DC Comics is bringing back its reader letters page.
Why did they get rid of it in the first place?
The New York-based publisher — its imprints include Vertigo and Mad Magazine — used to devote a single page, typically toward the back, to letters from readers commenting on the latest adventures of Batman, Superman and others.
Those pages disappeared in DC's comics in the face of e-mail, Facebook and Twitter. DC's last letters page was in 2002.
They saw Facebook and Twitter coming in 2002? I thought it was forbidden to interfere with human history.
2 comments:
Clearly yet another retcon.
In Japanese and Korean manga, which are mostly distributed originally in weekly or monthly magazines with multiple storylines going at once, before being reprinted into single storyline compilations, it is customary for the author to have about a quarter page per episode to break the Third Wall and talk to readers (often about their personal lives or the writing process) and to respond to letters to the author, a process that remains current and is designed to foster intimacy in the relationship between the writer and the fans. Many of the writers receive birthday cards and random acts of kindness gifts from fans, and/or actively solicit input from fans.
In the cutting edge (but not very profitable) world of webcomics, most of the leading ones have discussion websites or bloglike comment options, typically managed mostly by a "fanclub president" or family member of the author, with periodic involvement by the author.
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