{"id":4600,"date":"2026-03-22T12:38:49","date_gmt":"2026-03-22T16:38:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.opendoor-comics.com\/unbagged\/?p=4600"},"modified":"2026-03-22T15:26:43","modified_gmt":"2026-03-22T19:26:43","slug":"short-box-comic-the-magazine-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.opendoor-comics.com\/unbagged\/2026\/03\/22\/short-box-comic-the-magazine-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Short Box: Comics! The Magazine #1"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Comics! The Magazine<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

#1<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Release:  <\/td>Mar 11, 2026<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Prana Publishers<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Creators<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Cover Artist<\/td>Nick Dragotta, Rico Renzi<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n

During a recent visit to the comic shop<\/a>, I was provided with a freebie, provided in the spirit of “the first taste is free” in the hopes of getting me hooked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Said freebie was, of course, the magazine shown above, a new entry into the old world of physical comics news media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the days before there was such a thing as the world wide web, before my hiatus<\/a> from comic-buying, I was a regular reader of what could be described as the industry’s newspaper – especially given that it literally was a newspaper – the Comic Buyer’s Guide<\/em>, or CBG.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I adored CBG, and it wasn’t unusual for it to be the best thing I picked up at the comic shop in a given week (it was<\/em> the ’90s, after all).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was also a semi-regular reader of Comics Scene<\/em> magazine, and a less frequent reader of Wizard<\/em>, though that magazine had its peak well after I’d stopped buying comics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Comics! The Magazine<\/em> has a segment devoted to the history of comic “fanzines” that shows a timeline of the mostly extinct magazines that have preceded its own debut, which I fear may serve as an example of the past being prologue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like the magazines of old, Comics!<\/em> features interviews, profiles, previews, news, comic strips, a letter page – this one dominated entirely by letters from comicdom’s beloved scamp and Canadian National Treasure Chip Zdarsky, who published a comics-focused magazine himself – price guides, and classified ads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s all put together nicely, though I will say that one of the selling points is also a bit of a drawback. The magazine itself has the same dimensions as a standard comic, which makes it easier for storing, but does tend to make the layout rather cramped. Text-heavy pages, such as the cover story interviews with the people behind Absolute Batman<\/em>, incredibly dense and difficult for these old eyes to read. The font is a readable size, but there’s just so much text <\/em>crammed onto the page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I do miss the days of periodicals focused on comics, but I fear their time has long-since passed, and even the relative currency of the weekly CBG was not fast enough to keep up with the demand for news the way the web can, and while I hope for the best, I can’t help but think about the dozens and dozens of copies of this first issue that were still strewn about the shop during my last visit despite every regular customer getting a free copy the week before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ideally, they’ll have a better sense of demand with the next issue and can scale the supply appropriately, and I wish them the best of luck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>
\n

Born and raised in the sparsely populated Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Jon Maki developed an enduring love for comics at an early age.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Comics! The Magazine #1 Release:   Mar 11, 2026 Prana Publishers Creators Cover Artist Nick…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[66],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-short-box"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peoZaI-1cc","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.opendoor-comics.com\/unbagged\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.opendoor-comics.com\/unbagged\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.opendoor-comics.com\/unbagged\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.opendoor-comics.com\/unbagged\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.opendoor-comics.com\/unbagged\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4600"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.opendoor-comics.com\/unbagged\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4600\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4602,"href":"https:\/\/www.opendoor-comics.com\/unbagged\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4600\/revisions\/4602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.opendoor-comics.com\/unbagged\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.opendoor-comics.com\/unbagged\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.opendoor-comics.com\/unbagged\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}