I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Stan Lee a Letter

Sit back, kiddies and kiddettes, and let ol' Uncle Bully tell you a story about an older time, a simpler time, a better time, when Pepperidge Farm cookies roamed the plains and prairies, when comic books only had four colors and when Tony Stark wasn't (so much of) a jerk. In these long-ago, far-away days, the internet was just the gleam in the eye of that bright tyke little Alvin Gore, and email? Pfui. Didn't exist! You could pony up your wheat pennies and buffalo nickels and plasticine dimes at the old Western Union to send a telegram or, as Grampa Bull used to call it, "a word whistle," or better yet, hitch up old Dobbin to the buckboard and whinny on down to Mr. Drucker's General Store and Post Office, where for a mere three shiny pennies, an acorn and a whittlin' stick, you could buy yourself a glossy new first class postage stamp to stick on an envelope so you could write Ida Lou out on the farm in Oklahoma, or maybe send away for that feed catalogue you saw advertised in the back of The Farmer's Almanac, or maybe...just maybe...you could write a letter to your favorite comic book magazine.

Yes, before everyone and his little stuffed bull had a comic book blog to compain about Final Crisis and the size of Power Girl's breasts, you had to mail a letter into a comic book to write about it, and we liked it that way. Altho' Mister Stan Lee didn't invent letter columns, writing to comics was all the rage once the Marvel Age of Comics got underway in the Swingin' Sixties. Why, writing to Smilin' Stan and King Jack was as popular a pastime in the 1960s as challenging the establishment, burning your bra, and hanging out at the Coffee-a-Go-Go listening to the hep rhythms of Bernard the Poet.

The comic book letter columns are mostly gone from Marvel Comics (with the exception of Three Times Monthly Spider-Man, which reinstituted them recently during "Brand New Day"). But while they lasted, it was a Golden Age for the fans. That was the beauty of it all: the sheer democracy of the system. Anybody could see their name in print, anybody could have their letter published if they wrote a missive that amused or intrigued the Marvel gophers or editors (or if they wrote during a month nobody else wrote in). Why, even early on, look at the common folk fans who were writing into Fantastic Four, a guy just like you an' me who got his letter published in FF #4:



Of course, that magazine, and that letter-writer, soon vanished and were never to be heard from again.

Naw, jus' kiddin'.

Here's s'more letters to the Fantastic Four Fan Page from folks who would one day make a name for themselves in the world o' comics:

Gerry Conway! (FF #50)

Denny O'Neil! (FF #53)

Tony Isabella! (FF #74)

Don McGregor! (FF #80)

Alan Kupperberg! (FF #101)

J. M. DeMatteis! (FF #101)

Mike W. Barr! (FF #131)

Jill Thompson! (FF #246)

And some guy by the name o' Stan... (FF #269)

Huh. That guy's going nowhere in this business.