After more than 40 years of advising comic buyers, the magazine will ship its final issue in March.
Source: CBGExtra
F+W Media announced today that it will be shutting down Comic Buyers Guide, the longest running English language print publication reporting on the comic book industry, according to Wikipedia. The press release cites "a lack of any comics worth buying" as the main reason behind the decision, confirming an opinion that has long been held by the internet.
"Comics suck," said one internet comic book fan, adding, "I quit reading them years ago, and now I just hang around on message boards and twitter and complain about whatever everyone else is complaining about."
The sentiment raises an important question: if no one on the internet reads comics, how does anyone know what to bitch about?
"I stopped picking up all big two comics after [Marvel's] Civil War," said a message board poster who wished to remain anonymous. "I found that bitching about comics on the internet is actually a far more rewarding experience than actually reading them. I still pick up occasional trades of The Walking Dead and Saga like any sane human being, but, for the most part, if I have to choose between spending my time actually reading a comic book or just reading a spoiler-filled press release and blindly declaring Dan Slott to be worse than Hitler, I'm gonna go with the press release every time."
F+W Media estimates that the last decent comic to be published in North America was Runaways #8, released in November of 2005, though they admit that the final issue of Planetary might also qualify, since it wasn't released until 2008, despite being originally solicited in 1972, due to the comically absurd inability of artist John Cassaday to meet deadlines . "We basically feel we've been wasting our time and money for almost ten years based on the vague hope that the industry would rebound from this creative slump," said a representative for the company. "We finally had to face facts and realize that isn't going to happen."
The final issue of Comic Buyers Guide will be the March 2013 issue.
