NY Post Article on Wizard CEO Gareb Shamus As Bad As It Sounds
The NY Post has written a profile of Wizard Entertainment founder Gareb Shamus that is (no joke) titled "Crash! Pow! Profit$," and is pretty much guaranteed to piss off anyone with any affection for comics. Or journalism, for that matter. It begins with the tale of a plucky young Gareb, who launched "Wizard" magazine 19 years ago because "loved the fantasy genre so much." Really? If he loved it that much, why exactly did he start a magazine about the superhero genre?
The fact that the writer doesn't know enough to make a distinction between "Lord of the Rings" and "Superman" -- or a genre and a medium, for that matter -- really helps to set the tone for what's about to come: a celebration of the "Comic-Con" industry and how little it has to do with comics:
"These aren't your older brother's Comic-Cons -- those sleepy, hotel-based two-day affairs that draw 3,000 hard-core comic book geeks who drool over top comic book illustrators and swap insider hero tales... You might have to look hard to even find a comic book."
If that doesn't warm your heart enough, it also calls "Wizard," a magazine that has decimated its staff in recent years, a "thriving" publication, and I don't even know if we need to keep going at this point because rereading it just feels like watching a horrible accident over and over again on Youtube.
Screw it, here's a picture of Shamus wearing boxing gloves instead: