Once upon a time all comic books had letter pages where fans and readers held forth on what was going on in their favorite series. They had cool names like "Let's Rap With Cap" (Captain America) and "Greenskin's Grab Bag" (The Hulk). The Internet killed that (along with a lot of other cool stuff.) What with chat rooms and message boards and all that, most publishers began to think of letter pages as something of a dinosaur, so they got rid of them.
Big mistake. One enormous way that letter pages were superior to message boards is that the editor had weeded out all the redundancies and moronity that fill most message boards. (And naturally we did not get an extra page of story, we got an extra advertisement.)
Anyway, some comics are now realizing the error of their ways and are bringing back the letter pages. She-Hulk, already one of the coolest comics out there (thanks mostly to writer Dan Slott) got even cooler when they added a page of letters. They even gave it a cool name -- "Gamma Gamma Hey!" -- which, if you are not a fan of the Ramones and the Hulk family, is hilarious, take my word for it. Even without the letters I'd recommend this comic book. So many writers today just know how to write grim, hopeless ultra-violent stuff. Dan Slott is one of the few with a genuine sense of humor. Greg Horn does the covers and he is second only to the master of modern cheesecake Adam Hughes. (And he's better than Hughes at drawing funny horses.)
The latest issue (#5) has a letter from me in it. Naturally it's witty, charming and insightful, but it's also poetic as they published a limerick I wrote about Shulkie (as she is affectionately known.)
Check it out at your local comic shop. And when I say "check it out" I mean buy it, this ain't no library, bub.
No comments:
Post a Comment