This is the fourth in a series of five posts about comics that made an impact on me growing up. I'm not talking about anything I worked on as a professional, but books I bought that influenced me as a creator and as a person. I know what you're thinking: "Power Pack? Seriously?"[image src="http://thomz.com/blogall/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/powerpack.jpg" align="left" border="image_border" link="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0785137904/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0785137904&linkCode=as2&tag=thozahartstu-20&linkId=RAPTQIW6KROE56J5" alt="" title="" lightbox="false" ]
It's not the story or the art here, though those are certainly solid. If you look in the letter column, you'll see the first letter I ever had published in a comic book. It was me coming up with an idea about how the Power children could speak an alien language. Yeah, it was also my first attempt at a No-Prize.
But, this is one of the first instances of external validation of me as a writer. Sure, my parents liked my stuff, and I probably won a contest or two. But this was Comics saying that what I had to write was worth printing. It seems like a little thing, but at the time it was huge.
From there, I had letters published in several issues of Fury of Firestorm, in Spectre and in Star Trek. I gained some pen pals from my letters' appearance, which in the pre-internet days, that was an incredible thing.
A couple years ago, I met Louise Simonson and mentioned this story. She said "I always printed the smartest letters." It made my night.