Know Ye These, the Hallowed Ranks of Marveldom

[Aaron Kashtan]

This just came up on the Comics Creators Fan Letters thread, and I'd been thinking of doing a thread on it for a while now, so here we go.

As Scott! informs us here, the Hallowed Ranks of Marveldom are:

R.F.O. (Real Frantic One) – a buyer of at least three Marvel mags a month
T.T.B. (Titanic True Believer) – a divinely-inspired “no-prize” winner)
Q.N.S. (Quite ‘Nuff Sayer) – a fortunate frantic one who’s had a letter printed)
K.O.F. (Keeper Of The Flame) [/b] – one who recruits a newcomer to Marvel’s rollickin’ ranks.
P.M.M. (Permanent Marvelite Maximus) – anyone possessing all four of the other titles.
F.F.F. (Fearless Front Facer) – an honorary title bestowed for devotion to Marvel above and beyond the call of duty.

The obvious question is, how many of these ranks do you have? But let's make it even more interesting:

--If you have ever been an R.F.O.-- and I assume most of us have been, at one time or another-- then how long did that last? Are you still an R.F.O.?

--If you are a Q.N.S., where was the letter printed, and what was it about? How heavily was it edited?

--If you are a T.T.B., what did you get the no-prize for?

--If you are a K.O.F., who did you recruit, and under what circumstances?

--As mentioned in the other thread, Roy Thomas is a F.F.F. Has anyone else ever been awarded this honor? If not, who else deserves it?

Excelsior,

[Mark Evanier]

Ranks of Marveldom? What a stupid idea. What cluck came up with that?

[MWGallaher]

I was an RFO from about 1973 through, hm, 1984 or so. I stopped buying Marvels as my meager show of support for Jack Kirby's struggle with them over the return of his original art. I found I didn't miss many of them, and it allowed me to miss things like McFarlane, Liefeld, and Lee's Marvel stints, for which I am, frankly, grateful, and left me entirely uninterested in the Image launch. I don't think I've ever resumed RFO status, although there have been some Marvel series and miniseries that I've bought, like the first Thunderbolts run, Liefeld's unintentional comedy Captain America ("Heroes Reborn"), Busiek & Perez's Avengers, among many others.
I earned QNS with a letter published in Planet of the Apes, in which I praised the script and art of newcomer Ed Hannigan. I think that was his first comics work, which would make mine his first fan letter. I wish they had edited the letter a little more heavily than they did!
I'd give FFF status to Fred Hembeck, whose loving looks back in his many comic strips have served as ambassadors for the back issues. If you want to understand why people love classic Marvels so much, you could get no better explanation than to read a few of Fred's tributes.

[Mike Kuypers]

RFO: Approx. 25 years -- until the proliferation of secret wars, mutant wars, living alien costumes and other drek made me give up on Marvel altogether.

TTB: Got my genuine No Prize (a postcard) from Bill Mantlo for pointing out a silly minor error in an issue of Marvel Team-Up. One panel had Peter Parker clinging to a wall with shoes on. Bill quipped "I bet you couldn't walk on a wall with your shoes off!" Little did he know I have enough trouble walking across a floor, with or without shoes. :)

QNS: My first letter was published in an issue of Master of Kung Fu. (I want to say #28, but that may be wrong.) I wrote it after meeting Al Milgrom at the Detroit Triple Fan Fair. (I wrote something to the effect of, "Al, I was the fan in the wheelchair who approached you in the hotel restaurant." That was edited out of the printed letter.) My other letter was printed in Marvel Team-Up. Again, I don't recall the issue number, and I don't recall what it was about. I do know my request for the No Prize was edited out.

[Mike Kuypers]

Ranks of Marveldom? What a stupid idea. What cluck came up with that?

This cluck!

[i*love*comics*247]

I have been a R.F.O. pretty much since I started collecting comic books back in 1968. A long time.

I have never been a T.T.B. or a Q.N.S. even though I did have a letter printed many years ago in the old CBG. I suggested to Cat Yronwode that I thought Henry Pym would never betray the Avengers (circa Avengers 210-220 approx.) and that his mind was being manipulated by Moondragon. She was very friendly with me but thought differently.

I have been a K.O.F. many times over. No way can I remember everyone but I think Chris Cirino was the first. And this was before I opened my own comic shop.

I can't be a P.M.M. without the two above. But my friend Chris was dubbed an F.F.F. in 1977 by Stan Lee himself. Stan had come to the Univ. of So. Miss for a lecture on Marvel comics. Chris and I went to listen and afterward we "cornered" Stan and led him outside. Chris had painted his Volkswagen Thing orange and painted many of the panels on the Thing with characters from Marvel. Stan's jaw dropped and with his hands shaking (as if using a magic spell), immediately dubbed Chris an F.F.F.er. To this day, even though Chris quit collecting comics long ago, he reminds me of that night. He's such a nerd. :) LOL.

[InfoBroker]

RFO from May of 1966 until sometime in early 1970, when I was buying any comic book with a Marvel label on it. (At least for the most part).

1971 until late 1979 or so. There would be peaks and valleys but meeting the 3 comics a month things was definitely happening.

Sabbatical in 1980-82 due to college expenses and the beginnings of raising of family.

1982 until 1987 or so. Whenever it was that they brought back Jean Grey. Like the movie The Return of Spock it really wasted a classic death story and spoiled the importance of life in all these characters that mean so much to me.

Early 90s, some picking and choosing. There were probably several months in this time frame that the RFO title would apply.

1994 to 2001 or so. Kurt Busiek and Mark Waid's stuff almost exclusively.

Post 2001, not too good overall. Meager amounts of material, all of it writer driven for the most part, except for the John Romita Jr. that tended to buy even if the story wasn't very interesting. Boy do I love his work.

TTB Let's see now, I have three no-prizes in all. All are envelopes proclaiming that the no-prize is inside...

Somewhere... I'm still trying to find them in there.

The first was for a silly minor error, but I get the feeling that hundreds of fans claimed it along with me. See the cover to Spider-mand #56. The error is blatantly obvious.

The second was given to me for a re-designed masthead that I did for Daredevil comics. It never saw print, but Linda Fite like it enought to type on the no-prize letter itself, "For a Marvelous Masterpiece of Artwork" and she even signed it. I felt so special to all my comic friends showing that one off.

The final one was for a long essay that I did for Expository Writing class in 12th grade. It focused on hero-types in the modern age and how I felt that super-heroes were the myths of our time. That I could tie common threads back to Beowulf impressed the teacher, since she also taught British Literature. Not so ironically enough I had her for it the following semester. (Take about polishing my apples early).

KOF - During the early years of collecting, there were two waves of comic book recruiting. The first was in 1967 when I practically had the entire neighboor of boys reading comics. Must have been a dozen all told, and a couple had pretty decent collections of a several hundred Marvelous Marvel Masterpieces.

The second was in 1971, when I dragged several fellow art students into the comic reading fold. Selling them on Adams and Wrightson, Kaluta and Aparo was easy. Kirby was a differnt kind of a sell, where reading the comic, not just looking at the pretty pictures was crucial. But once hooked, those guys became hardcore Kirby addicts.

Thirty Years in the Making

I didn't do too much letter writing to the comic companies during the prime boyhood years of 12 to 16. I was too busy making my own comics for that I guess. However there were some moments.

My first letter ever printed in a comical book was Bat-man #254, er no wait a minute that's not a Marvel Comic. Moving forward...

Circa 1975 Roy Thomas mentions a letter of mine in one of the Savage Swords of Conan. OF course he spelled my name wrong (John Baron or Barron I think) and he twisted the name of the town I was living in as well. But it was definitely me and my letter. I was commenting about the wizard in the story "Citadel at the Center of Time" and what a neat character he was, evilness and all. I think his name was Shamus Shim Ukin or somethng of that ilk. I'm hoping Roq can help pin the name down for me. My Savage Swords are all boxed up. Anyway, I was thinking that it would be nice to have a comic book that starred a Socerer for a change. I mean there several (at the time) that featured the Sword guy. Why not consider the other side of the S&S coin? This complex and sinister fellow seemed like such a perfect character to twist a series around.

Roy mentioned that chances were very good that would be seeing him again, soon in a future issue or two of Conan, but as I remember, it never happened.

And yea ok, the letter wasn't actually printed so I still can't claim the title.

Ah here we go. It's 1997 or early 1998. I'm commenting within the Comics and Animation forum on Compuserve to Kurt Busiek and Tom Brevvort about how much I approve of the name Socrates for the name of Pepper Pot's puppy dog. Seemed so appropriate since I have used that name for many of my email addresses over the years. Their answer was, shall we say a bit suggestive in nature.

Ok, yea it isn't much of a deep and detailed analysis of comics and their creators. But Hey! It got printed in a Marvel Comic Book and thus allowed me a legitimate claim to the QNS title. And with that one in hand, PMM also came within reach.

-jb the (member of both MMMS clubs with two MMMS numbers to prove it) ib -

[Aaron Kashtan]

The first was for a silly minor error, but I get the feeling that hundreds of fans claimed it along with me. See the cover to Spider-mand #56. The error is blatantly obvious.

Here's the cover so that we can all look for the error...



spoilers:

Are you referring to the use of an exclamation mark, instead of a question mark, after the word "Disaster"?

end of spoilers

[Roquefort Raider]

R.F.O. (Real Frantic One) – a buyer of at least three Marvel mags a month

I was that from 1978 to 1993.

T.T.B. (Titanic True Believer) – a divinely-inspired “no-prize” winner)

I tried to get one by explaining how time flows at a different pace between the Microverse and our universe, but that somehow was too dorky even for marvel comics. I also thought writing up a chronology of all the kings and queens of the different countries seen in Marvel's Conan comics would be helpful to the editors and maybe warrant me a no-prize, but no. (I was thanked for my efforts, though).

Q.N.S. (Quite ‘Nuff Sayer) – a fortunate frantic one who’s had a letter printed)

Does it count if only part of a letter is printed? They skipped one line of my one paragraph, making the letter almost impossible to decipher! Anyway, that letter to Savage Sword of Conan accompanied the aforementionned chronology.

I miss the letter pages. Or I guess I would if I read anything else than the trades nowadays!

[InfoBroker]

I miss the letter pages. Or I guess I would if I read anything else than the trades nowadays!

Unfortunately, even if you picked up the periodicals, you'd still be missing them. For the most part they've all been discontinued. Astro City still maintains a very well constructed letters page, withl lots of entertaining material.

New issue on sale this month BTW. <sneaking in a free plug every chance he gets>

Although they have yet to print a letter from their self-designated Infobroker. I guess they can't show favoritism or something. Yea, that's it... that's my excuse.

-jb the (not that I'm holding any grudges or anything) ib -

[Shellhead]

R.F.O.: From 1974-1985, I earned this title. During my peak buying years in the mid to late-70s, I was buying close to 20 Marvel comics a month. I lost my RFO status due to a combination of college costs, heavy-handed editorial changes by Jim Shooter, and a strong increase in the quality of DC comics

K.O.F.: I got a friend named Mike Seuss hooked on comics shortly before his bar mitzvah, around 1978, and he soon assembled an impressive collection of back issues, covering all the main Marvel comics, including Spider-man, FF, and the X-Men. He also bought plenty of new comics, probably all Marvel.

[dan bailey]

lessee ...

r.f.o. -- from probably the fall of '67 (i know i was buying sgt fury every month as of sept or thereabouts, & i'm pretty sure i was generally picking up a couple of other marvels per month -- anything from spider-man to, uh, millie the model ... hey, i was 8 years old!) to probably mid-1970, at which point i was probably only picking up the occasional horror reprint title. (my interest in comics, period, hit a definite lull around the onset of the bronze age, for whatever reasons. looking back, that's the time i started becoming quite the sports fan, so maybe i wasn't quite up to serving two masters back then. even back in the days of 10-cent cokes & 5-cent ice cream cones there's only so far one could stretch a 50-cent allowance, & it's not like they were giving baseball cards away for free ... though in retrospect, at 10 cents a pack they came pretty close.)

a burgeoning interest in horror & sf evelevated me back into rfo-hood in late '73, i think, when i came across weird wonder tales #1 & worlds unknown #5. before long i was checking out most of marvel's horror/sf titles. i continued buying at least 3 titles a month through the end of '78, at which point the price increase to 40 cents prompted me to discontinue all my comics-buying.

except for extremely sporadic silver- & bronze-age back-issue buying that began toward the end of the '90s, i'm pretty sure i didn't buy 3 marvels over the next, oh, 25 years. *sigh*

not sure exactly when i resumed buying a decent array per month ... probably about a year ago.

q.n.s. -- my first loc would've appeared in tomb of dracula 38, expressing general praise for the title. others were printed in red sonja 9 (i think that was the ish ... in any event, general praise again), ms marvel 15 (mainly kudos to chris claremont for getting his scripting act together), i believe ish 10 or so of super-villain team-up (complaining about an obvious rush job a couple of issues earlier that saw jim shooter getting a partrial art credit), marvel two-in-one 48 or thereabouts (surmising that ron wilson's pencils were lacking on a previous because he'd had to turn in a rush job as well, a conclusion that the letter-answerer confirmed) & marvel two-in-one 54 (praising jo duffy's script & especially gene day's inks, which led to my receiving a letter a short while later from gene thanking me for my kind words -- what a great guy he was).

k.o.f. -- seems like i converted a couple of friends (one circa 3rd grade, the other circa 12th grade) to reading marvels, but i couldn't absolutely swear they weren't already doing so.

[scratchie]

RFO: From 1975 to the end of 1979, and again from last fall to the present. (Although I'd hardly call myself "frantic" at this point; Civil War has been unredeemably stupid from the start and unless the quality of Marvel's offerings increases, I'll probably be buying only three comics a month before too long: Daredevil, Captain America and Ultimate Spider-Man).

QNS: My first letter was printed in Fantastic Four at the end of last year.

[Cei-U!]

The obvious question is, how many of these ranks do you have? But let's make it even more interesting:

--If you have ever been an R.F.O.-- and I assume most of us have been, at one time or another-- then how long did that last? Are you still an R.F.O.?

I was an RFO for 20 years or so, from '68 to '88. It was the resurrection of Jean Grey that drove me away and (save for the Busiek/Perez Avengers and the occasional Steve Rude mini) keeps me away.

--If you are a Q.N.S., where was the letter printed, and what was it about? How heavily was it edited?

My only letter was published in Defenders #116 and it congratulated Marc DeMatteis for finally making me like Hellcat. It ran uncut save for a personal postscript.

--If you are a K.O.F., who did you recruit, and under what circumstances?

I turned a couple of my college buds into Marvel fans, largely using Howard the Duck, Tomb of Dracula and Engelhart's Doctor Strange. Years later, I turned a guy at the office onto the Stern/Buscema/Palmer Avengers after he saw an issue in my desk drawer and innocently asked "What's that? It looks cool."

Alas, I never earned a TTB and thus was ineligible for the PMM. :(

Cei-U!
I summon the greatest disappointment of my teen years!*

*Second greatest if you count my striking out with Anna C in 9th grade.

[dan bailey]

I it congratulated Marc DeMatteis for finally making me like Hellcat.

*ahem* so, kurt, in what way(s) were/are you like hellcat? expiring minds want to know.

It ran uncut save for a personal postscript.

given the above-cited revelation, i can only imagine what that postscript said.

if you count my striking out with Anna C in 9th grade.

was this before or after you were like hellcat?

not that there's anything wrong with that ...