Very likely true, but not in this instance. Shamus' letter column often focus more on the covers and the promotional trading cards included than on the content itself, so he did tell the story of the creation of this cover.

Edit: #17 and #18 will feature the Wizard robe/hat once again, but after that, they're gone for good.

I can never tell if H. S. Thompson is self parodying or if everything about him is truly as insane as it seems. If he was playing it up, he didn't break character, even in death.

Because (1) it's not inherently obvious, (2) it's intertwined with the identity of the magazine I'm reviewing, and (3) because recognizing and exploring this helps to offer clues about Wizard's origin -- namely how a staff of young, inexperienced white nerds got the major financial backing necessary to launch a publication like Wizard in the first place. As I've argued previously, I think Shamus was essentially a puppet, utilized as a face for the company that the clientele could relate to, while other powers that be called the majority of the shots behind closed doors because they were bankrolling the project.



Advance Comics and Previews both disagreed. They ran covers featuring the Death of Superman that month and included feature articles about it. They did the same for Youngblood and were right in that case, too.

DC's problem in the '90s that they are criticized at length for in Wizard is that they weren't shaking up the status quo enough in the age of hype and speculation. Killing off Superman (even if it proved to be temporary) was not on the level of anything they'd tried before. Superman was an institution; this was a big deal, and the media at the time couldn't get enough of it right from the moment it was solicited. A silly idea or not, people were clamoring for more information. A comment is made in Wizard #16 that non comic readers were coming to LCSes in record numbers to inquire about it. So Wizard waiting two months to acknowledge the event was a major snafu.

Sure, but for Wizard to not hype that and be hyping glittery cover comics, it does seem shortsighted. They could have had exclusive content that had a huge market. That was a BIG story at the time, a real story on TV and in newspapers. Larry King talked about it if I remember correctly. The magazine could have easily gotten some exclusive this or that from DC to run and potentially expanded their market instead of hyping a bunch of companies that ultimately failed before they even got started. The Death Of Superman definitely drew people into the LCS at the time. People who were interested in nothing else. Putting Doomsday on a cover would have guaranteed a boost in sales for Wizard.I mean in the grand scheme of things, they went with Wetworks instead?

I just stumbled across these reviews of Wizard magazine as I've been researching The American Comic Book Chronicles: the 1990s for TwoMorrows Press and found your reports really interesting. The earliest issues of Wizard are completely fascinating because of the choices that the staff make in terms of what they emphasize and hype, and I enjoyed reading your insights. I've been using Wizard as a source for information for my book, and though you have to take it with massive grains of salt, the mag also provides useful insight into the state of mind for the creators and many average fans in that era.

As you say, this is especially true when it comes to the earliest days of Image and the ambivalence that some of the creators feel when they move away from their Marvel projects, as well as the kind of on the ground view of the comics landscape shifting. By mid-1993 Marvel has seen their market share cut in half versus their sales in the month X-Force #1 shipped, and that shift is well on display in these magazines.

A few notes on stuff you brought up:

First, regarding the Death of Superman, it's true that Previews and Advance Comics promoted the heck out of it, but no other magazines at that time followed suit. The Comics Journal didn't do special coverage, nor did Hero Illustrated or Comics Scene. The hype for the Death of Superman caught *everybody* by surprise; there's commentary from Superman line editor Mike Carlin from both then and now stating that DC had announced these plans months before the comic was actually solicited but nobody batted an eye. Once the idea caught on, however, it started to get land massive attention.

One sub-note: Bloodshot #1 from Valiant premiered the same day as Death of Superman and sold somewhere in the neighborhood of 800,000 copies. There's testimony from the time by the owner of Golden Apple Comics that he had two lines around the block that day: one for Superman and one for Bloodshot.

Second sub-note: Wizard's Death of Superman issue, which came out at around the time that the Reign of the Superman storyline began, is wonderful. So is their special Age of Valiant, from around the same era. Both are top-notch in terms of production values and quality content.

Second major note, on the birth and evolution of Wizard, check out Wizard #50, which has both an issue by issue summary of key events and an interview with Shamus conducted by Fabian Nicieza (I believe - I don't have the issue in front of me). The story they tell is essentially that Wizard grew out of a comic shop that Gareb's mother bought called The Wizard of Comics and Cards. Gareb and friend McCallum worked up an in-house newsletter for the shop and decided to take it nationally as just a price guide. On advice from Walter Wang of Comics Unlimited, Shamus and crew added articles. McFarlane was a family friend through the shop, so everything fell together in a "hey let's put on a show" way and the magazine launched. The article makes the whole thing sound very seat of the pants, but also implies that Shamus came from a fairly affluent family and was lucky along the way.

Anyway, thanks for the series -- it's great reading and I hope you will write more.

One more thing that's fascinating about the old issues of Wizard is finding facts that are interesting in retrospect. Like Wizard #7 has a list of the top 100 comics of 1991. 

Marvel published 91 of the top 100 best-selling comics of 1991; only DC's mini-series Robin II: the Joker's Wild cracked the top 50 as all four of its issues were surrounded by Marvel books on the charts. Marvel's best-sellers had two things in common: 41 of the top 50 comics were X-Men or Spider-Man titles, and 38 of the top 50 were illustrated by one of a handful of artists: Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld, Whilce Portacio or Marc Silvestri.

Nope. Diamond and Capital City were the two big distributors, according to Wizard. I know there was also Hero World. May have been others that I'm not aware of.