By Shaenon K. Garrity
Our columnists are independent writers who choose subjects and write without editorial input from comiXology. The opinions expressed are the columnist's, and do not represent the opinion of comiXology.
I hope you didn't think I was joking when, two weeks ago, I promised to devote two columns in a row to 1990s-era issues of
Wizard magazine. Because I would never joke about such a thing. I was and remain deadly serious. As proof, here's
Wizard, July 1995, with a pretty boss Judge Dredd cover by Simon Bisley.
I swear, comics in the 1990s couldn't do anything decent without British people.
In my last column, I touched on the larger ideological issues unearthed in old
Wizard letters columns, issues that still affect the comics industry today. But that required thought and analysis, so this time I'm just going to crack jokes about how people in the '90s had no idea how much less comics would suck in the '10s. For instance, in 1995 Hollywood was making movies about comics, and
Wizard was very excited about this hot new trend.
I wish I could say I'd forgotten that there was, in those dark days, a
Richie Rich movie starring Macaulay Caulkin, or that anyone was excited about it, but a couple of years ago the Cartoon Art Museum did a Harvey Comics show, and I discovered that those Harvey fans have not forgotten. Also, I discovered that there are Harvey Comics fans.
The other comics-to-film adaptations celebrated in the article include
Judge Dredd,
Casper,
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III,
The Mask, and (oh dear)
Tank Girl. I guess
The Mask wasn't too bad? Readers are also told to look forward to James Cameron's
Spider-Man, Chris Columbus's
Fantastic Four, and
The Incredible Hulk produced by Gale Ann Hurd, who finally got it made in 2008. It's funny because predictions are wrong!
Also in the '90s, the Internet became a thing.
The article lists the many ways for fans to get online and start arguing about Neil Gaiman's
Mr. Hero: America Online, CompuServe, Prodigy, GEnie, and "The Internet," which you may be able to get for free if you're a college student.
Wizard suggests subscribing to a mailing list called Comics-L: "Send the message ‘subscribe COMICS-L Firstname Lastname' to LISTSERV@UNLVM.UNL.EDU." I was alive and using the Internet around this time, and even I can't remember how we survived this medieval nonsense.
Speaking of which, does anyone remember in 2002 when Gary Groth wrote a long rebuttal to Scott McCloud's
Reinventing Comics called "McCloud in Cuckoo-Land," arguing, among other things, that webcomics would all have to shill for telecom corporations to make money because it was the only way to get hosted on important portals like AOL? I'm pretty sure Groth got all his information about the Internet by reading this 1995
Wizard article. Fortunately, he was wrong, and webcomics didn't turn into thinly-disguised advertising for Big Telecom. They turned into thinly-disguised advertising for video-game companies and Threadless t-shirts.
So what else is in this issue? Oh, about what you'd expect. The "Top 10" comics list is just the 13 alternate covers for
Gen13 #1, although, to be fair, they're nifty covers. There's a profile of 17-year-old phenom and
Creed creator Trent Kaniuga, who I think mostly does game design now. The "Casting Call" is for a hypothetical
Sandman movie, and my hat goes off to
Wizard for suggesting "Rowdy" Roddy Piper as Destruction. I think
Wizard made an effort to put "Rowdy" Roddy Piper in every Casting Call. Isn't it weird that no one's ever gotten around to making a
Sandman movie? Not that I want one; I'm sure it would be terrible. But they made
Watchmen, and that was a much worse idea for a movie.
As I commented in last week's column, the 1990s were a more complex time for comics than we sometimes remember. In most issues of
Wizard from this period, you can get the whole decade in a nutshell by pairing the featured title from the "Palmer's Picks" indie column with that month's #1 "Pick from the Wizard's Hat":
On the left:
Eddie Campbell's Bacchus, another indie comic I started buying thanks to Tom Palmer, one of the Tzadikim Nistarim. On the right:
Spawn: Blood Feud #1. Yes, the 1990s was an era when even Alan Moore, "fresh from his popular
Violator mini-series," could be cajoled away from tantric wizardry long enough to pen a Spawn/vampire four-parter that reveals important information about Spawn's costume. But it was also an era when Eddie Campbell could make a living self-publishing a comic about a Greek god who looks like Popeye hanging out at a bar. So things weren't all bad.
Then again, the #2 and #3 Picks from the Wizard's Hat are
Spider-Man: Maximum Clonage Alpha and
X-O Manowar #50-X and #50-O, and I have no rebuttal to that.
Wait, I do! The Wizard Profile on the back page is the wonderful Amanda Conner, hard at work on Marvel's
Gargoyles and
Rock Video Girls. I know people bristle when someone makes a blanket declaration that the comics industry is sexist, but surely there can be no stronger evidence than the
fifteen years it took Amanda Conner, very nearly the only person in this issue who can actually draw, to make the transition from the
Wizard back page to the
Wizard Top Ten.
Anyway, if Conner had the power of the Beyonder, "I would probably waste a lot of my time and power playing large-scale practical jokes on the entire planet Earth." This is still not the correct answer ("Try to bone Dazzler"), but it's good. Since
Wizard has stopped using this question in its back-page interviews, I might as well reveal here that if I had the power of the Beyonder, I would use it to insert the Beyonder into every comic book, because I love the Beyonder that much. Marvel, if you ever get serious about this "Year of the Woman" thing and let me write a mini-series, I will put the Beyonder in it. I will find a way. I would also like Amanda Conner to draw him.
Shaenon K. Garrity is a manga editor at Viz Media and is best known for her webcomics Narbonic and Skin Horse.
All the Comics in the World is © Shaenon K. Garrity, 2010
