Wizard's Dead

Dammit.  Now where am I going to get my monthly dose of crappy Image characters on a cover?

I stuck with Wizard for a long time after it was obvious that all the news in it you could read about on Newsarama or CBR.  Some of the features were okay, but when I realized I was paying a lot more than the $4 it used to cost, I dropped it like a bad habit.  So yeah, good riddance.

Wizard actually used to be a pretty fun and entertaining mag in the 90s.

It turned to shit sometime in 2000 when they did a redesign and started including

movies and videogames.

Have any of you read Comic Heroes? Its a british magazine produced by the same folks who do SFX Magazine. Much better than Wizard.

I do see that Mag in stores, but I've never actually looked inside one.  I feel a little bad celebrating the death of a mag, and of many jobs I'm sure.  But, I can't say I'm sorry.  Certainly not surprised at all, its surprising it lasted this long anyway.  Despite the fact it was a Mag targeting an extremely small and insular audience, the Mag just flat out sucked.  It simply refused to change, or become interesting to anyone other than the small group of superhero nuts. 

I think the interesting thing is the timing.  And the fact, that this is very likely signalling the death of the direct market.  It's going to be interesting to see how digital shapes up, but what I'm seeing from Comixology isn't encouraging.  Percentage wise, creators get less from digital than they do from print, with Comixology.  A lot less.  All I see is the same sort of predatory anti creators practices, which will only supress the industry further.  

Somebody needs to figure out a better approach.  Like an online indie digital publisher.  I'm sure things are going to change, but its probably going to take a long time for the dust to settle.