Festivals Extra: Wizard World CEO Resigns; Shuffling At Top

I see three different stories on Wizard World CEO and President John Macaluso resigning: The Beat, Bleeding Cool, Newsarama. I don't know who was first so I'm linking to all of them. You should at least read the first two, and this analysis of his salary linked to by Bleeding Cool. Macaluso remains on the board. John Maata takes over Macaluso's positions, while someone named Paul Kessler takes over as board chairman. Macaluso has held his position since 2012.

I imagine the smart thing to do here is to link this news to recent money-losing performances by the company, after a profitable 2014 that some thought meant the convention-throwing business had turned a corner. I'm enough of a dissembling mess that I'm always divided on Wizard, basically in all its iterations. On the one hand: I think they actively do harmful things, or at least have a history of profiting by doing so. I also think they're gross, which isn't the kindest impulse for me to have. Turning the affection fans have for their various items of interest into a money-making machine that returns so much to its highest-ups in terms of salary strikes me as demeaning on a certain level. At the same time, there is genuine love being exploited here, willingly given over to Wizard World on the part of many fans. There are also so many scrambling to take part in comics that for many of them Wizard is somewhere between a natural fit in terms of its fans' joy for like-minded material and a make-the-best-of-it-you-can fit in terms of finding any way to get more people in front of your work. I'm also dubious that they serve a lot of markets not served by a convention of some sort, whose organizers have to make money before they take home 1/10 the money going to the person that gets to be Wizard head honcho. I won't be sad if they go away, even if that lack of empathy makes me a dick.
 
posted 11:55 pm PST | Permalink
 

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