The first—and last—comic book to which I ever subscribed was Fantastic Four.

It was my first because after all, it was the “The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine”—wasn’t that what Stan Lee had been telling us on the cover almost from the beginning? And for several amazing years in the ’60s, that seemingly hyberbolic claim may not have been all that hyperbolic after all.

And it was my last because—have you ever seen a subscription copy of a comic book from the ’60s? If not, you might not realize how poorly they were treated. They were folded in half lengthwise and then wrapped in brown paper on which an address label was slapped. By the time copy arrived in the mail, that fold was an eternal crease, a condition from which any true comic book collector would recoil.

But if you’ve subscribed to a comic book during the past few decades, then you know that this destructive practice was eventually eliminated. Would you like to know when?

January 1976.

And I know because I was there. And by there, I don’t mean there there, but working in the Marvel Bullpen, and therefore privy to the memos which brought about that change.

January 1976 was the month World Color Press told Marvel it was possible to mail subscription copies flat …

… and Sol Brodsky then let Stan know it could be done “immediately at no extra coat.”

I’m not sure which cover-dated issues were first affected by this change—I’ll be glad to let someone else research that answer—but at least you now know how it began.

Yet another gem unearthed from the musty Edelman Marvel memos vault!