Shingo

The real Shingo was inside of you all along.

Shingo was an eight year-old reader of the Marvel Generation 1 comic in the 1980s.

In a letter to the editors in issue #18, John Kamatani, a 23-year-old reader, mentioned that his eight-year-old cousin, Shingo, thought Transformers was cool. The letters column ran with this, eventually wondering why Shingo himself didn't write in. No letter was immediately forthcoming, and Shingo became a running joke among the comic's readers and editors. As time went on, the letters-column text would contain mock indignation and "outbursts" about Shingo's silence. Some fans ended their letters with statements like, "By the way, I spoke with Shingo a while back and he says Transformers are cool."

Then in #38, a letter was printed from "Shingo XXIV", who was sharply critical of the comic. They seemed to be responding to the recent "Man of Iron" storyline, which was a reprint of material from the Marvel UK comic. This person thought that the UK story had more emotional depth and drama, while the US book was overloaded with one-dimensional characters announcing their weaponry in a "trivolous" [sic] routine.

A few issues later, the editors claimed that Shingo had snuck into the Marvel offices at night and written his name into the issue's artwork. Readers who could identify the location of the signature were "eligible to win dream prizes & gain amazing approval from [their] peers!" Marvel called this contest "Spot Shingo" or "Spot the Shingo".

Spot the Shingo contest

"Spot the Shingo" was a contest run in 1987 through the letters pages of the original Marvel Comics Generation 1 comic. The contest required readers to examine the comic's artwork to spot the subtly inserted signature of the fan named Shingo. Two such signatures appeared in the pages of issue #41, "Totaled!"

Notes

• As of 2024, Shingo has not been reported seen. Please notify us if you see a Japanese man in his 40s saying Transformers are cool.