Sometimes it was nothing more sinister than picking a letter because it was neatly typed and thus saved the editor some work. (Roger Stern tells the story of pointing out to one of the writer/editors that he was running absolute drivel in his letter columns because he was applying this approach, and it happened that a couple of the more, er, damaged fans happened to be good typists.)

More often, tho, an editor chose a letter because it served some purpose, usually promotional. The old "Glad you asked about Dr. NastyGuy, as he will be appearing in our very next issue!"

What sprang from this, let's call it "innocence" on the part of the fans was a false sense of empowerment. By getting a letter published, they felt they had really "made a difference" -- even if it usually meant they had no idea of the publishing schedules of the books! (There was one guy who used to write to FANTASTIC FOUR almost like clockwork, complaining one month about something he thought I was doing, and then writing the next month to say he was glad to see I had followed his advice and gone in a different direction. He was completely oblivious to the fact that the issue that commanded his second letter had been finished and done months before he wrote his first letter!)

In the corner symbol, Sue is partially invisible. The colorist has made the background green, but her legs, what can be seen of them, pale blue. This is because "Sue is always blue!" One of those arbitrary "rules" that find their way into the lexicon.

The effect is to make her look rather more like a floating amputee than a woman who is partially invisible. It's no wonder, then, I suppose, that over the years I have received several letters from fans who did not quite "get" what being "invisible" means. Best typified by the one who suggested that, just as Johnny sometimes used his flame to sculpt dopplegangers of himself, Sue should use her forcefield to make "invisible copies" to fool the bad guys.