Noah Broessel of Pop Culture Paradise in Tempe, Arizona saw John Riley's comments on Wizard's covers (see 'John Riley of Grasshopper's Comics on Wizard Covers'), and has his own problems with Wizard.

I started disliking Wizard's tactics when they felt the 'need' to have their own store instead of promoting comic stores and the locator service for selling DC direct figures, comics, busts etc.  To me it's a conflict of interest for a magazine that gives full page, color ads to the same companies that it is now selling product for.  I can imagine they can work out special discounts and exclusives figures in place for advertising.

Now they have special figures/Heroclix that people can only get by subscribing to Wizard directly instead of coming into my store to buy them!  Wouldn't it have been better for Wizard and Diamond to work a deal where Diamond sends me one Heroclix for every copy of Wizard that I've averaged over the last 12 months and reward customers with the figure that buy it in my store?  Obviously this has hurt my sales of Wizard since my comic collector/Heroclix players have all signed up for 1-2 years and don't need it from me anymore!