I used to write for COMICS SCENE *many* years ago, and thought it was a fun gig. I loved interviewing creators.

When this was all just magazines, it seems to me that the "keyhole" into the behind-the-scenes was a narrow one and a lot easier for fandom to ignore. After all, you have to BUY the magazines! With the rise of the internet, everything is out there now--often for the worse and with no filters at all.

Just my two cents.

When this was all just magazines, it seems to me that the "keyhole" into the behind-the-scenes was a narrow one and a lot easier for fandom to ignore. After all, you have to BUY the magazines! With the rise of the internet, everything is out there now--often for the worse and with no filters at all.

••

One of the truly bizarre things of which I have become aware since I first stepped into the cyber-jungle of the internet, some fifteen years ago, is the strange "crossover" mentality in some fans/posters.

Back in the day, when everything was paper, it was considered a Big Deal to get a letter published. One felt as tho one was actually contributing in some way to the creative process. After all, the editor had read one's letter, and selected it, out of hundreds, even thousands, for publication. That made it IMPORTANT.

Setting aside the many reasons editors might have for picking a letter (it was typed, rather than hand written being a leading contender!), there is nothing of this "special" quality to posting on the internet. There is, as noted above, no "filter", so all the writer/poster needs is a marginal ability to type and hit the "ENTER" key. Yet many who post online still believe themselves to be making a valuable contribution. They think they are being LISTENED TO, and rather miss the point that they have become "a voice crying in the wilderness", even LESS likely to get noticed than someone writing a letter on a piece of paper.

It's why you can have forums debating how Superman and Spider-Man can be living on the same Earth. I suspect that anyone who thought that way years ago, and wrote a letter to DC, would be ignored and their letter would be thrown in the bin.

••

Yup.

I think readers back then were happily oblivious to the fact that letters got chosen mostly on the strength of serving some editorial agenda. Occasionally negative letters were run, if they presented their case in a coherent manned ("U SUK" would not have made the cut), but the negative mail was in the minority, and it was difficult to represent it accurately.

For instance, when I was doing FANTASTIC FOUR I'd get about 500 letters per month. Now, a good quarter of those were illegible, combinations fo colored inks on colored paper, or pencil leads smeared and smudged, but of the rest maybe a dozen would be flat out negative. So, in a lettercol with room for maybe six or eight short letters, running a negative one would be giving an undue bias. The percentage was simply not that high.

Many complained, of course, that Marvel "never" printed negative letters. But that word, "never", was about as valid then as it is when it turns up on the internet today. Not very.

As the editor of a UK Superman title said back in the 80s, he was working well ahead of us. Whilst we were reading the second or third issue of the title he was editing, he was already working on the fifth, sixth or seventh issue's features. I think some fans forget that by the time their letter is printed with it's "suggestions", the creative people are way ahead of them.

••

This is one that has been a bit of a vexation from the early days of my career -- and from the early days of the industry, I'm sure.

There are so many fans who immerse themselves in the Lore, but learn almost nothing of the Process. They seem somehow to think the comics they hold in their hands were produced only a matter of days before they were shipped off to the comic shops. (Too close to true, these days, but not always so!) Many a time I would get mail to the second part of a story in which the letter writer took "credit" for suggesting the solution I presented to the problems posed in the first part of the story. No awareness at all, it seemed, that the second part was probably finished three or four months before the first part went on sale.