Not a Red Letter Day, and More...

On Thursday, DC Comics announed that the letter column, a staple of comic books for something like fifty years, was no more. With the advent of the online message board, where fans can communicate quickly and without editing with other fans and with creative talents, the letter to the editor had become outmoded. Which is true, but only part of the story as DC has long since stopped running critical or intelligent letters, and since the letter page shrank from two pages to 2/3rd of a page.

So the letter column, birthplace of Simon DelMonte, is gone. And while I have posted elsewhere about this, I think I will do a few entries about who Simon DelMonte is, who he came to be, and about the letter column in general. I'm feeling nostalgic for when the only way to communicate with the pors was by mail and when the thrill of seeing your letter was still fresh.

But I will start with the ultimate Simon DelMonte story, the Harlan Ellison Story, which cut-tagged due to length...

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