Thursday, December 27, 2007

I Miss Letters Pages...

The fine folks at Titan Publishing in the U.K. have been reprinting a bunch of recent DC material in neat packages, comic-book sized but with more pages than U.S. "floppies" and with really cool cardstock covers. My recent run on the SUPERMAN/BATMAN series is currently being reprinted in "DC Universe Presents", where, with the most recent issue (#4), Titan is including a good, old-fashioned letters page.

DC in the U.S. killed their letters pages a few years back, reasoning that fans are interacting aplenty on the internet (and, I suspect, the time it took to assemble the pages was just one responsibility too many in a busy editorial schedule), but bandying opinion back and forth on a message board just not the same as seeing your name in cold print in your favorite book.

When I was a kid, I had letters published in several comics, including X-MEN (first series, of course), RAWHIDE KID, PHANTOM STRANGER, GREEN LANTERN and others. For someone with aspiritions toward professional writing, these "appearances" were a real thrill. And when I was running my own letters pages (for THE AMERICAN, mostly), it was usually fun to go through the mail and see what people had to say. (Note that caveat, "usually.") E-mail has pretty much put an end to pen and ink letters, but not the sense of investment that came from seeing your name or other fans "up in lights" and discussing their favorite books.

Anyway, kudos to Titan for bringing back the letters page!

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