My Lex Luthor Baldy Award no-show

A while ago I wrote about the time I won Marvel's No-Prize (and managed to misspell my own name in the process); at the end of the post, I briefly mentioned DC's Baldy Award, given out to "letter writers of the week", or something to that effect, in the back of Superman-related titles.  My comic book organizing has finally made it down to the "S" boxes, so when I flipped to the short-lived Superman: Man of Tomorrow, I made sure to grab a few issues and search for the one in which I had a letter published and managed to win that week's Baldy Award (please, no jokes about how prophetic that title would soon become).

Above I've posted a scan of the letters page from Superman: Man of Tomorrow #11, in which my letter is published regarding issue #9.  Even though I hadn't read the letter in 13 years, I remembered that it was pretty embarrassing as all I did was give effusive praise to a book that, honestly, didn't have much of a purpose over its publishing history.  But looking back at it now, holy cow was it sycophantic, to say the least.  I should have just wrote in and said "I love you!  Give me a prize!"  They did, though, at least in print, and I suppose I accomplished my goal in that regard.

At the end of the letters column, Superman editor Mike McAvennie writes "And because you were such a trooper for waiting 20 weeks and listening to this long-winded explanation, we hereby grant you this month's Baldy award, guaranteed to show up pretty quick!"  And then he writes something about Mike Piazza, which in hindsight is pretty funny.  If I remember correctly, he had a really good year in 1998 but was traded twice before winding up with the Mets (who will never, ever win the World Series again, much like the Pirates).

Anyway, perhaps McAvennie's guarantee was meant to be ironic, because I NEVER received any Baldy Award, to the point that for a long time I assumed that it was an award in name only, and not something that people actually received.  The advent of, well, Google, has taught me otherwise: the Lex Luthor Baldy Award is a handwritten postcard "from" and signed by Lex Luthor, congratulating you on the achievement.  A quick image search provides a look at the front of the card:

I can only say that while this award is merely a mass produced postcard, an inexpensive marketing stunt on DC's part, it is also something that, as a comic book fan, would be so awesome to have.  So winning the award is a notch in any Superman fan's belt, but MAN, I wish that I had the physical prize for my stupid letter to go along with it.  Mike McAvennie, if you happen to read this post and just have stacks of these lying around, it's not too late to correct a 13-year-old omission.

My No-Prize snafu

I came across my very own No-Prize, pictured above, earlier this evening.  I received it in 1998 after writing in and getting a question published in one of Stan Lee's Soapbox columns - I think I asked some asinine question about Stan's role with the company or some such noise.  To earn a No-Prize, one usually had to explain away a seemingly unexplainable gaffe within one of Marvel's books (Mr. Fantastic is drawn with three arms?  He must be stretching his back into the shape of a fist so he can punch someone!), but the rules got a little lax in the '90s: all one had to do was get a question published and the once-lofty prize got shipped out en masse, lucky for me.

What's funny about this is that my name is misspelled on the envelope - I go the double-C route with "McClelland", and what's written above drops the second "C" and capitalizes the first "L".  What's funnier is that my name is also printed incorrectly in the Soapbox and the handful of books in which it appears.  What really takes the cake, though, is that I have a sinking feeling that I misspelled my own name - the one I've had since birth! - on the letter I sent in.  I don't have any proof of this, but I can distinctly remember seeing my letter printed and saying "this is my fault.  THIS IS MY FAULT!"  So, for posterity, my name in the catalogue of Stan's Soapbox No-Prize winners is officially "Jeff McLelland".  Dammit!

I've probably written a total of four letters to comics in my life (and none in the last, oh, ten years), but I also had a letter printed in a Superman: Man of Tomorrow letters column and was awarded the "Baldy" award for that issue - something they ran with for a good long while over at DC.  I never received anything in that regard, leading me to believe that the Baldy award didn't actually exist.  I mean, at least with the No-Prize, you get SOMETHING - an empty envelope with a stock image of Spider-Man on the front.  Thus the irony of the situation: I got more of a prize from being awarded a No-Prize.