Meet the Staff: Justin Aclin

July 15, 2008 on 2:50 pm | In Staff Bio | No Comments

There are five members of the ToyFare staff and we’ve met four of them so far (Managing Editor Kate Napolitano, Associate Editor TJ Dietsch, Designer Jairo Leon and Price Guide Editor Jon Gutierrez), so that must mean I’m late again.

My name is Justin Aclin, and I’m the Editor of ToyFare.

What does the Editor do? How does one get to be an Editor? Why did my old title used to sound better than my current title even though my new position is higher? Strap yourselves in, because I’m going to answer at least two of those questions. And I’m extremely long-winded.

As Editor, I’m basically in charge of the whole shebang here. I’m blessed with an extremely talented staff who make my job a whole lot easier, but basically it’s my responsibility to make sure that everything that goes in the magazine meets ToyFare’s high standards of entertainment, readability and juvenile humor. Not a page gets printed unless I give it the okay, which means that, ultimately, all the typos are my fault.

Aside from the actual editing, I’m in charge of determining the content for the magazine, meeting with Jon and TJ to brainstorm all the feature articles and come up with ideas for covers. I’ll also write the occasional article for the magazine, and I remain one of the head writers for Twisted ToyFare Theatre, as well as the goofy word balloons scattered throughout the issues (and, in case I haven’t mentioned it in a couple of days, the newly returned Big Shots, which you can find starting in next month’s issue #134).

I started as a Wizard intern during college, was hired as an Associate Editor for ToyFare right out of college, then slowly worked my way up to Senior Editor under Zach Oat’s Editorship. For reasons no one can adequately explain, Senior Editor is less good than Editor. Then I left for a couple of months. Then Zach left. Then I came back and took his job. And now I’ve got a desk that faces the window.

My all-time favorite toy lines are Masters of the Universe (in all its incarnations), Xevoz, Marvel Legends, DC Universe Classics and MiniMates. And because it’s part of my job and I also enjoy the hell out of it, you can frequently find me over on the Wizard Universe Message Board, answering fans’ questions and listening to your suggestions for how to make the magazine better. Stop in and let us know how we’re doing.

Well, that wasn’t too ridiculously long, was it? If you find yourself yearning for even more of my ramblings, you can check out this interview with Zach and I from a few years back on the radio program Fanboy Radio. It gets into some of the details about the making of Twisted ToyFare and the magazine, if you’re into that sort of thing.