| Hudson Leick gains me my SFX immortality. |
Insanely, despite my way with words, my one success was in an issue of SFX magazine, about ten years ago, where, in the guise of a pair of lesbians, I demanded they print more pictures of Xena: Warrior Princess actress Hudson Leick. I actually wasn't that fussed about whether they published more photos of Hudson Leick or not. I just felt that a letter demanding more photos of an attractive woman might press the right buttons with an editorial staff of geeky types who liked to think of themselves as laddish, and therefore increase my chances of publication.
Reader, that ploy, shameful as it was, succeeded, and the Hudson Leick as Callisto photo above is the one they printed in response to it.
Sadly my earlier ventures into the vale of such egomania brought less success. And that's where comics come into it.
Despite sending a whole bunch of letters to Marvel UK when I was a child, not one ever got published - not even the one that pointed out the Silver Surfer shouldn't need to dodge when the Hulk throws boulders at him.
My sister, however, only ever wrote one letter to them. All it did was criticise them. That letter got published in Spider-Man Comics Weekly. I won't say which issue because then she'd probably kill me but it was a John Romita issue and featured the Spider-Slayer. I'm not sure what it says about me that, even after nearly forty years, there's still a little part of me in which it rankles that my repeated efforts failed where her single effort succeeded.
Still, I can always recompense myself with the knowledge that she doesn't have a blog like I do, one with a million adoring fans whose lives would collapse if I didn't tell them whether I like Supergirl #8 more or less than Supergirl #7. On top of that, I know that not everyone's had the nightmare experience with letters that I have, so I might as well ask you while you're here; have you ever had any letters to the editor published, and just when and where?