What Was Up With 'Wizard,' #17: February 2000 ⋆ Atomic Junk Shop

All right, we’re moving on into the new millennium with Wizard #101, with Steve Dillon’s Punisher gracing the cover!

In the letters pages, someone asks about “Onslaught.” Jim McLauchlin, who answers the letters, does point out how weird it is to get questions about Onslaught some years after the event, but what the heck. The dude asks why Namor and Wanda jumping into Onslaught didn’t make him stronger, because mutants made him stronger. I don’t really care about this, but the word we get from Bill Rosemann, who worked for Marvel, is that Namor isn’t a mutant. Wait, doesn’t Marvel often market him as a mutant? Make up your damned minds, Marvel! Another writer asks what ice cream goes best with beer, and they ask Chris Bachalo, who’s Canadian and knows some things about beer. Bachalo opines that Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food, which goes well with Sam Adams or Labatt’s Blue. If you say so, Chris! A guy writes in from Montevideo, asking if he’s imaginary because Grant Morrison wiped out the city in DC One Million. McLauchlin tells him that he no longer exists at all and is only hope is to get “Hypertimed” back. Oh dear!

On page 18, we find out that Waid and Busiek are launching Gorilla Comics, which I bet was a huge success! They don’t have a lot of specifics about the titles that it will do — Pérez was going to do Crimson Plague through it — but it’s a lot of optimism. Gorilla Comics did not last long, sadly. They had some cool comics, but things just didn’t work out. There was a note on the next page about Marvel Knights targeting Bendis for … something? Ok, it had to be Daredevil, but Wizard doesn’t know this yet. Erik Larsen got booted from Wolverine and Steve Skroce was taking over. Given what we know about Skroce and his speed, how long did that last? We get a brief article about Marvel’s new “Monster” format — 100 pages for a whopping $2.99 — of which Avengers #27 is the first example, with reprints of issues #150-151, Annual #19, and issue #101. This was to bring in new readers — kids — because it’s good value for parents who want to buy comics for their kids. Man, that’s a reach for Marvel. In the “thumbs up/thumbs down” section, they get grumpy with the Spider-Man insert that showed up for a while in Marvel comics — the one where the dude he meets is smoking pot and that’s a bad thing. Wizard does not criticize the dumb anti-drug story, but the fact that Marvel put it into the issues with no break, so it felt like it was part of the regular story. Those inserts were very weird, I agree — they did intrude on the story abruptly.

Pages 28-29 have blurbs on six new publishing concerns coming in the next few months. Their track record is not good. Allred’s AAA Pop Comics is on the list, as it Black Bull. Colorist Chris Lichner was doing some books, which would be published by Top Cow. Kirby Comics was also launching, but it seems like that was just a reprint thing, so I’m not sure why Wizard listed it. The first publisher listed is CrossGeneration Comics, which always seemed a bit too much like a cult to me — you had to move to Tampa and live on the compound? Weird. CrossGen had some very cool comics, but the company’s eyes were bigger than their stomach, so to speak, and they went bankrupt in 2004. Finally, the one real success on their list is BroadSword Comics, which is Balent’s boutique publisher. For the most part, Balent is still going strong, although it seems that Tarot has faded in comics consciousness a bit (perhaps because Chris Sims isn’t around excoriating it anymore). Still, Balent bet that a large subsection of the comics-reading public would pick up a book based solely on the fact that its characters get naked a lot (which is, as someone who’s read at least two issues, basically all there is to it), and he wasn’t off-base!

What, oh what could be the secret to Balent’s success?!?!?

They have a goofy three-page article that’s a parody of The Blair Witch Project in which the writer ventures to the wilds of suburban Long Island to see why Joe Madureira dropped off the map. Madureira had been doing a lot of other things, including animation and video games, and the article does get to that, but mostly, it’s just the writer writing about his mental breakdown. It’s not bad. Wizard then picks the top five video games they’d want to see made into comics (due to the new Lara Croft comic), with creative teams! Up first: Final Fantasy by Alan Moore and Jay Anacleto. I mean, they give a justification for Moore, and it’s impressive it’s not just “He’s Alan Moore,” but why would you want Anacleto — a slow artist — on this book and not on his creator-owned one, which he probably cares about a whole lot more? On Resident Evil, they’d have Ennis and Angel Medina, which isn’t a bad team. Erik Larsen is the writer/artist of Duke Nukem, which is a pretty good choice. I don’t know anything about Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, but I’d read something by Warren Ellis and Rags Morales! For Metal Gear Solid, they have Chuck Dixon and Matt Haley, which seems to play to their strengths. I don’t know if any of these video games ever made the jump to comics, but Wizard did a pretty good job with the creators!

Wizard asks and answers the “most important questions” of 2000, beginning on page 44. They claim that the X-Men movie will be huge (it was), but it’s odd that, given the recent track record of superhero movies (Blade aside), they would be so confident. I mean, the movie did have “A-list director Bryan Singer” (ewwww) on it, so it had to hit big! They wonder if Tomb Raider can “save” comics. The first issue sold really well, with big-time retailers actually selling it, and Wizard believes younger readers will get into it because of the video game tie-in. That did not really work out — Lara Croft has remained in comics, sure, but she did not save comics. So sad! They then ask if Rising Stars is the next Watchmen, which they emphatically answer “no,” but they do point out that Alan Moore did wish that some comic would overshadow his masterpiece. Straczynski wanted to write something grand, of course, and Rising Stars is pretty good, but when even Wizard — who was totally in the bag for it — thinks it’s not going to approach Watchmen, that’s that. There’s a note about whether Kevin Smith will write Green Arrow, which, of course, he did. They wonder if Cliffhanger is going to survive, which did not seem like a sure bet at the time. It did manage to stagger on for a few more years, but it just never really took off, even in the early days. Wizard wonders if Jim Lee is retired, which is hilarious given that Lee just managed to finish six issues of Batman in this Year of our Lord, 2026. I mean, he barely draws anymore, but he’s drawn more pages in the 21st century than, say, Todd McFarlane! Moving on, Wizard wonders if Spider-Man can be saved — the Mackie/Byrne relaunch, which Wizard admits they guaranteed — wrongly — would be a big hit, and it was very much not. JMS took over with issue #30, which came out over a year after this magazine, and it seems that really revived Spidey, so it did happen, but it took a while! Finally, they wonder if Claremont will wreck the X-Men when he returns, which they do not think he will. I mean, he gave it a try, didn’t he! Wizard thinks he’ll be able to keep up with the hype about the movie, but it was pretty clear that comics had passed Claremont by, which is a bit sad. Oh well!

Wizard has a decent interview with Garth Ennis as he prepared to launch The Punisher. He notes that he doesn’t really want to do monthly comics, which is somewhat ironic considering he was about to start a very long run on the Punisher and The Boys was still in his future. He does mention how non-violent he is, which is funny, but I suppose it’s good to be non-violent and get any violent tendencies you have out in your writing. He also doesn’t think that God — if they exist — would punish him for his writing. I mean, sure, but I know a lot of people who would disagree, Garth! Wizard never goes too in-depth in their interviews, but they are usually pretty fun!

As you know, we always have to get a casting call, so Wizard does an Avengers movie, some years before the actual Avengers movie, but that just makes it more fun! First up, they have Tom Selleck as Tony Stark. Selleck looks the part, sure, and he is a pretty good actor, but he was also 54 at the time, so perhaps a bit long in the tooth (Downey was 42 or so when he first played Iron Man). Kevin Sorbo is Thor, which at the time wasn’t a terrible choice, but it certainly hasn’t aged well (neither has Sorbo, of course). Peter Weller as Vision is an interesting choice. Weller was also in his 50s (52), so maybe not, but he would have done well with the part, I think. They cast Melina Kanakaredes as Wanda Maximoff strictly because she resembles the character. Come on, Wizard! Kanakaredes was 32 at the time, so I guess it’s nice that Wizard didn’t simply go for the youngest actor they could find, but it’s still an annoying tendency they have. I don’t know if Kanakaredes is a good actor or not, but neither does Wizard (as they freely admit)! They cast Howie Long as Captain America, which … I mean, I like Long in a limited capacity, but I don’t know if he’d have made a good Cap. Luckily, we didn’t have to find out! Catherine Bell, at the time in the middle of JAG, is their choice for the Wasp, which is fine, I guess. For Hawkeye, they chose 38-year-old Woody Harrelson, who would have been better than Renner, I think (and I like Renner). They’ve picked Stephen Collins for roles before, unfortunately, and they do it again for Hank Pym, which … you know, given that they’re both scumbags in their own way, might have worked! They have Carol Danvers-as-Warbird in their movie, so they cast Janet Gunn simply because she’s hot. Never change, Wizard. They also have a role for Justice, and they cast Wes Bentley, who was 21 and coming off American Beauty, so he was hawt hawt HAWT! I like Bentley, so sure. For Wonder Man, they have George Clooney, with the disclaimer, “All right, George Clooney, it’s time to redeem yourself” after Batman and Robin. Clooney, 38 at the time, probably would have been quite good as Wonder Man, but he also didn’t need superhero movies, as he had just started his super-hot streak that saw him launch completely into the stratosphere: Out of Sight and The Thin Red Line were in the rearview, and here are his next few movies: Three Kings, Fail Safe, O Brother, Where Are Thou?, The Perfect Storm, and Ocean’s Eleven. Yeah, he didn’t need redemption after that. For Firestar, they give us 21-year-old Nikki Cox, who had been starring on Unhappily Ever After. It seems they picked her solely because she was a redhead. Well done, Wizard! For Immortus/Kang, they chose Terence Stamp, who had turned 60 the year before but was still kicking ass (The Limey had just come out). They have a role for Jarvis — the butler, not the AI — and they choose Pete Postlethwaite, because if it was the mid- to late-1990s and you need a stoic English dude, you get Postlethwaite! Billy Zane seems slightly villainous in real life, so they put in him Loki’s role, which, honestly, tracks really well (Zane was 33 at the time, which is a solid age for Loki). I liked Spader as Ultron, but man, Christopher Walken as the big robot would have been keen (honestly, Spader kind of brings Walken energy to the role, don’t you think?). They cast the Grim Motherfucking Reaper in this movie, and as the brother of George Clooney, they cast … Jeremy Piven. Sure, why not? As the soon-to-be-killed Baron Zemo, they get always-gets-killed Sean Bean, which is also a good choice. This is a ridiculously stuffed cast, and I’d say it’s too stuffed, but as we know, Marvel eventually said “damn the fucking torpedoes” and stuffed their movies anyway. I wonder if this movie would have worked without all the movies building up to it, much like the Justice League movie didn’t work too well, but Wizard did their thing!

The late Nineties is strong in this cast!

Moving on, Wizard‘s deal with Satan means that they have to mention a Batman movie once an issue, and so they bring up Warner Bros. possibly developing a “Year One” adaptation (which I brought up in an earlier post) and a Batman Beyond movie. There’s not a lot new in the story, except for the fact that if they were doing a “Year One” adaptation, the choice for a young-ish Bruce Wayne was … Ben Affleck?!?!? That’s pretty awesome — it took another decade-and-a-half until Affleck took on Batman, but it’s nice that the speculation was there! Then we get some updates on the X-Men movie, which was trundling along. They mention that the story spans 35 years, which wasn’t exactly right, but other than that, it’s not a bad article about the issues to bring it to the screen. In smaller items, we learn that script approval from Harrison Ford and Steven Spielberg was holding up a fourth Indiana Jones movie, which took a while since the next movie didn’t come out until almost a decade later. Dark Horse had optioned Kirby’s Satan’s Six, but nothing ever came of it. There was going to be a Ghost World movie (oh yes there was!), with negotiations going on with Thora Birch and … Leelee Sobieski?!?!? I’ve never seen Ghost World (yes, I know — shame on me), but I wonder how different a movie it would have been if Sobieski had been in it instead of ScarJo. Would ScarJo have the career she does today?!?!?!? It’s a whole Sliding Doors scenario, people!

Wizard gets readers to draw stuff, as they often do, and we get this bomb-ass drawing of Lady Pendragon: