The Letters Page

As I said yesterday I miss the letters pages in the comic books. Sometimes I would read that page first. I must not have been the only one. I remember a couple of times when an editor would reveal part of the plot to that issues story in an answer to a question someone would ask in a letter. Before he did the editor would say something like if you’re the type who reads the letter pages first then you may want to stop now if you don’t want to know the ending to this issue. I usually kept reading. I don’t know for sure if Stan Lee started the letters page in the 60’s but he took full advantage of it. He talked to the readers as if he was standing right there in front of them. He created his own slang terms like “real frantic one” “face front true believers” and “make mine Marvel.” You felt as if you were in a club with your friends talking about comics. Eventually the letters page got a spin off called the Marvel Bullpen Bulletins Page. Stan had a section called Stan Lee’s Soapbox. There he would tell you what was on his mind. Usually it was about Marvel sometimes it was about what was going on in the world. Most of the time he would bring that around to related to the world of comic books. The page informed you about what was going on in other Marvel comic books and also in the lives of the creators. Without realizing it Stan had created a loose knit family. Of course other comic book companies saw what was done and tried to imitate it. DC started their own letters page. At first it wasn’t as fan friendly as Marvel’s. Letters to Marvel usually started out Dear Stan and Jack. Letters to DC would start out saying Dear Editor. At Marvel you were writing to a friend. At DC you were writing to a business. By the 70’s DC had gotten a bit friendlier. The one company that had almost as much success with their letters page was Archie Comics. The letters weren’t just about the stories in the books but about how the Archie comics affected the reader’s life. They might send in a poem or they might tell how a story in Archie comics caused them to get friends together to clean up litter in their neighborhood. Just as Marvel created fan clubs like the Merry Marvel Marching Society and later Friends of Ole’ Marvel, Archie had the Archie Club. The letters page was really reports from club members. Membership was only 25 cents. The top four letters were printed in the Archie Club News each month and given prizes that ranged from $1 to $5. Club members were given a button as a club member and a press card. You see club members were considered reporters as they were reporting on events in their lives. I use to imagine using mine to get into a real news event and report on it but I never tried that. Another aspect I miss about the letters page is the title of the page. At Marvel they had “Let’s rap with Cap” for Captain America or “The Spider’s Web” for Spider-Man. DC had “Metropolis Mailbag” for Superman or “Cape and Cowl Comments” for World’s Finest. The most fun part was when they had contest for the readers to name the page. You would send them a letter that contained your entry and hope you would win a prize. Usually it was just seeing your name in print. Sometimes it might be something special like having a character named after you or getting a year’s subscription to the comic book. When DC started a Captain Atom comic book I was probably one of the many readers who suggested calling it “Splitting the Atom” I believe they wound up calling it “Quantum Comments.” Speaking of prizes, this was another thing that Stan had fun with. If you spotted something that was out of place in one of his comics, like a typo calling Spiderman Superman for example, he would give you a No-Prize. Many readers tried to get one of these. Early on if you did get on Marvel you send you an envelope saying that it contained the No-prize. There was nothing inside. Later with the cost of postage rising they stopped the mailing even if you did win a No-prize. Hey it was in the title. You won no prize. As I got older I would sometimes look back on old issues to see if any big names in the industry had their letters printed. You would expect them to be filled with names like Marv Wolfman, Len Wein, Mark Evanier, Fred Hembeck, Neal Adams etc. You know it turned out to be rare to see any names of future comic book writers and artist. I remember seeing one from Martin Pasko but that is about it. After reading all of this you would think that I would have had a lot of letters published. I had none of mine published. I only wrote two. One to Marvel Team Up and one to Green Lantern and neither were considered for publication. That didn’t matter. I still loved the letters page. This is what I had on my mind today.