Wizard #37, September 1994

I scored this for a buck at the Albany Comic-Con.

I’m sure most of you know what Wizard magazine consisted of, but for those of you that don’t know…let me give you a brief explanation.

This was the self-proclaimed “Guide to Comics”(the last issue was for March 2011, and is now a web-only publication).  It’s first issue debuted in July of 1991, and quickly became almost like a bible for comic books.  The early issues were jam-packed with anything you wanted to know about any comic.  And those were my favorite issues.  Basically every hot artist at the time did covers for Wizard.  Like Todd McFarlane, Sam Kieth and Rob Liefeld(I’m not a fan of his work).  A lot of the older issues came with premiums as well(trading cards, comics, special offers).  These earlier issues were also about 3-4 times thicker than the later issues.  In any event, it was fit to be called the “Guide to Comics”.

Now, I’m not going to review every freakin’ page of this magazine.  But I will show five of my favorite pages from the magazine(this could lead to future installments, as I have a few other early issues in my collection).

(1.

Envelope art is awesome!  I’ve sent my fair share of mail with drawins on the envelope, but nothing of this quality.  These envelopes took time and talent!  This was a feature I looked forward to every month during the magazines early days.

 

(2.

Mortal Kombat II was such a bad-ass game when it came to the arcade(or deli or pizza place).  This was the advertisement for it’s home console/portable release.  The Super Nintendo version would be my choice…for sentimental reasons.

This issue was not short on video game ads.

 

(3.

Homemade Heroes was another regular feature that I looked forward to.  It’s really cool to see custom action figures from almost 20 years ago.   I’m no fan of Mystery Science Theater, but it’s cool to see custom figures from the show.

 

(4.

I like Spawn, and was a huge fan back in the day.  But this was not the main reason that I selected this as one of my favorite pages from this magazine.  The word “almost”, is why I chose it.  Back in the early years of Image Comics, they were known to have delays and erratic schedules for a lot of their titles.  In my opinion, this is suitable for framing.

 

(5.

The top 100 list.  This would give you some insight to which were the hottest books at the time.  For every issue  you may have read at the time, there were a lot others that you may have had no prior interest in, but got them because of this list.  When trades for books on this list went down, we always used the price guide in the back of the mag to see what would be a fai trade.  The price guide was reduced to a mere few pages in later issues.

 

It sucks that you can no longer find Wizard on the racks, but it’s a great trip to look at these older issues.  Does anyone have any memories from this great magazine?

And since I made it a point to mention the premiums, and showed the magazine in the bag stating what the promos are, here’s what was within the polybagged offering.

I couldn’t make out the name, and didn’t feel like searching online for it.  So I guessed that it is called Brute Babe Infinity(but I could be wrong).   The issue number is the infinity symbol, so that’s different, but the comic itself doesn’t do anything for me.

Now these promos are worth talking about.  Here we have a four card spread(I don’t want to call it an uncut sheet, as there’s an ad for the series onthe back, instead of the usual card backs), and a chromium-foil Gen 13 card.  I have a few other foil promo cards from other issues, but I must say that I was disappointed when these stopped coming with the magazine.  Sure, they had some promo cards(non-foil or gimmicky), in future issues, but they just weren’t the same.

My Favorite Comic Book Covers #3

In my last post, I said that I would leave tonight’s post up to you.  Colin was the first to respond, and he said that he wanted to see some more comic book covers.  So that’s what we’re here for.

I really wanted to put this one on my last comic cover post(The #1s).  But there are so many #1 comics out there, and only so many can be put on a single post(plus everyone’s opinion varies).  This is a now classic cover from Todd McFarlane.  Back in the early nineties, Marvel had a huge selection of the best comic talent working for them.  This cover is the reason that I think McFarlane’s representation of Spider-Man is among the best that I’ve seen.

This cover has two things going for it.  First it’s done by Sam Kieth(my favorite comic book artist), and secondly, it’s a Batman comic!  Batman is huge and looks pissed, and the Joker looks psychotic!  Not all of Kieth’s work is the same, but it all has his touch(look at Four Women for example).  Many of you will know Kieth as the creator of The Maxx.  And if you’re my age, you’ll remember that he did a slew of Marvel Comics Presents covers back in the early nineties(and these were double covered comics, with one on the front and one on the back).  This is one of favorite Sam Kieth covers ever!

How can you not like this cover?!  It works so well!  I started reading this title around issue #34, and while my interest started to wane after 10 or so issues, the covers that continued to come out, gave me a reason to buy them anyway(I still read them).

My favorite incarnation of the Turtles, will always be the original old-school comic look.  I’d say the first four issues have the best cover art, but this is my favorite “Tales” cover.  Just looking at this cover has me wanting to re-read the series and fill the holes in my collection.

Jim Lee is an amazing artist, and his run with Batman had some really nice cover art.  It’s the top 2 guys on the DC roster, but they don’t look so friendly.  It could be assumed that this scenario(Batman being human and Super-Man being a powerful alien) would be the likely one, but I’m pretty sure Batman has Kryptonite in his utility belt(I really need to start re-reading my comics).

BONUS

A short while back, Open the Toy wrote a post about Eric Draven(The Crow).  In the comments I stated that I had a hand drawn sketch from none other, than J. O’Barr himself(creator of The Crow).  LEon, who runs that site asked if I would share the sketch with everyone.  Well, I figured with tonight’s subject matter, it would be fitting.  So LEon, this one’s for you.