Wizard World shuts down publishing plans

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Submitted by Mike 'Ace' Maillaro on Fri, 11/17/2017 - 14:40

From Comics Beat:

Well well. Just the other day we mentioned the horrible Q3 financials for convention company Wizard World. Along the way we pointed out that their revamped publishing plans didn’t seem to have gone too far and mistakenly said that the “WizPop daily newsletter idea had never appeared. we were corrected in that it’s actually up as a daily FB post.

With a little more than 1200 followers. Not to be mean.

We were thinking to ourselves, hm, putting money into a tough business like publishing is probably not a great idea for a company bleeding cash like Wizard World…

And…now, this very day, I’m told Brian Walton and Luke Y Thompson, who were hired to run the publishing, have been put “on hiatus.”

Thompson back this up, tweeting yesterday: Okay, followers. Seems I'm looking for work again. I'd love any pointers. Thanks.

I”m also told that there may be more layoffs at Wizard World as they try to staunch the money flow.

Source: Comics Beat

Commentary: I was pretty excited when we covered this story back in August. I grew up on Wizard, and it just seemed cool to me that it would be back. I even sent over a portfolio to see if I could get hired as an editor or content provider. Never heard back, by the way.

As time went on, and Wizard no longer talked about it, I started to suspect that this wasn't really going to happen after all. Today, it seems like we have some confirmation. It's sad, because Wizard had a unique blend of sarcastic wit and deep compelling researc back in the day, and I really think they could have carved out their our niche.. But let's be honest, there are so many free news options available online, would Wizard really have been able to maintain a quarterly publication? It's not all that surprising that this idea ended up dead on the vine.