THE MIGHTY MARVEL MAILBAG STRIKES AGAIN! (OR: 'NORMAN MAILER')...

Every comics fan in the world has surely heard of Frank Bellamy, right?  That being the case, many of them will know of Norman Boyd, who has a site devoted to Bellamy which can be found in my bloglist.  Norman is a longtime reader and collector of comics from back in the '60s, and it should therefore have come as no surprise to me to see a letter from a Norman Boyd in a back issue of The Mighty World Of Marvel (#85), when he'd have been a teenager.  However, I had no way of knowing for sure whether it was from the same Norman without first checking with him, so I contacted him to ask.

Norman couldn't remember if it might be one of his letters, so I scanned the page and sent it to him.  He was astounded to see (going by the location) that it was indeed written by him, as he had absolutely no recollection of it.  The same thing happened to me once.  I knew I'd written a few letters to Marvel UK back in the '70s, but I remembered the details of only one of them as I'd photocopied it at the time.  Imagine my surprise, then, when a Crivens reader (Duncan, I believe) commented to say that he'd read a letter by me in an issue of MWOM (I think) that I'd completely forgotten.  In fact, when he sent me a copy of it, I still couldn't fully recall it right away, though there was a hint of something vaguely familiar about it.

And so it was with Norman.  He was so thrilled at being reminded of his moment of glory in MWOM that he said I could write about it if I wanted to.  So I have.  Trouble is, my deteriorating memory is getting so bad that I'll probably have forgotten publishing this post in a couple of weeks and write it again.  Then you can all write in to remind me.  In the meantime, let's take a look at the letter which established Norman's near immortality in Marvel literary history for many years to come - probably for eternity, in fact.  (Well, you can't have one without the other, can you?  Immortality and eternity I mean.)

This ever happened to you?  Being reminded by someone of a letter you'd written to one of your favourite childhood comics that you'd completely forgotten about?  (The letter, not the comic.)  If so, tell all in the comments section.

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