Chris Eckert has a fascinating look at The Comic Reader, a fanzine from the late ’70s/early ’80s, over at FBB. The inaugural edition of what I hope is going to be a series is pretty fascinating, and even explains those weird painted marks on old comics.

[…]Denny O’Neil contributes an open letter to Steve Skeates, responding to an earlier interview where Skeates lambastes what he perceives as O’Neil’s dishonest business practices and “lukewarm liberalism” masquerading as as “radicalism”.

So in case you were wondering everyone, politics invaded comics a long time ago. Blame Nixon.

TCR allows O’Neil to ramble for over two pages, mixing inside jokes with lengthy quotations from Camus and e.e. cummings, old convention anecdotes and critiques of specific issues of Aquaman. What’s amazing is that these are not the kneejerk slapfights we’ve grown accustomed to in the blogosphere, these are letters delivered by parcel, debates with months between retorts. But even with those hurdles, creators found time to fight!

Go give it a read.

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