girl" comic market with titles nobody talks about today? Remember Shi? No? Well in the '90s you'd have thought she was one of the biggest comic characters of all time destined for icon status. There was one Top 10 I recently scanned that had like seven of the top 10 books being Lady Death, Shi, Vampirella, and someone else I can't remember. These first handful of issues are pretty drat sparse in content and only have like five or six ads for the same stuff over and over again. Once we get out the first year that's when Wizard truly turns in a spectacle. X-O fucked around with this message at 17:59 on Jun 3, 2022 |
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Jun 3, 2022 17:57
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X-O posted:There was one Top 10 I recently scanned that had like seven of the top 10 books being Lady Death, Shi, Vampirella, and someone else I can't remember. It had to be Dawn, right? I was more of a Hero Illustrated guy while that was a thing, but I read Wizard regularly nevertheless. It was where I was introduced to the art of customizing action figures. I remember trying to turn a ToyBiz Silver Surfer into the all-white Vision by basically dunking it in Testors enamel and cutting up a Hanes undershirt for the cape, lol.
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Jun 3, 2022 19:53
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that entire top ten is Marvel. Was DC putting out any good non-Vertigo books at the time?
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Jun 3, 2022 21:08
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Soonmot posted:that entire top ten is Marvel. I was reading DC primarily during that time period. I was a big fan of Superboy and GL with Kyle, but I don’t know if they would be considered good by a majority of fans.
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Jun 3, 2022 21:44
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Soonmot posted:that entire top ten is Marvel. In 1991-ish at least they certainly weren't popping like X-Force and X-Men and the metric of 'this is really popular' Wizard was using.
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Jun 3, 2022 22:49
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I'm more thinking of books we'd consider good by today's standards. I was full on marvel zombie at that point, so I had all those books.
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Jun 3, 2022 22:56
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Wizard Magazine Issue #3 November 1991 Cover  Contents  Article of Note      Article of Note     Article of Note    The Top 10   Random Ads    
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Jun 3, 2022 23:48
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I had a subscription to Wizard for about five years, until I finished high school, so from around 2004-2009, and, hooboy, my memories of comics fandom are completely tied to the magazine. Such a special time to me personally. Some months when things were really rough for me it felt like I was just waiting for my new issue to Wizard to get me through things. In the past couple years I’ve been filling in my collection. I’m trying to get a full run. Thankfully they’re not too hard to find, nor too expensive in old comic book stores. I probably have 100+ issues now, going from early double digits to the mid-2000s (when I originally started collecting). They’re great little historical curiosities and they’re fascinating to read to see what the temperature of the industry was at the time. What stuck around, what didn’t, what became a much bigger deal than they forecasted, what fell off. It’s a great magazine!
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Jun 5, 2022 22:47
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Wizard Magazine Issue #4 December 1991 Cover  Contents  Article of Note      Article of Note        Article of Note    The Top 10 (The first Valiant in the Top 10. The onslaught has begun...)   Random Ads (These are getting a bit monotonous now as it's evident Wizard had very few people faithful enough in the magazine this early to buy ads. It's mostly the same ads every month with a couple new ones)   
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Jun 7, 2022 17:38
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5 covers for a Robin series. the 90s were wild.
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Jun 7, 2022 22:43
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"Part of X-Force's charm is they KILL people." Also learning Bart Sears worked on the COPS toyline makes a lot of sense in hindsight given their design.
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Jun 7, 2022 23:56
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I'm going to try get through this first year or so relatively quick. Then the fun can begin. Wizard Magazine Issue #5 January 1992 Cover  Contents  Article of Note     Article of Note           Article of Note     The Top 10   Random Ads (These are getting a bit monotonous now as it's evident Wizard had very few people faithful enough in the magazine this early to buy ads. It's mostly the same ads every month with a couple new ones)   
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Jun 8, 2022 03:03
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I'm interested to see when you get to the first one I ever got. I'm pretty sure it was in the teens. I still viscerally remember the incredibly 90's cover. I could look it up, but where's the fun in that? Old Kentucky Shark fucked around with this message at 03:13 on Jun 8, 2022 |
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Jun 8, 2022 03:11
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Old Kentucky Shark posted:I'm interested to see when you get to the first one I ever bought. I'm pretty sure it was in the teens. I still viscerally remember the incredibly 90's cover. Who is on the cover? I'll let you know about how far away we are. For a while I'm gonna try to post two or three issues a day to get past this early stuff that doesn't have a ton of content.
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Jun 8, 2022 03:12
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WildC.A.T.S. Which doesn't narrow it down a lot because they were on half a dozen covers in the early 90's.
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Jun 8, 2022 03:15
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Old Kentucky Shark posted:WildC.A.T.S. I'm pretty sure I know which one you're talking about. Especially if it's really in the teens. If I can move through this single digit issues as quickly as I want It'll probably hit this weekend or early next week.
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Jun 8, 2022 03:28
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Old Kentucky Shark posted:WildC.A.T.S. OKS, we might have gotten the same first issue of Wizard. On topic, that Simonsons interview does make me get a lit of wistful since they'd do more of that in the early days. Heck, what got me onto Cerebus (mixed bag that turned out to be) was a big article on it in Wizard.
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Jun 8, 2022 04:34
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I was, and still am, obsessed with Erik Larsen’s work, it was cool seeing Savage Dragon get a lot of love in Wizard as the market was burning itself down. I think Erik only did a couple covers for the magazine, plus that Wizard comicon special that had the Image jam piece for the cover, but he had a few big write ups, and for a good stretch, there were monthly spotlights of the current issue being solicited. The only 1/2 issues I ever mailed away for were Savage Dragon and the Maxx.
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Jun 8, 2022 06:27
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If memory serves next issue is the one with Sam Keith drawing Hulk on the cover. If so, that’s the first issue I bought. Thanks for taking the time to do this, I’m really enjoying it! 
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Jun 8, 2022 09:14
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I still have my t shirt from the mighty mutant tour. It's not wearable outside the house though, big arm pit holes, collar is ready to fall off. But it's still in my closet
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Jun 8, 2022 11:41
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I never got into Wizard, though I followed it's trad games cousin InQuest for a while. That said, I did get the Wizard JLA special issue and must have read it 100 times.
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Jun 8, 2022 11:54
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Vulpes Vulpes posted:I never got into Wizard, though I followed it's trad games cousin InQuest for a while. That said, I did get the Wizard JLA special issue and must have read it 100 times. Oh man, that JLA special! I was so excited for Morrison’s JLA and spent hours pouring over that issue. If I’m remembering right, Morrison said they had big plans for including Shazam/Captain Marvel on the team, but that never came to pass. I might have been the only person in the world other than Morrison who was excited about Zauriel, lol.
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Jun 8, 2022 13:53
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Vulpes Vulpes posted:I never got into Wizard, though I followed it's trad games cousin InQuest for a while. That said, I did get the Wizard JLA special issue and must have read it 100 times. InQuest also used to be really good about talking about the less than mainstream stuff before it was just Magic & Friends.
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Jun 8, 2022 14:00
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Wizard Magazine Issue #6 February 1992 Cover  Contents Someone at Wizard thought this layout was better for a contents page. I'm going to assume this person was fired as it was completely different by next issue.   Article of Note      Article of Note Your eyes do not deceive you here. This article seemingly ends mid sentence. The immediately following page is an ad and then another article starts right after that. Other scans of the issue that previously existed show the same thing. Where's the end? I don't know. Quality editing here at Wizard Magazine.      Article of Note Your eyes do not deceive you here either. This article seemingly also ends mid sentence. Though it does appear to be end of the article this time so better I guess? Wizard Magazine, what can you say?      The Top 10   Random Ads (The Valiant push has begun...)    
X-O fucked around with this message at 14:44 on Jun 8, 2022 |
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Jun 8, 2022 14:39
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It’s crazy how uninterested I was in David Lapham’s Valiant work and how blown away I was when finally exposed to his stuff on Stray Bullets.
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Jun 8, 2022 15:03
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Wizard Magazine Issue #7 March 1992 (This issue is basically dripping in Valiant Propaganda) Cover  Contents   Shameless Inclusion (How could I not include this mammoth three paragraph historical documentation of a character that had existed for like maybe 10 issues at this point?)  The Flash!   Article of Note        Article of Note     Article of Note     Fan Art! (Uh-oh, this is the beginning of what could be a very questionable thing to include. I foresee bad things in the future here.)    The Top 10   Top 100 of 1991  OVERKILL  Random Ads (Basically a million Valiant ads, stuff you've already seen in the previous issues and a couple random ones like this)  
X-O fucked around with this message at 18:27 on Jun 8, 2022 |
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Jun 8, 2022 18:25
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God this thread owns, so many wonderful memories. I read Wizard before I really read comics, I used to get it from the library every month to the point where the librarian would set the new one aside for me automatically
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Jun 8, 2022 18:30
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Splint Chesthair posted:Oh man, that JLA special! I was so excited for Morrison’s JLA and spent hours pouring over that issue. If I’m remembering right, Morrison said they had big plans for including Shazam/Captain Marvel on the team, but that never came to pass. I might have been the only person in the world other than Morrison who was excited about Zauriel, lol. I don't think I knew anything about Morrison at the time, and so for years this picture from the JLA special was the image of them that came to mind: 
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Jun 8, 2022 19:25
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I really quite like that Flash cover, actually
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Jun 8, 2022 20:37
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Conrad_Birdie posted:I really quite like that Flash cover, actually That was the first issue* to have a variant cover of a different character. Ironically enough the other cover featured my namesake, X-O Manowar and I do not have that version. Alternate covers became a big thing for Wizard later. *Technically the previous issue with Hulk had a variant as there was also a Gray Hulk version of the same cover. Vulpes Vulpes posted:I don't think I knew anything about Morrison at the time, and so for years this picture from the JLA special was the image of them that came to mind: There were actually two JLA Specials. One in '97 and one in '98. Both of them will eventually find their way to this thread! X-O fucked around with this message at 20:46 on Jun 8, 2022 |
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Jun 8, 2022 20:43
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X-O posted:Article of Note
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Jun 8, 2022 21:24
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Thanks for this thread! I have a lot of memories of Wizard, and they probably mirror yours pretty closely, though I didn't have anywhere near this collection. Since I'm not doing anything, I've decided I'm going to do a thing along with this: Wizard's Top 10: Where Are They Now?? These were the hottest books as determined by Wizard Magazine, so they must still be very valuable, right? Let's see what Ebay in 2022 has to say about that! Issue 1, September 1991: #1: X-Force #1 with Cable card (first issue of a popular series, obviously, specifically with a popular character's trading card): I can't find any recently completed auctions that actually sold, but there's a number with sub-$5 BIN that didn't sell. Let's call this one QUARTER BIN FODDER #2: Uncanny X-Men #248 (first Jim Lee penciled issue): $4.50 #3: Silver Surfer #50 (cool embossed cover, lead-in to Infinity Gauntlet): $9.99 #4: X-Factor #63 (first Wilce Portacio penciled issue): Can't find a solo sale, but it sold along with #64-65 for $7. QUARTER BIN FODDER #5: Spider-Man #1 (platinum) (chase cover for top-selling comic book of all time for a few months): $564 unslabbed! This was a good pick! Somewhat strangely, a slabbed 9.0 sold shortly after for $586, so either someone got a deal, or someone got hosed. #6: New Mutants #87 (first appearance of Cable): A slabbed 8.5 copy sold for somewhere less than $140 (best offer accepted). A slabbed 9.8 sold for $675. We'll call this a good pick by Wizard. #7: Silver Surfer #34 (Jim Starlins debuts as writer, Thanos returns from the dead): $10 unslabbed. Slabbed copies seem all over the place. Probably not a great pick. #8: Ghost Rider #15 (Ghost Rider vs. Johnny Blaze, cool glow in the dark cover): Only actual sale I can find is part of a lot including 25 total comics. QUARTER BIN FODDER #9: New Teen Titans #2 (first appearance of Deathstroke): Slabbed 9.0 for $259. I can't find any unslabbed sales. Good pick! #10: New Mutants #100 (final issue, first appearance of X-Force): Slabbed 9.6 for $48. Bad pick! Issue 2, October 1991: (From here on out I will only include comics they didn't previously list) #1: X-Men #1 (#1 selling comic of all time, gatefold cover): A slabbed 9.8 sold for under $129, and another seller sold 10 unslabbed copies for $200. We'll call this a mediocre pick. #3: Uncanny X-Men #281 (new team with Wilce Portacio art): $5.50 by itself, but there's some other copies selling for even less as part of lots. QUARTER BIN FODDER #9: New Warriors #1 (new teen team. Teen teams are cool, right?): Slabbed copy under $72, on unslabbed sale for $10. Bad pick! #10: X-Factor #71 (new team, new creative team of Peter David and Larry Stroman): lots of two in near mint sold for a cool buck. QUARTER BIN FODDER Issue 3, November 1991: #9: Infinity Gauntlet #1 (first issue of a hot miniseries): Slabbed 9.4 under $109, unslabbed $16.50. Mediocre pick here Issue 4, December 1991: #1: Robin: Joker's Wild #1 (Five covers! Holograms! What's it about? Who cares!): One copy sold under $5. Best I can tell you can't give this away. QUARTER BIN FODDER #8: X-Factor #24 (first full appearance of Archangel): Slabbed 9.8 for $282, unslabbed for $22. Not a bad pick #9: Uncanny X-Men #282 (first appearance of Bishop): Unslabbed copy under $20, slabbed 9.6 for $96. Mediocre pick. #10: Magnus: Robot Fighter #1 (first modern appearance of Magnus): Issues 1-3 sold in a lot for $4. That's close enough to QUARTER BIN FODDER to me. Endless Mike fucked around with this message at 14:14 on Jun 9, 2022 |
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Jun 9, 2022 02:38
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Now it does seem almost like Wizard was priming the pump to manipulate the back issue market by going hard on Valiant.
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Jun 9, 2022 03:28
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