Pipeline #494 - 28 Nov 2006

[Augie De Blieck Jr.]

2006 will be the first year I don't have a letter in print since I started letterhacking 15 years ago. And that got me to thinking about letters columns, letterhacking, and all the rest. 2200 words later, you get a column.

The monthly look at PREVIEWS will begin next week now.

-Augie

[pmpknface]

I'm gonna have to cram Previews in in only a few days. I may not get my copy until tomorrow.

[Augie De Blieck Jr.]

I've had it since Wednesday, but have yet to crack it open. It'll be a short podcast this month, just because we won't have time to prepare for it properly. Hey, whatever works!

-Augie

[pmpknface]

That excuse is as good as any. :D

O... I owe you an email on this too...

[goman]

Concerning last weeks podcast: What is it with comic podcasters doing bad Stan Lee impersonations? I've heard three recently, and I just had to ask. Is it in some kind of podcaster handbook, or do you guys get together to plan these things?

[pmpknface]

I think on some level we just want to say the words "True believer" or "Excelsior!" and be taken seriously. :p

I may do impersonations, but I'll stay away from Stan. Promise!

[torippu]

I've had it since Wednesday, but have yet to crack it open. It'll be a short podcast this month, just because we won't have time to prepare for it properly. Hey, whatever works!

-Augie
Drats! Even if the podcast is short this month I went through the latest Previews with a fine toothed comb over the long holiday weekend and lots of notes/observations/things that I noticed to talk about...

[pmpknface]

I'm sure we'll still cover PLENTY!

[Augie De Blieck Jr.]

The Stan Lee impersonation thing is a direct results of the Comic Podcasting Cabal putting its master plan to work. This is only the first stage.

We're all working on our Jack Kirby impressions next.

We were going to go with our Steve Ditko impressions, but that much dead air is bad for podcasting.

-Augie

[pmpknface]

We're all working on our Jack Kirby impressions next.

-Augie

Yeah, but it's hard to get the stogie visual across via a podcast... it's still a WIP...

[goman]

See, the good thing about a Kirby impersonation is not as many people know what he sounds like, so you can get away with a bad one.

[torippu]

2006 will be the first year I don't have a letter in print since I started letterhacking 15 years ago. And that got me to thinking about letters columns, letterhacking, and all the rest. 2200 words later, you get a column.

The monthly look at PREVIEWS will begin next week now.

-Augie
Here's a funny tangent to today's column - when Image first started up and I got my roommate hooked on Savage Dragon, he and I would have monthly debates about whether or not either that Augie De Blieck Jr. guy or Olav Beemer from the Netherlands were real people! I think that we were amazed at the output from you 2 guys in those early Highbrow books - you had something to say about every issue, every month.

[Chad Anderson]

Great column, Augie, and I say that as someone who's shamed by your output, having had a grand total of three letters printed (Batman, Amazing Spider-Man and Action Comics Weekly, thanks for asking).

I understand why the letters columns went away, but it still saddens me. As you noted, the good ones were really great, and it connected you to the book and the creators in a way that may seem quaint in an era of all-access messageboards, but it was the only game in town at the time. And it is always kinda fun to see a letter in a back issue from someone who later went on to become a pro (or, ahem, an online comics reviewer), particularly since the letters sometimes express a love for certain characters that would probably embarrass the pro today.

I agree with you, Mike Gold was certainly one of the best, but I also have fond memories of a few assistant editors from the '90s, such as Scott Peterson, who did the letters columns for a few of the Bat-titles, if I remember correctly. In fact, a throwaway reference he made to a band we both liked led me to give him a bootleg of one the the band's shows at a convention. A few weeks later I got a thank-you letter and a Knightfall trade in the mail signed by the writers and artists involved. Sure, today I would've e-mailed him and file-shared an MP3 of the concert somehow, but it's not the same.

I also always really liked the letters columns run by the creators where they talked about things outside comics as well. Denny O'Neil's reading lists in The Question were always fun, and Garth Ennis led me to a few good books with similar recommendations in the Preacher letters page. James Robinson also ran a great letters column in Starman while he kept it up; he talked about the stuff he collected and folks would write in about the things they collected (beyond comics, of course), which generally made for an interesting read. And, of course, who could ever forget Grant Morrison's letters column spurring the readers of The Invisibles on to self-abuse in the name of creating a sigil that would save the comic from cancellation. Can't say I participated, but I'm thankful to those who did. Had that been a post on a message board, it would probably have been either removed by the mods or wiped from existence by now.

[pmpknface]

I feel like such an outsider. I don't really care for the letters columns that much. Even today, I don't read what others wrote in, but I do read the replies. The only real time I do read what fans write in is when the entries are numbered. I like numbered questions. :)

I've never gotten into the letters pages that just go on and on like the ones in POWERS and I don't feel like I'm missing anything buying the book in tpb. 90% of the time you get fans saying how much they either HATED or LOVED something, and I know what I felt about that issue so I don't really care what "fanboy1986@aol.com" had to say about it.

The biggest kick I get out of those pages is looking at OLD back issues and finding some guy named Kurt Busiek from Cambridge, MA had written in a letter. Or last week I had a back issue and Marc DeMattais wrote one. Now THAT's cool! :D

I do prefer that comics HAVE them, even if they aren't all that entertaining to me. I like how future things can be teased a bit, and the letters page is a great place to do it.

If I had to pick my favorite letters column today it'd have to be CABLE & DEADPOOL. Flip through that one next time you're in the shop, if you don't already buy it. Now THAT'S entertainment! :D

[torippu]

Great column, Augie, and I say that as someone who's shamed by your output, having had a grand total of three letters printed (Batman, Amazing Spider-Man and Action Comics Weekly, thanks for asking).

My output wasn't much better. I probably didn't have more than 10 letters printed (probably less) with most of them being in Erik Larsen's books. I also think that I may have had 1 or 2 printed in Mark Crilley's Akiko comic book.

I may have mentioned this before, but my most notorious letter was sent after Star #1 was released where I wrote something like "Well, I guess it's pretty obvious now that Peter Klaptin is the identity of Star" and Larsen's response was something along the lines of "Oh, really?" To this day, that letter still haunts me, especially knowing later on that Augie had figured out the identity of Star (who turned out to be a completely different character for those of you who don't read SD) many, many, many months (years?) prior to that mini-series being released.

[torippu]

The biggest kick I get out of those pages is looking at OLD back issues and finding some guy named Kurt Busiek from Cambridge, MA had written in a letter. Or last week I had a back issue and Marc DeMattais wrote one. Now THAT's cool! :D

Yes, it is fun finding the creators of today in the letters pages of yesterday.

My favorite discovery along these lines happened a couple of years ago. I was flipping through some old GI Joe issues at my folks house while visiting for Christmas and noticed a letter from my best friend from high school in the letters pages. At the time the letter was printed, he lived in Michigan, hadn't yet moved to Georgia and I hadn't even met him yet! It was cool to discover it 20 years after it was published and to call him up out of the blue to confirm whether or not that was him.