Marvel Subscription History 1 1

[dzbad]

So here is a historical question.  What year did Marvel start running subscriptions? 

When did Marvel stop fulfilling their own subscription? 

Did they hand it off to Mid-Town Comics right away, or was there other distributors who took this over 1st?

I await the wisdom of the collective knowledge of the CGC Message boards :-)

[shadroch]

Marvel offered subscriptions in the Silver Age and advertised them thru the Copper Age, long before Mid-Town existed.

[dzbad]

On 5/13/2023 at 11:05 AM, shadroch said:

Marvel offered subscriptions in the Silver Age and advertised them thru the Copper Age, long before Mid-Town existed.

Thanks very much for the reply. 

I can see how I worded this "Did they hand it off to Mid-Town Comics right away, or was there other distributors who took this over 1st?" that it was poor wording.  I know Marvel did their own subscriptions for years.  I was not aware it went all the way back to the silver age!

Any idea of when in the silver age they started doing this?  I can see all the way back in x-men 92 1975-02 there were no ads for subscriptions.  There was Marvel ads for other stuff like a Stan Lee Marvel history book but not subscriptions.  The earliest book I can confirm a subscription ad for within Marvel is x-men 98 1976-04 which is well into the Bronze age.  Funny thing is that as you can see from the picture, you could not even subscribe to the x-men comics from the ad in X-men comics.   

According to Wikipedia, Mid-Town Comics was opened in 1997.  I know Marvel still did their own subscriptions then.  I was wondering on the above poorly worded question, if when Marvel stopped doing their own subscriptions, did they hand it off to Mid-Town Comics right away, or did they have another company do it, and then that company stopped and then Mid town toook over? 

I always like learning about the history of Marvel Comics and comics in general. 

[dzbad]

And now I see how it goes all the way back to the silver age.  Checking the India of my oldest non encapsulated book X-men 17. I see that there was a subscription offer if you read the indica .  You know kids loved reading the indica back in the 60's :-)  Also it is interesting that the cost of the subscription back then was over cover cost.  1.75 for 12 issues, when the cost of the books were .12 retail.  I guess that covered shipping, but still. 

[shadroch]

Magazines were usually much cheaper when you subscribed, but comics were rarely discounted. Generally, they cost more than the cover price. Not sure why that was.   IIRC, DC offered theirs at exact cost where Marvel was more, except for sales they would occasionally run.  By the mid 1970s, you could subscribe via third party companies. 

[Tec-Tac-Toe]

I had a few Marvel Subscriptions (A S-M, Avengers, etc.) in the 1970s (circa 1971 to 1975). I still own every issue and, of course, very few reached me unfolded and I read them to heck and beyond. They may be nowhere near mint, but if one can love comic books, I love those because I paid for the subscriptions with the allowance my parents gave me. That connection alone makes them priceless to me.

[Cman429]

I remember my elementary school did a magazine subscription drive where they enlisted entrepreneurial 3rd graders to push subscriptions on every one of our parents’ friends/relatives with the promise of certain prizes for x number of subscriptions sold. 

Anyway, they offered Marvel subscriptions so my mom let me and my brother get two each. I didn’t get any prizes but I did end up with a nice run of 80s ASM & Xmen and he ended up with GI Joe & MTU thanks to that nonsense.