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.