Happy Friday, old pal! You as glad to be done with this week as I am?
I’m passionate about a lot of weird things in life, but one of my strangest loves is for comic book “letter columns,” which are nearly as old as comics themselves.
Here’s the “original” letters page to 1964’s X-Men #5, created by the production team in the so-called Marvel Bullpen, with their boss Stan Lee responding to readers in a self-deprecating/self-aggrandizing style still aped by many of us hacky comic writers today:
When co-creator Fiona Staples and I started working on Saga over a decade ago, I thought it would be fun to do an old-school letter column at the back of each issue, one that only accepted physical mail (as I hate the internet and was trying to avoid ever having to use it; warm tidings, lovely Substack subscribers!).
I thought we might get enough postcards to maybe pad out the first couple of issues, but more than ten years later, “To Be Continued” continues to receive bags and bags of correspondence from all over the world every single week.
I’ve mentioned comics historian and King of the Modern Letter Hacks Reed Beebe here at Exploding Giraffe before, and he’s written a fantastic article about the history of our humble column.
And in the back of our first Saga hardcover, letterer Fonografiks describes exactly how he formats each column, giving questions and comments from our readers equal weight to my dopey responses.
But today, I thought I’d give you a brief visual tour behind the scenes of the creation of one of these letter columns, this one for next Wednesday’s Saga Chapter Sixty.
The process begins when my perpetually trembling dog Milkshake and I head over to the To Be Continued World Headquarters at “Suite 332”:
Yes, sorry to shatter the illusion, but 332 is really just just a lowly P.O. Box, so please don’t beg the nice folks who run this establishment not to murder Ghüs or what have you. (This has happened before, and they will have no clue what the hell you’re talking about.)
Anyway, Milkshake and I then head to my Actual Secret Writing Lair, where trusted correspondence wiener dog and sole heir to the K. Vaughan family fortune Hamburger K. Vaughan carefully selects the best missives.
Pro Tip: ‘Burger loves decorated envelopes, and his least favorite letters are the ones that try to bribe him with disgusting dog “treats” that have usually been siting for days in a metal box in our desert climate.
After Hamburger makes his selections, I painstakingly type up your sloppily handwritten letters (my busy wife retired from this thankless chore before our hiatus), and then craft my dumb replies, before sending the file over to Fonografiks, who somehow transforms it all into the elegant pages at the back of each issue.
In an effort to better understand our audience, every couple of years, the Saga team has printed a survey where we ask readers a few dozen highly invasive personal questions like these:
2022 SAGA READER SURVEY
1) Do you love your job?
2) How many pushups can you do?
3) What are your pronouns?
4) Did that last question bother you?
5) Other than the incomparable Fiona Staples, who’s your favorite comic artist?
6) What do you smell like?
7) Who’s the best bald fictional character who is NOT a villain?
8) Ketchup: yay or nay?
9) Have you ever killed someone?
10) What was the #1 movie in America on the day you were born (which you can apparently discover online at https://playback.fm/birthday-movie)?
11) Who’s the most famous person you’ve ever touched?
12) Do you believe in angels?
13) Is there a podcast you think we should be listening to?
14) What did you lose during the pandemic?
15) What did you gain?
16) Are you a fairly “accurate” representation of your astrological sign?
17) How’s your local comic shop doing?
18) Are you happy?
19) What would it take for you to be happier?
20) Do you have any trophies?
21) What’s the best sandwich you’ve ever eaten?
22) How is/was your relationship with your grandparents?
23) Do you have any addictions?
24) What’s one good quality of someone you hate?
And because I think comics are meant to be read until the staples fall out (not “slabbed” in plastic coffins), I normally suggest that readers just tear the non-story pages featuring these questions directly out of the back of their issues.
Here’s a small selection of the THOUSANDS of you who were willing to sacrifice the “mint condition” of Saga #56 (and the cost of at least one stamp) to send a bunch of strangers your most private opinions:
Why do readers do this?
I have absolutely no idea, especially because all we’re offering in exchange is the chance for you to be entered in a random drawing to win some stuff from The Almighty Prize Drawer.
Literally a junk drawer in my office containing un-valuable odds and ends from my various jobs and travels over the years, the A.P.D. is now continuously refreshed by fans sending in their own largely worthless detritus to be shared with fellow readers:
Anyway, for the first time in the history of “To Be Continued,” I’ll be giving away some tchotchkes from the Almighty Prize Drawer outside the pages of Saga, and exclusively for readers of Exploding Giraffe like YOU.
Just answer one/some/all of the above 2022 Saga Reader Survey questions in this weekend’s private chat (available below to any generous Monthly, Annual, or Founding paid subscribers in The Tower), and Hamburger will randomly select a few of you to receive some of that precious flotsam and jetsam.
As an added bonus, I’ll also be revealing MY OWN top-secret responses to those 2022 survey questions, which I still can’t believe so many of you were willing to share with us.
And whether or not you can join us beyond this paywall, my dogs and I hope you have an outstanding long weekend. Niko Henrichon, Fonografiks and I will be back on Monday with another assembled edition of Spectators, and some more fun prizes.
Thanks again for being the greatest readers in comics!