Mr. Magazine

A Mr. Magazine™ Musing…

Growing up, I always believed that magazines were magical, from the contents inside the pages to the “secret” locations where they were created. To my childlike wonder, these sweet spots where all things magically magazine were maintained, was like the Land of Oz. It had its heroes; it had its villains; and it had its spies (what did you think those Flying Monkeys were doing for the Wicked Witch anyway?).

That being said, when two magazines from two entirely different “Wizards” comes around with very similar covers, contents, or names, my thoughts are always traveling down that path of least resistance: my childhood imaginations of how magazines worked.

Take, for example, when back in the last century, Family Circle shows up on the newsstands with a beautiful cover showcasing a delicious-looking pasta dish and then days later, Woman’s Day is sitting there next to it with basically the same cover. Or there is no major news story or catastrophe going on in the free world and TIME magazine and Newsweek are sporting the same cover story.

Well, bearing that in mind, Mr. Magazine™ would like to present to you two premiere issues of two new titles that will definitely cause you to do two double takes(regardless of the subject matter of both magazines): FMG Publications’ DIY Guns  and F+W’s Guns DIY. And no, those are not typos.

DIY Guns is for the gun enthusiast who likes to tinker with their own firearms. From the American Handgunner brand, this title covers handguns heavily, but also touches on some long-gun endeavors that will surely keep the rifle, shotgun-lover busy as well.

Guns DIY stresses in its first editor’s letter: America’s DIY Firearm Heritage Lives! Customization and modification are the two mainstays of this new title and offers readers the opportunity to make these firearm transformations at home.

So, basically, two different “Wizards” have created two different magazines with titles that are hauntingly similar and content that, in some ways, could be considered very familiar to each other.

This caused Mr. Magazine™ to ask himself what’s in a name in the world of magazines anyway? As long as there is room on newsstands for both of these titles (or any others out there already or coming up) new magazines are the life’s blood of this industry. And these two new titles from long-time publishing companies may or may not have known about each other, but obviously, it’s a given; great minds think alike… that, or one of them left the windows open and the Flying Monkeys had a field day.

Until the next time…

See you at the newsstands….