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Article 10: Wicked Wizard
I don't know. Somebody tries to do something nice and innocent like organise a comic book convention, and everybody jumps down their throats. You've got to feel sorry for Wizard, really, haven't you? No, only kidding. Of course you don't. For obvious reasons, I don't generally take much interest in the American convention circuit. Aside from anything else, it's in America, which is dreadfully inconvenient. Besides, Britain has its own perfectly good conventions, where you can sit happily in a bar drinking for three days and then realise that you've missed all the panels. Nitpickers might argue that you don't need to go to a convention just to sit in a bar for three days, but you see, it's a different bar. We also don't bother with half-naked models in silly costumes. This is partly because it's embarrassing, partly because nobody can afford to hire them, but mainly because everyone's in the bar. It's all very different from the American circuit which, in theory, is full of big names and big announcements. In fact, despite its name, the San Diego Comic-Con International seems to be drifting away from comics altogether. The desperate efforts of comics journalists to find something, anything to report from this year's event were far more entertaining than anything that actually seemed to happen at the convention itself. As near as I can recall, the big news items were that Marvel are publishing a MOON KNIGHT miniseries by somebody you've never heard of, and that Dan DiDio has bought a new shirt. Still, I'm sure the bar was well stocked. But over the last couple of weeks, the convention circuit has finally impinged on my consciousness with the vastly entertaining brawl over WizardWorld Atlanta. For anyone who's been sleeping under a rock, a couple of weeks back, ICV2.com reported that Wizard were running a convention in Atlanta on 29 June to 2 July 2006. This caused lots of controversy, since Shelton Drum's independent Heroes Con was already due to be held on the same dates in Charlotte, which would be considered fairly close by American standards. The widespread perception is that Wizard deliberately chose these dates in an attempt to get rid of a rival convention. If so, it backfired enormously, as creators who didn't even live in the continent started lining up to publicly support Heroes Con against Wizard, pledging to attend. While the major publishers didn't get directly involved, it rapidly became clear that Heroes Con was going to have the best line-up in its history, and Wizard's convention was going to be a pariah in creative circles before it had even started booking guests. Wizard's official line is that their Atlanta convention was never scheduled for these dates in the first place. It would be fair to say that nobody takes this terribly seriously. At the very least, they were pencilled in to the venue for those dates, albeit that it doesn't seem to have been firmly booked. Newsarama have obligingly posted a scan of the handout they were given with the dates on it, and it is at the very least interesting to note that Wizard only rushed to correct this tremendous journalistic error after the scale of the backlash had become apparent, rather than, say, after it was first reported. Odd, that. What interests me about the whole mess is the sheer number of creators rushing to take the opportunity to side with Heroes Con. Of course, there's always a natural tendency to side with the underdog. But the affair does seem to have tapped into a real vein of hostility against Wizard themselves. Let's face it, Wizard are not exactly the most popular people in the industry. Wizard magazine itself is, for many people, a symbol of everything that's wrong with comics. In many ways, I've always felt that the criticism of Wizard was a bit harsh. It's often attacked for the narrowness of its focus, which entirely misses the point. The magazine that sets out to serve a particular audience - basically the typical fanboy demographic. And it serves them perfectly well. It gives them what they want. It's not Wizard's responsibility to single-handedly cover the whole industry. The problem isn't Wizard's lack of range, but rather a lack of alternatives. Wizard has achieved dominance in its field against a background where the only real alternatives are a mixture of relatively dry news reports, and The Comics Journal - which is fine if you're into that sort of thing, but they'll never have mass appeal with the comics audience. Wizard Entertainment holds a position of real influence in the industry. They're so important to the promotion of a mainstream comic that, at the very least, you'd really rather keep on their good side. There are alternatives, of course - the news websites are a pretty effective hype channel in their own right. But all told, it's in everyone's interests not to fall out with them. The Atlanta convention, however, saw Wizard blunder into a spectacular PR disaster. Quite aside from the fact that they would have to put other people out of business in order to do it, the last thing anyone wants to see is for Wizard to dominate the comics convention circuit in the same way as they dominate comics magazines. (Well, the last thing anyone other than Wizard wants to see, anyhow.) While previously they had more or less been filling a much-needed void, this time they were taking on underdogs with a lot of existing goodwill behind them. And, by so openly moving in on another convention, they looked like assholes. This is not a trivial point. Accurately or otherwise, Wizard have cultivated a public image as fun-loving overgrown kids. It is not in their interest to be perceived as bullying thugs. Wizard have spectacularly misjudged the situation - not to mention the willingness of creators and industry professionals to turn on them when a good enough reason presented itself. It's striking how big the backlash became, once it started to gain momentum. And nobody at Wizard seems to have heard the adage that when you're in a hole, you should stop digging. Their response to this PR disaster has generally been to blame everyone else for reporting the story, and deny ever making the announcement despite fairly powerful evidence to the contrary. Ideally, this would be the point to show a little humility and acknowledge that a miscalculation was made. Everyone who cares already knows that anyway. But I'm not sure Wizard Entertainment really do humility, do they? Paul O'Brien is the author of the weekly X-AXIS comics review. Ninth Art endorses the principle of Ideological Freeware. 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