That Old Captain America/Wizard Magazine Controversy

Warning: nothing new to see here. If you want timely observations, you'll need to check back at a later date (or, some would suggest, peruse a better site). This here be history.

I was looking over site stats and saw that Johanna over at Comics Worth Reading had linked to my article about the declining popularity of Newsarama. She mentioned how their doing away with forums irritated her for a reason other than what I was pointing out in my post: links to old 'Rama articles were now dead, since the forums had been wiped from existence.

After thanking her for the link in her comments section, it hit me: one of the few original articles I had done for Newsarama (not counting convention coverage) may have been lost to the ages. Googling it confirmed that it was one of the things that had all traces deleted off the 'Rama website. What a kick square to the nuts.

While I was able to dig up the original Word doc I sent for publishing, I'll never be able to locate the conversation it generated and the give and take. I know from my notes that it was the first interview Drew Seldin had given on the subject, even if it was one of the last to get posted on the sites. For instance, Rich Johnston had a brief bit published about it in his Lying in the Gutters over at CBR, but I had talked to him before that call took place, which is partially evidenced by the message not being quite so well-formed from Wizard yet. There are some similarities in answer, but the longer form of our discussion revealed some stumbling blocks.

As I conducted the whole interview on my own (from tracking down Seldin, to developing the questions and recording the phone conversation), never received any compensation and now the article is no longer even published on Newarama, I'm going to repost it here for posterity's sake.

Oh...and for the record? Drew Seldin was a pleasure to talk to. He's a great guy who had nothing to do with the decisions Wizard made, just was in the unenviable position of having to deal with the aftermath.

Original article (with "Newarama" now edited out) follows after the break.

(full article...)