Met a guy at the comic shop who collects fan letters from the 60s

I stopped by Midtown Comics last Saturday to grab the new issue and ended up chatting with this older guy named Frank. He told me he's been tracking down old fan mail sent to Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, and he showed me a letter from a kid in Ohio who drew his own Spider-Man story in 1964. It hit me different because I always thought of fans as just readers, but this kid was creating and connecting with the creators directly. Has anyone else ever seen something like old fanzines or letters that change how you see fandom?

2 comments

2 Comments

luna5191mo ago

Doesn't it make you wonder if we've lost something by having everything so instant and polished now, instead of knowing that a kid's messy drawing could land on someone's actual desk?

park.troy1mo ago

@luna519 nailed it. Polished feels safe but it strips away that raw human touch. Sometimes messy and real hits harder than something that's been edited to death.