"Remember how we promised you the latest scoop on our mighty Marvel softball team? Well, the other day the Marvel Comics (as some anonymous wag christened our Bullpen batters) took on the whole cockamamey staff of the Greenwich Village Voice, one of New York's best-known newspapers. We won't exactly tell you who won - but let's just say that our new team motto is, 'Wait'll next year!'When I was a kid, there was this series of hardcover juvenile adventure books featuring a character named Jerry Todd. They were something like the Hardy Boys, but they had a lot of humor mixed in with the adventure. And at the very end of each book, the publisher printed letters from the readers as well as responses from the author himself. It was so informal, so warm...it made me feel like I knew these guys and they cared about what their readers thought. I was surprised at the time other books didn't see what a great idea this was. I don't know if I consciously remembered those books when I set out to do the Bullpen page years later, or if I was unconsciously influenced and only afterwards realized where I got the idea from. I do know that talking to the readers informally and indirectly seemed like the natural thing to do."
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