Hey, remember letter columns in comic books? They don't have many these days but back in the sixties, almost every comic book had one and I oughta know. I was in a lot of them.
I still remember the moment I first saw one of my letters — and therefore, my name affixed to something I'd written — in print. It was an issue of Aquaman. I picked it up off the rack in a drugstore where I bought comics and as I carried it to the counter to purchase, I flipped through it and spotted my name. It was a chilling but pleasant sensation. I stared at it, unleashed a mental "wow" and then went back and bought a second copy.
The fellow at the drugstore thought I must have made a mistake. Why on Earth would anyone buy two (2) copies of the same comic book?
(Odd coincidence: The editor of Aquaman then — the man who I suppose selected my letter for publication — was George Kashdan and he was then based in New York. Forty years later, Mr. Kashdan lived and finally died in a nursing home across the street from where that drugstore in Los Angeles had been located.)
I was proud for a while to be a lettercol "regular" but even before I got into the industry, the pride diminished. A number of my letters when they saw print had been edited or rewritten to say things I had not said, once even turning a negative letter into a positive one. One time, my name was on a letter I had not authored at all. At least twice, remarks meant as jokes came out as serious points after editorial meddling.
When I got into comics, I understood why they did that…and why I shouldn't have been as proud as I was to be so often-published in letter pages. Most of the letters comics then received — I'd say at least 80% of them — were unprintable. They were figuratively (sometimes, literally) in crayon and they said things like, "I love Green Lantern" or "Can you send me a drawing?"
My letters had been rewritten by some poor slob who was handed a pile of mail like that and expected to cobble up a two-page text feature that was interesting and made the readers sound like they were over the age of nine. He was in the habit of treating reader mail like rough drafts to be polished to suit his needs.
Not only were a lot of letters rewritten like that but many were outright fakes. In the mid-seventies when I was back in New York for a few weeks, I helped out a gang of friends who were assembling letter pages for DC, Marvel and Warren books. We took turns writing bogus missives for each others' assignments, often signing the names of some fictitious comic fans who appeared in stories my pal Dwight Decker was then writing for fanzines.
One other point I should make: These days, when folks compose scholarly articles about comic books of the past, they often quote the letter columns as somehow indicative of the feelings of the general readership at the time. Believe me, they never were. Even in columns that didn't include phony letters and heavily-rewritten ones, the mail was never reflective of the audience. By volume, it was statistically insignificant.
As for the correspondents' intentions, it was pretty clear that people who wanted to see their letters in print would parrot the style and sentiments of the letters they saw being published. It was also always negative about change. If you changed artists or the hero's costume, the mail was always 90% negative for a while.
And the selection of which letters to print, real or fake, was often driven by an agenda on the part of the lettercol assembler. I'd say nine times out of ten, if you saw a lot of negative letters published about the work of the guy writing the comic, it didn't mean the general readership thought the guy was a bad writer. It meant the person assembling the letter page wanted his job.
When I got into the position of truly controlling the letter pages in comics I edited, I did not edit letters for more than grammar, spelling and sometimes for length. I also did not foist the job off on some assistant. My assistant retyped letters but I selected them and I answered 'em. I thought the ones in Groo were often pretty funny, mostly because of funny readers, not me. I didn't get paid for doing those pages but I believed/hoped they added something to the comics.
What all this is leading up to is this: I'm currently assembling letter pages for the second, third and fourth issues of the new Groo Vs. Conan mini-series which comes out next week. The first has a text page with no letters. I have to get #2 and #3 to press before I can expect any real mail on #1. So here's your chance.
I'm accepting letters for the page at this address — letters@groothewanderer.com — and I'll print the best ones I get in the next 48 hours in #2 and best of the following 48 hours in #3. Please do not be serious or attempt to say anything of subtance about Groo the Wanderer because, you know, it's Groo. But if you have a question or comment, send it in. You might have the thrill I once got from an issue of Aquaman. If you do, buy two copies.