Ryan McKern

Rick Mar­shall has a story to tell.

After "part­ing ways" with Wiz­ard Mag­a­zine ear­lier this month, Rick has been blog­ging about it very pub­licly for the last few days. The online comic book indus­try sites seem to be sup­port­ing this, and it doesn't seem like it's sim­ply because they've all hated Wiz­ard for years. For the record though, they've all hated Wiz­ard for years.

First, I'd like to give you some quick back­ground because I am assum­ing that you're unfa­mil­iar with Wiz­ard magazine.

When I was a kid grow­ing up in Albany, NY, I used to shop at a comic store named Mid­night Comics. It was there that I picked up the first (hor­ri­ble) issue of Wiz­ard. I was in 2nd or 3rd grade at the time, and even I could see that it was rid­dled with typos and mis­takes through­out. But it was color and I was happy. The qual­ity of the mag­a­zine slowly improved, and they started build­ing a rep­u­ta­tion for get­ting scoops and break­ing sto­ries no one else wanted to tell. They never devel­oped a rep­u­ta­tion for their writ­ing, but they made up for it with glossy prints, col­or­ful pic­tures, and a shock­ingly con­densed amount of news sta­ples to the front of their monthly "Hot Comics" price guide.

What was more impres­sive to me per­son­ally was that to some small degree it felt like a local pub­li­ca­tion as the publisher/Editor in Chief was a recent SUNY Albany grad­u­ate. It felt a lit­tle like "(trans­planted) local boy makes good". Of course, this is only how it seemed to me as a child. I even­tu­ally turned, I don't know, 10 years old, and real­ized that Wiz­ard was just a bunch of wank-mag art­work with all the sexy bits pen­cilled over.

But as I was say­ing, some time around the year 1996 Wiz­ard offi­cially con­quered the comic book news world, and was King Shit of Fuck Moun­tain. But as with all con­quests there came stag­na­tion. They stopped try­ing so hard. The funny staffers spun out into a new upstart pub­li­ca­tion named Toy­Fare, leav­ing the mag­a­zine dry and the humor forced. The mag­a­zine started treat­ing their read­ers more like The New Yorker and less like the "we're all in this together" old days.

Then The Inter­net hap­pened and Wiz­ard found them­selves behind the curve this time. Wiz­ard basi­cally sat on their hands for 10 years while The Inter­net con­tin­ued to scoop them almost daily, and they'd had enough. So they started the new Wiz­ard Uni­verse site, hir­ing Rick in the process. This is where his sto­ries start and mine stops.

He is admit­tedly a friend of mine, and maybe that makes me biased, but I've gone through the "rude awak­en­ing" of being "let go" before, and I respect his integrity in deal­ing with this entire affair. I know he never sought to make things pub­lic before he felt Wiz­ard Mag­a­zine had forced his hand, because I talked with him about it the entire time it was hap­pen­ing. That being said, I will always sup­port the man who stirs the shit and smacks the hor­net nest.

If you fol­low no other comic book indus­try drama this year, his on-going story of attempt­ing to hold Wiz­ard to their word and pay him no more than he is owed should be the one time you fol­low along.