More Disconcerting News About Marvel as Well as Wizard

A Phrase I Normally Hate

I have a confession: I hate the phrase that involves, "Waiting for the other shoe to drop," or, "There's the other shoe dropping," etc. Sometimes stuff just happens in isolation and there are no other shoes to drop, and sometimes a bunch of events happen at once--more than a pair--so the expression doesn't work then either unless you say something dumb like,"All the shoes are dropping." Well, I guess I can eat crow today as there are two situations where the other shoe did indeed drop.

The "Shoes"

Axel Alonso

I recently talked about how Brian Michael Bendis was leaving Marvel for DC and other people wondered if this could signal other folk leaving Marvel--especially individuals who used to work closely with Bendis. There had been rumors for awhile about Axel Alonso, Marvel's Editor-in-Chief, leaving, but they had been simply hearsay. Well, after having been involved at Marvel as EIC for a number of years and in general in some capacity since all the way back in 2000, Alonso has announced his departure from the company. The other shoe just dropped.

Also, I just posted about how Wizard was disclosing a lot of financial problems that made it apparent that while we may get shows in 2018 from them, the future was looking a little bleak. I and others wondered how in the dickens they would re-launch their magazine in this publishing climate considering they are hemorrhaging cash. Well, that other shoe dropped  in that scenario too and they aren't going to be doing a magazine anytime soon.

C.B. Cebulski

Marvel has announced another long-time employee, C.B. Cebulski, will assume the role Alonso filled. With all his years at Marvel it is easy to point out how Alonso had at times made controversial decisions or said questionable things, but overall it seems he was well-liked and respected at Marvel, making me wonder what caused his quitting (or if it was secretly a firing).

Wizard has discussed how they still intend to do their shows in 2018 and to never-mind all that talk of publishing a magazine, but if their are doing as badly economically as I heard I wonder what else might get cut or who else could be let-go to stem the metaphorical bleeding of funds. I hope the quality of the shows doesn't suffer as plenty of past news stories have shown that when corners are cut in the production of convention things can really fall apart (remember Dashcon? You don't? Exactly).

We shall see how things go for Marvel and if we are on the cusp of some big editorial shake-up just as before too long it will become apparent what the long-term outlook (e.g. surviving into 2019) is for Wizard World. For now though, it seems despite how much I hate the term, the other shoe has dropped for both these companies and the news is quite disconcerting. Who would think DC would be having such a good month in comparison to Marvel considering they had to own-up to keeping a sex-monster gainfully employed for way too many years?