The comic realm, like most forms of media have a wide variety of reporting and evaluating services from print magazines to online blogs.  For over a decade, Wizard Magazine has long been the standard for reporting on the comic industry.  It has combined informative previews and updates on projects with clever reviews and junior high humor that made it popular, plus a slew of cool other side features.  Recently though, critics of the magazine have been growing in number, citing that while the industry itself has changed to become more accessible by new fans, Wizard is stuck in the 90s with its look and its content has been down substantially.  Having been a longtime reader of the magazine, here’s my opinion of what they should change if they want to keep up with the competition.

Color scheme

Maybe bright neon colors on black backgrounds were cool 10 years ago, but the industry has moved on.  I can’t remember the last time I picked up some glow-in-the-dark cover.  Making it as eye-catching as possible is cool.  Think Apple iTunes… Nintendo Wii… nice sleek design, white/light metallic, kinda Start Trek-ish look, with simple font.  Less is more.  All those black backgrounds and yellow text in articles just makes readers go blind.  Uniform looks are in.  You don’t have to create a new comic-strip like border for every article in it.  This is the biggest distraction as far as the magazine goes.  Terribly outdated.

Dude, where’s my comic?

One of the cool features of Wizard has been the comics price guide it comes equipped with so fans can watch how their stockpile has risen and fallen.  But in efforts to conserve space and include more titles, Wizard limited the price guide to special issues.  It’s pretty much hit or miss whether or not the issue you wanna look up is included.  When only half of your issues are included, the price guide pretty much looses all of its functionality.

Also, the magazine used to be complete with cool reviews of comics, interesting history pieces and funny parodies of various comic characters and issues.  Now it's just one big preview magazine.  All it consists of updates of projects over and over again.  After the first preview of Marvel’s Civil War a year ago, and every subsequent update since then has reiterated what was said originally.  Bring back original and creative articles.  Bring back the historical pieces that taught me the history of this medium.  Show some diversity.

Keep it simple, stupid

Quit trying to encompass every means of communication in your magazine.  When I pick up your magazine, it's because I want to know what Marvel and DC is doing, not an update about the new Lost season.  Quit loading down the magazine with projects that have so little to do with comics.  I don’t care about Brad Meltzer’s new legal thriller.  Make mention of it, but you don’t have to do a complete article about it just because he writes comics.  You’re reporting about a medium that’s been around for over 70 years, surely there is something you haven’t covered yet.  I don’t care about a review of Aqua Teen Hunger Force.  This is a comics magazine.  Over the last year or so, Wizard has been trying to become some all-encompassing pop culture authority.  There are many other magazines that have a head start on you.  Stick to what you know, give the people what they want.  And even trim down your Indie section.  You have your Wizard: Edge for that.  Last issue had a whole huge section I had to flip past to get to the next article.  Chances are, readers of Wizard are going to be more interested in mainstream Marvel and DC, not some remote Indie title.  Leave that for Edge.

Would you like some impartiality with that bias?

Ok, so I’m all for helping the medium along and getting it as much media exposure as possible, but do you think you could seem somewhat less propaganda-like?  It seems no matter what is coming out; it’s always touted as the biggest thing to come along since sliced bread.  Whenever a preview article about a new company event comes out and has the line “it’ll change everything”, I taste a little vomit in the back of my mouth.  Yes comics are the best they’ve been in years.  But not everything is a winner.  Some of it just flat out sucks.  And its ok to admit it.  In fact, it makes the magazine seem more honest and reliable for it.  Beyond that, think you could be a little more critical of Marvel?  All through Infinite Crisis, you busted DC’s balls about some aspects of the project.  But with as much as fans balked at how terrible Marvel’s Civil War was, all we got was month-by-month updates on the project glorifying the cop-out event. 

In short, Wizard has spiraled down into an outdated, out-of-style, monotonous preview of magazine that is just flat out boring.  If its editors are smart, it’ll revamp itself soon or it’ll quickly go the way of the dingo.