Wizard Magazine Returning-What Will They Say About Spidey Now?

[Miles To Go]

Some of you might remember back when it was first in publication, Wizard ran a big article about what they'd have liked to have seen in the Spider-Man comics. Much of what they wanted has come to fruition in the last decade (at least during the BND era anyway)

With the magazine confirmed to be returning, there's bound to be a few opinion pieces on the state of the franchise (and hopefully mego toy theatre comes back)

[Phoenixx9]

Ah, what great news! I had not heard about this before now. Thanks for posting this.

[Gnarlly]

A link to Mets' Spider-Man Crawlspace with scans of the Wizard article:
http://www.spidermancrawlspace.com/2...an-circa-1997/

Some interesting conclusions in the article, many of which I would have agreed with at the time (ex. the resurrection of Norman Osborn) and some which are still relevant today (lack of a supporting cast?). The "Youth" suggestions in particular seem to have been implemented as Wizard would have liked (Marriage dissolved, no spider-baby).

[Mister Mets]

I'll be curious if there is any one unified voice on the character.

[nnelg]

I'm happy about this. I bought Wizard until they stopped selling it.

[Cakeflip]

This is crazy news to me! Why, you say? After I renewed my subscription for two years, they went under and now my old friend Luke Y. Thompson is going to be Associate Editor (we both lived in the same apartment complex during the late 1990's!). Maybe I will get the rest of my sub!

[Venomous Mask]

Wow, that article is an incredibly narrow, and I dare say insulting, take on Spider-Man. Basically, according to the writers, Spider-Man should be perpetually frozen in time, with the occasional addition of a new villain or two as the only meaningful changes. And seriously, saying that because Peter is married and his wife had a miscarriage makes him completely un-relatable to comic book fans is just crass. The author of the article is, whether intentionally or not, mocking the readers by saying that comic book fans don't have these kinds of problems. Oh no, we never get married and have families and personal tragedies in our lives, we're just a bunch of adult children who sit around in our parents' basements geeking out about funny books in between munching on the cookies our mommies brought from upstairs, and we are completely incapable of handling any change in the status quo whatsoever. And that comment about hoping that Peter and MJ's baby "never, ever rears its ugly head" is just foul. The one good thing that I got out of this was that it's a good mirror for people to look into when they are craving a return to the status quo of their favorite comics during their childhood, as the writers of this article seem to be greatly enamored with the Spider-Man of the seventies and early eighties; younger generations generally do not relate to the childhood nostalgia of older generations, and this article serves as a warning to anyone who wants to whip the clock back without any thought to the interests and desires of younger fans. But beyond that, no, this was a painful read through and through.

[Timmyb52]

Some of you might remember back when it was first in publication, Wizard ran a big article about what they'd have liked to have seen in the Spider-Man comics. Much of what they wanted has come to fruition in the last decade (at least during the BND era anyway)

With the magazine confirmed to be returning, there's bound to be a few opinion pieces on the state of the franchise (and hopefully mego toy theatre comes back)

Screw Wizard...they were the ones with their minority opinion that the marriage was bad for Spidey that helped create OMD. They can come back...but they won't last very long IMO.

[plasticman101]

i will GLEEFULLY buy this again! loved everything about it! .
It taught me what hot books to hunt for!
I agreed with SOME of what they said about peter & his marriage.

[Confuzzled]

A link to Mets' Spider-Man Crawlspace with scans of the Wizard article:
http://www.spidermancrawlspace.com/2...an-circa-1997/

Some interesting conclusions in the article, many of which I would have agreed with at the time (ex. the resurrection of Norman Osborn) and some which are still relevant today (lack of a supporting cast?). The "Youth" suggestions in particular seem to have been implemented as Wizard would have liked (Marriage dissolved, no spider-baby).

Well, sales are much lower now than they were in the 90's despite those changes implemented so it seems like a Pyrrhic victory.

Having said that, that article seems to have come out at the absolute nadir of the neverending 90's nightmare, so Wizard's perspective was perfectly reasonable.

It will be great to have them back at this point in time.

[Digifiend]

This is crazy news to me! Why, you say? After I renewed my subscription for two years, they went under and now my old friend Luke Y. Thompson is going to be Associate Editor (we both lived in the same apartment complex during the late 1990's!). Maybe I will get the rest of my sub!

Doubt it. How many subscribers will have moved house since then? Plus isn't this a different company bringing back the brand, if the original company went into liquidation? They probably don't even have records of past subscribers. I hope you weren't paying in advance.

[Mister Mets]

Screw Wizard...they were the ones with their minority opinion that the marriage was bad for Spidey that helped create OMD. They can come back...but they won't last very long IMO.

Wizard reflected an attitude among people who worked in the industry at the time. It didn't create it.

[ObserveCreativeSouls115]

Venomous Mask, precisely! Couldn't have said it better myself. I recently made an entire video where I try to explain that it would've been great to have a married Spider-Man with a kid (without any Faustian pacts or fan-fiction level of weirdness, aka Conway's Renew Your Vows series), it would've been even more amazing if he actually grew older (just like JMS always intended him to, for he always took his time with exploring Peter's choices and was doing his best in terms of writing him as a responsible adult, where all of his relationships in life truly mattered and had consequences, unlike an irritating and annoying man-child like some of the other authors that came right after he has left the sinking ship that is the House of No Ideas) and experienced more loss in his life like all of us do at certain stages (the passing of Aunt May in post-Back in Black climate).

If it wasn't for OMD/BND, Quesada, Slott and other incompetent nincompoops, we probably would've seen even more traces of growth, progression and transformation (Peter Parker as a fugitive on the run, dealing with side effects of Aunt May's death, trying to hide with MJ god knows where and under what circumstances, how does Bill Lamont fit into this - does he help them or not, maybe even coming back to that "Last Stand" story from ASM#500, where nothing is for certain and where the future is always under a big question mark... would read the hell out of a risky comic book like that, sort of like that Sensational Annual that was written by Fraction with Larocca drawing it, only extended).

Not to mention that, somehow, at some point, they probably would've gotten to this 'Aguirre-Sacasa/Clayton Crain' Sensational #40 point (without Conway's fantasies about MJ and their kid suiting up; that's where I feel, DeFalco and Frenz' early run on the Spider-Girl series worked much, much better):

1502744775796.jpg

But no... we will have to experience a lot of old editors, old authors (with not a single trace of young blood around) and other strange folks that will keep on working on their shenanigans with renumberings, relaunches, crossovers, tie-ins, synergy tactics and other nonsense that gets you up to speed with 'yet another revoltin development' in the world of your regular 'working class, Mephisto covered, always youthful and never agin' Pete Parker... what a sad and cruel joke...

[Smoov-E]

Wow, that article is an incredibly narrow, and I dare say insulting, take on Spider-Man. Basically, according to the writers, Spider-Man should be perpetually frozen in time, with the occasional addition of a new villain or two as the only meaningful changes. And seriously, saying that because Peter is married and his wife had a miscarriage makes him completely un-relatable to comic book fans is just crass. The author of the article is, whether intentionally or not, mocking the readers by saying that comic book fans don't have these kinds of problems. Oh no, we never get married and have families and personal tragedies in our lives, we're just a bunch of adult children who sit around in our parents' basements geeking out about funny books in between munching on the cookies our mommies brought from upstairs, and we are completely incapable of handling any change in the status quo whatsoever. And that comment about hoping that Peter and MJ's baby "never, ever rears its ugly head" is just foul. The one good thing that I got out of this was that it's a good mirror for people to look into when they are craving a return to the status quo of their favorite comics during their childhood, as the writers of this article seem to be greatly enamored with the Spider-Man of the seventies and early eighties; younger generations generally do not relate to the childhood nostalgia of older generations, and this article serves as a warning to anyone who wants to whip the clock back without any thought to the interests and desires of younger fans. But beyond that, no, this was a painful read through and through.

Haven't a majority of the online fan base been screaming that they want him perpetually frozen in time devoid of character growth, how Slott is the devil and etc

[Timmyb52]

Wizard reflected an attitude among people who worked in the industry at the time. It didn't create it.

I never said that they "created" it...they just propagated it among their readership in the hopes that fans would subscribe to it and demand that the marriage be dropped.They used their publication as a platform to spread Quesada and others fantasy for a return to the Romita days...a period that had long ago come and gone.