Post by JosephBardsleyIt's not clear to me if this person/entity was a fan, involved with the
comic in some way, or simply an invention all their own.
I've really come to suspect that the Marvel offices enjoyed a very
laid-back and jokey attitude. Moreover, I think that while the
high-profile titles like X-Men or Wolverine enjoyed a certain degree of
prestige, the lesser titles (and especially the books based on toy
lines) were considered less important, and as a result, the staff
working on those books probably took their jobs as unseriously as
possible.
So, anybody who was working on the Transformers title, especially in the
beginning, recognized that the whole thing was one big joke. It was a
comic book about cars that drove down the street until they sprouted
arms and legs and started talking to each other. That's not something
an adult will take seriously. The jokey, casual attitude towards this
concept crept into the comic book itself, with side characters spouting
quippy remarks during supposed life-and-death situations. I think the
bathos was the way of the Marvel staff dealing with the inherent
silliness of creating a comic book about gigantic outer space robots who
disguise themselves as Porsches and F-15's.
But then the joke grew old, and the comic book unexpectedly gained
enough popularity to last for a number of years. So it was time to joke
about something else. I think this was around the time the Shingo
letter was submitted to the editor, and I have no doubt the Marvel staff
had a field day with it. It's easy to latch onto something memorable
like the name Shingo (it's a little bit like Ringo!) and I have no doubt
it became an inside joke at the Marvel offices. How do you think Shingo
takes his coffee? I think I shared a cab with Shingo on the way to
Midtown. We'd better not miss this deadline or else Shingo will yell at
us. And so it went, most likely. The original author of the letter
became almost immaterial by this point.
So I expect the obsession with Shingo eventually seeped its way into the
letters column (hey, we haven't gotten a letter from Shingo in a while)
and even the pages of the artwork itself (pretending that Shingo
"really" infiltrated the Marvel studios and inserted his name into the
pages of the comic book). On the outside, looking in, we as the readers
had absolutely no idea who Shingo was or what his significance was
supposed to be, but that's mainly because we weren't privy to the inside
gag.
In other words, I think it was just something the staff on TRANSFORMERS
was doing to make their jobs quirky and fun and more easy to endure,
especially the staff members who didn't like being stuck on a dumb comic
book about robot toys who only joined up with Marvel because they had
dreams of one day drawing Spider-Man professionally or writing stories
about The Incredible Hulk. It was just goofy, silly nonsense that they
probably took way too far.
Zob (Shingo or Shinstay, doesn't Shinmatter either Shinway)