I just got bored reading all the groveling.

But I loved reading letters pages. Somewhere else in the comments on this blog I described meeting Jim Burke, aka T.M. Maple and while I was sort to disappointed to discover my long-worshipped icon of letter-pages was in fact an overweight, opinionated middle-aged guy (but then won’t most of us become that eventually?) I was still thrilled to be able to at long last meet him.

My favourite letter pages of all time would have to be (in no particular order):

1) Batman and the Outsiders. Mike W. Barr had the funniest way of replying to people and always loved to court controversy (I’ll never forget the time I went on a tirade about the Moral Majority Right, or the time he basically disavowed a Bob Haney-scripted Batman/Metamorpho team up from the ’70s happened in continuity– not surprisingly the latter was the more controversial!)

2) Mike Gold’s various letter pages in the back of various First Comics in the ’80s. The letters were fascinating and Mike Gold had a way of responding that was smart, articulate and stirred up trouble.

3) The issue of Swamp Thing where there was a letter by a famous female fan (I want to say Robyn Snyder or maybe Heidi MacDonald but I’m sure I’m wrong) about the female werewolf issue which was answered in incredible detail by Alan Moore and then ends with “Remember when the letter page was where people asked when Arcane was coming back?”

But my all time favourite letter page of all time has to be early-to-mid 80s Cerebus. The letters were always fascinating and filled with insight…and then there was the Chris Elliott-esque gems written by a demented soul named Mike Bannon. Between them came something almost as entertaining as the comic itself. Of course this was years before things got kind of…weird with Cerebus.

Currently, you can find a letters page in the Johnny DC comics, True Story, Swear to God, Powers, BPRD and some of the other indie books. I think Noble causes/Dynamo 5 have one if memory serves.

I remember seeing a lot of the letter writers such as Uncle Elvis and T.M. Maple in the letter pages, especially, T.M. Maple. It was as if he read every comic and wrote a letter for each one!

These days hew would be the EW comics reviewer or something, certainly he would have had a blog. It is a shame he passed away.

I would love it if letters pages made acomeback. Afterall just because there is an internet does not mean people cannot pass on their comments to a publisher via email or a formn at he website, etc.

Lauren

Y’know what I think happened? The Internet. These days, whatever random thought that pops into my head can be posted for the bored unattention of no telling how many Joe Blogreaders or Jane Messageboarders. There’s no qualification, no sense that I’m contributing to the publication of a comic book, not even the self-sacrificing rite-of-passage-ness of buying a stamp. I can write “CAMELOT FALLS sucks!” right now, totally unsolicited and with all the reasoned thoughtfulness of a burrito fart, and be somewhat satisfied that Kurt Busiek will read it and possibly forthwith slit his wrists in the unknown face of my spur-of-the-moment disdain (no, not really, ‘Camelot Falls’ is cool, hi Kurt!). Where’s the accomplishment in that, the sense of achievement? It cheapens things, this random blurting of infinite proliferation. So what if I got a letter printed in an issue of NIGHTWING? Some drunken illiterate on the DC.com Nightwing Message Board posted what appears to be hieroglyphic computer code interspersed with curse words and a link to Siberian porn, that was similiarly read by a Nightwing editor and thousands of DC fanboys and will be preserved for the entirety of digital records. I don’t feel to proud anymore of something associated with THAT.

The ones from Tales from the Crypt, The Haunt of Fear and The Vault of Horror are a hoot. The Crypt-Keeper, The Old Witch and the Vault-Keeper (actually Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein) loved to insult the letter-writers.

Old letterhack humor — ‘Hey, lock the door.’ ‘Dear Door ..’

I also got a few letters printed in Alan Moore’s comics (I’ve always been proud of my letter in ’1963′, which I tried to write in the 60s Marvel letterhack style); Moore, too, writes great letter columns. Especially ‘League of Extraordinary Gentlemen’. It’s worth tracking them down, it really is. (My favorite was his response to someone asking if Kevin O’Neill was selling original artwork for the series, late in the run after the six or seven-month gap between #4 and #5: “Frankly, at this point we’re not even sure if Kevin O’Neill is even drawing original art for the series, let alone selling it.”)

Other neat letter column moments (which I have no personal connection to, but have fond memories of): The Legion of Super-Heroes electing their chairman in the letter columns; the X-Men personally answering their own letters, rotating from month to month (Wolverine answering letters was a kick); and Mark Gruenwald’s little ‘Mark’s Remarks’ section of the letter columns in books he edited, about two or three paragraphs long but filled with interesting thoughts.

Letter columns. They’re dreamy.

I was lucky (or maybe unlucky) to get a letter published in SWAMP THING back in 1991 or so. I was commentating on Doug Wheelers last issue.

Possibly my favourite letters column was in CEREBUS which sometimes was 20 pages long.

And yes, that DC Nation page is rather dull.

how the years go by….. sigh… [pours more whiskey]

(He’s not going to make it, is he?)

[sighs.... pours more whiskey... waits]

And no, I never got a letter published. I sent in two, in 1973, gushing ecstatic barely-adolescent praise for the Avengers/Defenders fight and for McGregor’s Black Panther. I was absolutely crushed when neither was printed.
But then a year later another writer with exactly the same name as me was published in a Daredevil. I’m slightly embarrassed now to confess that I insisted to friends that it was my letter, and that somehow they printed the wrong address and town by mistake.

I might have had another comment in, perhaps, an issue of Static: Rebirth of the Cool, but my memory’s a bit fuzzy.

I remember T.M. Maple. There was a letterhack for ya.