What Was Up With ‘Wizard,’ #5: February 1998

I mentioned last time that I knew I started getting Wizard a little more regularly, I just thought it came a bit sooner, but here we are, only a month after the previous one, and I bought issue #78 of the greatest comics magazine ever in recorded history! Let’s take a look!

The letters begin on page 10 with Wizard addressing some rumors. Because they’re run by goofy and somewhat harmless frat bros (known to scientists as Fraternitas gronkowskius), one of the rumors is that comics writer Christina Z. is hot. They say it’s strictly subjective, but they do provide a photograph of Ms. Z.:

A dude writes in with several questions. He wants to know if McFarlane owns the right to Miracleman — “Please tell me it isn’t true,” he begs, but alas! Wizard must confirm that the Toddster does, indeed, own the rights. Another question he asks is if Rob Liefeld has lost his mind. Poor Rob, getting no respect! He also wants to know how much money a new-ish writer makes. It seems like $60 a page was the going rate for a newbie back in late 1997. Speaking of money, another dude asks who the highest-paid writer and artist are in comics. Wizard doesn’t know, but their guesses are: Scott Lobdell and Michael Turner. Let that marinate for a while.

A random dude asks “What is mulch?” Yes, he really does. And Wizard gives him a good answer! “‘Mulch’ is a combination of chopped-up leaves and stems spread around the bases of garden plants to prevent the roots from freezing in cold weather.” Because when you have gardening questions, you ask Wizard! One dude noticed that “Kurt Busiek” had a letter printed in Howard the Duck #19 and wonders if it’s our guy, which Busiek confirmed. Busiek said he had about 100 letters printed in Marvel comics, and Wizard points out that a lot of future comics creators had letters printed in comics during the 1970s (and 1980s, to be sure). How many have you spotted over the years?!?!?

Wizard has a two-page article on pages 18-19 on Spider-Man’s weird “split” into four separate personae and the reboot that will follow. This just sounded like a clusterfuck of massive proportions. Was anyone reading Spider-Man books at this time? Was it as weird as it sounds?

There’s a “Buzz Box” on page 20, in which Wizard tells us that Marvel is planning a line called “Generation M,” with three titles representing “the next generation” of Marvel heroes, for late 1998. This never happened, unless Marvel rebranded it and watered it down, but I think they just abandoned it. There was also a rumored Superman/Hulk crossover planned for the summer and written by Stan Lee. That never happened. So sad! One rumor that did pan out was Alex Ross and John Paul Leon working on Earth X, so good job, Wizard!

Wizard reports on two Savage Dragon/Superman crossovers coming in late 1998. Did either of them ever show up? We also get word that Jimmy Palmiotti and Joe Quesada had suspended operations at Event Comics in order to do a “Heroes Reborn”-style makeover of yet more Marvel characters. Event never came back, really (the last thing they published came out in 1999), but Wizard is talking about “Marvel Knights,” of course, which was wildly successful. Good for them! There’s also an item about Miller’s 300 coming down the pike, with the excellent beginning to the nugget: “Who says comics can’t be historically accurate and tell a damn good story at the same time?” I mean, I love 300, but calling it “historically accurate” is pushing it just a tad.

On page 24, Wizard has a weird item about the Hulk. First, Marvel claimed they were going to do an anthology series about the character, much like DC was doing with Batman Chronicles and Justice League: Classified, but that never got off the ground. That’s not the weird part. What’s weird is they write about Peter David’s plans for the Hulk going forward, with a big shake-up coming in issue #466 which will “transform the Hulk forever.” Of course, David’s last issue of The Incredible Hulk was #467. So it seems that even David didn’t know that would be his last issue, only a few months before it was published! Man, his departure from the title sure was odd. Below this is an item about Claremont, Golden, and Waid getting hired by Marvel for office jobs, which is a bit odd. I wonder how long those lasted. Claremont, of course, eventually started getting paid by Marvel to … sit around and do nothing?, so maybe this was the beginning of that. Meanwhile, Neil Gaiman was going to be the consultant on Sandman-related projects, beginning with The Dreaming. That won’t ever look problematic! We get to a brief “first look” at The Nail, which was a pretty good Justice League Elseworlds story by Alan Davis.

On pages 32-36, Wizard has a decent article about Robin, which they, as we’ve seen, really dug. It’s basically just a rundown of what’s been going on in the series with Chuck Dixon teasing some things coming up, but this is the kind of thing Wizard did very well. On page 39, Matthew Brady (I assume it’s the same guy whom I’m friends with on Facebook!) has a short introduction to a comic strip starring Groo, which is nifty. It’s only three pages, and Aragones takes aim at comic book collectors, but hey! if we can’t laugh at ourselves, who can we laugh at?

Moving on, there’s a Green Lantern movie to cast! Yay! The movie, they write, “would be packed with eye-popping space scenes, titanic battles between dastardly scum and larger-than-life heroes, heart-warming love scenes and acts of villainy and betrayal to churn a million stomachs.” No such film is on the horizon, they say (nor, you know, would it ever be!), but they’re still casting it! We get … Thomas Gibson as Kyle Rayner? Well, that’s a start. Gibson “can have a healthy combination of overconfidence, self-doubt, sense of humor and sensitivity that ’90s Everyman Kyle Rayner has,” opines the mag. Really? I mean, Gibson was (and, I guess, still is) a nice actor, but he didn’t really seem to have much star quality back then, and at that point he was 36, so maybe a bit too old for the role? As Donna Troy, they cast Yancy Butler, and if there’s any indication that this magazine came out in the 1990s, it’s that they cast Yancy Butler as Donna Troy. Dang. Butler was 27 or so at the time, which would have been fine, but she definitely should be older than Kyle. Maybe they would have played it that way, but the 8-year age gap between she and Gibson would have worked against it, I think. They cast Joe Morton as John Stewart, which would have been pretty cool. Morton was actually 50 about this time, which seems a bit old, but Stewart should be a bit older, and Morton looked younger than that at the time, and he would have nailed the part, I think. (Didn’t Corey Reynolds reeeeeaaaaallllly want to make a John Stewart Green Lantern movie around the time DC/Warner Bros. were beginning to have interest in it, which would have been a lot smarter given that Stewart was on the cartoon? Stupid DC, giving us the abomination they did instead of that.) Anyway, Wizard cast … Stephen Collins as Alan Scott (“Sentinel,” I guess), which … yeah, that didn’t age well. Honestly, at the time, that’s not bad casting. Collins was also around 50 at the time, and he has that cornpone ‘Murican “heartland” shit down cold, which works for Alan Scott. But still. They cast Ray Walston as Ganthet, which cracks me right the hell up. He would have been fine, though. As Rayner’s landlord, Radu Stancu (I guess he was kind of important in the comic at the time?), they cast G. Gordon Liddy, which is goofy stunt casting that might have been fine at the time. Wizard calls Liddy an “all-around bad-ass,” and while in the 1990s Liddy had some cachet for coolness, it’s clear he was kind of a monster, so that wouldn’t have been great. They put Neve Campbell in the movie as Jade, which isn’t a bad choice. Campbell was playing teens at the time, but she was already 24 or so, so she could have pulled it off. For the O.G. Woman in a Refrigerator, Alexandra DeWitt, Wizard cast Peta Wilson, another actor whose name evokes the Nineties. Why Wizard would cast Alex DeWitt when they knew what would happen to her is beyond me, but there you go. They put Jeremy Northam as Dr. Light, which isn’t a bad choice, except for the fact that Dr. Light is in the movie, which feels weird. Of course, now he’s a rapist, so DC isn’t putting him in a movie, but Northam wouldn’t have been bad. They justify it by writing, “Remember [his] role as a dangerous assassin in ‘The Net’?” Uh, no, Wizard, nobody wants to remember that. Did they even remember it in 1997? As Hal Jordan (who was then Parallax), they cast Richard Dean Anderson. That’s not bad at all. Better than Ryan Reynolds, I think (and I like Reynolds as an actor quite a bit, but he was mis-cast in that movie). They cast Schwarzeneggar as Major Force, which, sure. And they cast Angela Bassett as Fatality, and while I know nothing about Fatality, I know that any Angela Bassett in our lives is a good thing, so that’s a fine choice. What do you say, good readers? Would this have been a better movie than the crap-fest that we eventually got?

On pages 52-57, Wizard has an article about how to “fix” Spider-Man. Remember, kids, the mid- to late-1990s was the nadir of Spidey’s popularity and goodness, as Marvel simply did not know what to do with the character. It makes Joey Q’s decision to wreck his marriage a bit more forgivable, as if the writers of the time had no clue how to write married couples, maybe Joey Q could have hired better writers (too hard!) or, you know, made Peter sell his soul to save his desiccated aunt. Six of one, half-dozen of the other, really. ANYway, Wizard has some good fixes. They want Spidey to get his sense of humor back. Yeah, that’s a good idea. I imagine it’s harder to make Spidey actually funny than we might think, but it’s a good idea! They want the secret identity back, even from Mary Jane. “Peter’s double life should be so burdensome that he can’t confide in anyone as himself OR as Spidey,” they say. I mean, maybe. That’s a tough ask, though, because in superhero comics, stories often lead to places where a secret identity gets exposed. I hated the early 2000s thing where everyone knows Spidey’s secret, but I’m not sure if it being a complete secret is the way to go, either. In the same vein, they want his relationships to be “unstable.” Spider-Man messes with Peter’s relationships because, well, duh. That’s also fine and dandy, to a degree, but Wizard seems to think that new readers cycle in every few years, like Stan and others thought they did in the Golden and Silver Ages. Seeing Peter never have a stable relationship yet not go absolutely insane doesn’t feel right. They also want dead people to stay dead, which, I mean, is a complaint you could level at every single superhero comic ever. I do agree that in Spider-Man’s world, Uncle Ben, Gwen Stacy, and Norman Osborn should stay dead. Two out of three ain’t bad? They want him to be young, too, and their reasoning cracks me up: “Peter Parker’s a single guy in his mid-20s, living on his own and going to grad school — all the while trying to make sense of his disastrous social life. Because of this, he connects with the average comics fan. (Who, odds are, is single, young, goes to school, has problems with social life and aspires to live on his own.)” I don’t know what kind of market research Wizard did, but how do they know? I’m not saying they’re wrong, but how do they know? Also, if you have to read characters who are exactly like you in your fiction, you’re going to miss out on a lot. I mean, come on. Linked to this is that Peter should be poor. They mention that he’s married to a super-model, so that’s not a problem anymore, but I do think you can write good stories about them as a couple and still give them money problems. I do agree that Peter should have some money problems, but hell, we all have money anxiety these days, and you don’t have to be poor to feel that. They want his supporting cast back, which I completely agree with. This is a problem with a lot of comics these days, and it had begun to change around this time. There was no room for dense storytelling and “chill” moments, so non-stars got pushed out in favor of plot churn. You can’t have Peter having a rivalry with, say, Lance Bannon when there are seven super-villains coming at him every minute of the day. That’s a thing I miss in a lot of superhero comics over the past few decades. Wizard also points out that Peter is really smart, and recently, he’s been acting dumb. I agree. Peter should use his smarts more often. I don’t know if that changed in the coming years. They want his classic villains back, as I guess there had been a lot of Z-listers in the book, but I don’t know — Z-listers can be fun! They do think that the Spidey-team has been doing better with the villains, so that’s nice. They think Peter should hang out more at the Bugle and on campus, because those environments are where he can be his full, “Peter” self. I agree, but this gets back to the idea of plot churn — ain’t no time for him to get a job taking photos or taking classes, because there’s yet another villain wrecking shit! They do think there’s hope in the future, as Marvel seemed to know that they needed to “get back to basics,” but, I mean, we’re only a few years away from Norman Osborn banging Gwen Stacy, so clearly things didn’t get as back onto the rails as Wizard (and readers) would have hoped! Still, it’s a pretty neat article.

On page 58, there’s a nice interview with Joe Madureira, J. Scott Campbell, and Humberto Ramos about Cliffhanger, which was just about to launch. Of course, things always happen with these dudes who go off to create their own companies and series, and Danger Girl, Crimson, and Battle Chasers never made too much of an impact in comics, but good for those dudes, I guess. A couple of fun quotes: Campbell says early on, “When Image first started, it was the best of the best in comics. But as it grew larger, it certainly didn’t have that best-of-best feel. What we’re hoping to do with this label is set a precedence of quality back into comics.” Wow, Campbell, that’s a statement. Was Image ever “the best of the best” when they launched? I mean, it was cool and all, and Image has been hugely influential for the past 30 years and a lot of excellent stuff has come from it, but just because you have those founders doesn’t mean it was the best, given how slowly those books came out. And way to throw the current (at the time) Image under the bus, sir! Later on, when asked about the fact that these dudes aren’t known for their writing, Campbell comes up with this: “With respect to the good writers in the industry, I don’t think comic book writing is rocket science.” Of course, he needed a writer on Danger Girl, so maybe shut the hell up, J. Scott? Overall, though, it’s a pretty neat interview.

Pages 64-81 have “101 Little-Known Comic Book Facts You Can’t Live Without.” They’re fun. I’m not going to get into them, because you nerds probably know most of them! They also have some creator facts, like that Jim Balent once dug graves and Bill Sienkiewicz’s real first name is Boleslaw. Good stuff!

Wizard, as usual, gets a good artist to do a quick tutorial on pages 84-87. Mike Wieringo tells us how to make characters look like they’re moving, and he’s a very good choice for that, as ‘Ringo’s comics always look kinetic. He was a dang good artist, wasn’t he?

We move on to toys, which I would generally ignore, but man, that’s a good-looking Sandman:

Over on page 104, Wizard shows us the Marvel hockey jerseys for sale. I mean, these things scream “mid-90s”:

Wizard has some reviews! They don’t love the new Heroes for Hire (the one by John Ostrander) or the Connor Hawke Green Arrow by Chuck Dixon, of all people (given that Connor is an avowed pacifist). They very much like Major Bummer, which isn’t surprising as it’s a very good comic, and they dig Transmetropolitan, which is also not surprising as it’s also very good. They do point out that there’s “zero buzz” about the book because nobody has any interest in DC’s Helix line. Man, Helix. Anyway, I don’t know when the buzz on this book picked up, but it certainly did!

The news from television-and-movie-land was that Witchblade was getting a 22-episode order for the following fall. The show didn’t get off the ground until 2001, with Yancy Butler (hey, a second Yancy Butler reference in this post!) in the lead role (Wizard‘s on-line poll wanted Yasmine Bleeth as Sara Pezzini), and I never watched it. I don’t know why it took a few more years to get it going — maybe Wizard will explain in a future issue! Bendis had a two-picture deal with Miramax, and he was adapting a.k.a. Goldfish at the time. Gary Fleder, who directed Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead and Kiss the Girls, was negotiating to direct, but it never happened. They were still trying to get a live-action Hulk off the ground, too.

Wizard has their hottest back issues on pages 132-133. JLA #2, Witchblade #1, JLA #1, The Darkness #1, Heroes Reborn: The Return #1, Batman: The Long Halloween #1, Darkchylde #1 (the title shipped 5 issues in 2 years, according to Wizard, which … yeesh), Curse of the Spawn #1, Astro City volume 2 #1, and … Alpha Flight #1? are the top ten. You know you own them all! They also have a brief article about the pros and cons of variant covers (DC says they don’t do them, which feels quaint today), but what cracks me up is that Wizard asks, “But how long can readers support such books?” Well, nigh on 30 years, Wizard, how about that????

Take a look at Wizard‘s top 10 writers and artists! Is that … a chick? Gasp! And what’s going on with Bachalo’s broccoli hair?!?!?! The mind reels!!!!!

As you know, I skip the price guide (despite it being pretty fascinating), but Wizard does do a mini-bio of a random creator in each guide, and this month, they’re focusing on Ben Raab. Raab was not a very good writer, you understand, but he was doing some things at the time. Why I mention it is that he says a Union Jack story would be a “dream project,” and less than a year later, his Union Jack (with gorgeous art by John Cassaday) came out. Did Raab know at the time that he was doing a Union Jack mini-series? If not, that’s pretty cool for him. He spoke it into existence!

To finish up, on page 200 Wizard goes back 17 years, to Daredevil #168, and writes a bit about it, which is weird as absolutely nothing of note happened in that issue! Other things that happened in January 1981: 9 to 5 was big at the box office (I saw it with my mom in the theater!), The Dukes of Hazzard and Dallas were big hits, and “The Tide is High” by Blondie, a truly atrocious song, topped the charts. Fun stuff!

As I will try to remember to do, let’s take a look at some advertisements in this issue!

So that’s another issue of Wizard. Did I get issue #79? I can’t remember — I’ll have to dig through the box for the next one — but I know I started getting them a lot more often from now on!