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The Tharg Code

Started by bbgunn, 09 October, 2012, 06:40:35 AM

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Woolly

This is brilliant!
How did you find the time to do this?!
Arguably genius.
Really hope you get a Krill Tro for this,
God knows you deserve it!


Do y'see what i did there...  ;)

Colin YNWA

What delightful; craziness.

Can I ask what was your hit rate? By which I mean how many letters, e-mails did you have to write to get 35 published?

COMMANDO FORCES

This is everything that is wrong with letter writing today :D

Report to the small room for a debriefing by Buttonman and Proudhuff!

shaolin_monkey

That is twisted genius.  I am astounded.  I must now rush out and buy all those comics.

Large48

WTF?

Ok so to make sure I have understood this correctly, you have written to each of these publications and then had a letter published where the first paragraph starts with a T and then the second starts with a H etc, etc?

But what's the message?

P.S. There are real women out there you know....
[size=40]Train Hard - Run Fast - Hit to Kill[/size]

Proudhuff

Quote from: Large48 on 09 October, 2012, 01:18:55 PM
P.S. There are real women out there you know....

yeah, says you...
DDT did a job on me

SmallBlueThing

Im going home to ebay these particular comics tonight! How marvellous!

SBT
.

Spikes

Mental,  ;)

Welcome to the forum!

Buttonman

Got to endore this letters based wheeze! I liked how your letter in Meg 322 had a hidden name in a letter about hidden content. 'Tharg is sad' - not as sad as the work experience boy who missed that one!

For those doubting Mr Beebe's credentials he does have letters form having had a single letter printed in the Meg for each of the last 3 years :

JEREMY   BEEBE   KANSAS CITY USA   M298
JEREMY   BEEBE   KANSAS CITY USA   M312
JEREMY   BEEBE   USA                M322

This could be the begining of a great craze - imagine getting 'Savage Kicks Arse' on the Beano's letters page. We should all of course aspire to this kind of thing (obviously with less Rick Astley) :




Professor Bear

Quote from: Lee Bates on 09 October, 2012, 10:43:32 AMYou're the BEST kind of unhinged lunatic.

"Lunacy" is butchering women over a period of fifteen years and using their bones to make furniture, this is merely a wheeze.

bbgunn

Quote from: Buttonman on 09 October, 2012, 06:38:43 PM
This could be the begining of a great craze - imagine getting 'Savage Kicks Arse' on the Beano's letters page.

A coded Beano "Savage Kicks Arse" letter?  Now that sounds like a challenge...  :D



bbgunn

#26
Quote from: Colin_YNWA on 09 October, 2012, 12:36:34 PM
What delightful; craziness.

Can I ask what was your hit rate? By which I mean how many letters, e-mails did you have to write to get 35 published?

I submitted 60 letters to nine publishers (DC, IDW, and Valiant Comics did not publish the "Tharg Code" letters).*   It should be noted that two publishers - Marvel and Dynamite - printed some letters multiple times across magazines (example, Fantastic Four/FF).  The total number of published individual letters (rather than the number of comics -35- in which these letters were published) is 23, so 38% of the submitted letters were published.**  Overall, my greatest regret from this effort was not getting a letter published in Mad magazine, despite several attempts.


*I'm not counting the unpublished "Tharg Code" letters that I submitted to The Economist.  The goal was always to have the letters printed in 35 comics publications, and The Economist did not qualify for this goal, but I thought it was a personal challenge worth the (sadly futile) effort.

**In the comics publication count (35), I'm not counting fan letters where the letter was published, but the editor made small edits to the letter (separating a long sentence into two sentences, changing a word, etc.) that destroyed the "Tharg Code" (for an example of these Mutant Tharg Letters, check out Dark Horse's Star Wars: Crimson Empire III: Empire Lost #4).   

Pete Wells

Amazing! You and Buttonman truly belong in the same asylum...

Colin YNWA

Good hit rate that. Astonishing... so dare I ask what's next?

bbgunn

Quote from: Colin_YNWA on 10 October, 2012, 08:18:18 AM
Good hit rate that. Astonishing... so dare I ask what's next?

I'm going to have fun writing the best fan letters that I can, pushing myself and the letter pages format to see what is possible.  In addition to coded letters, I've also experimented with poetry, puzzles, constrained writing techniques, and other formats.  Robert Kirkman's Super Dinosaur #6, for example, has what I believe is comics' first word search puzzle fan letter (check it out!).  I recently submitted a 100 word fan letter to celebrate 100 issues of Mike Mignola's B.P.R.D. that I hope will be published.  In Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 9 #12, my "choose your own" fan letter was published, in which the editor could choose the fan feedback that he wanted.   

But I doubt that any future letters will match the challenge and fun I've had getting the "Tharg Code" letters published.   :D