Here's a letter (and Stan Lee's response) that was published in a Marvel comic back in 1964. See if you can guess which title it was published in...
Kind of hard to tell, isn't it? It pretty well references just about the entire line of superhero comics Marvel was publishing back then without focusing on any one in particular.
It was actually published in
Fantastic Four #26. I figure this might strike people as interesting because, on that very same page, there is the following blurb in the "Special Announcements Section"...
Prior to this, it wasn't a given that comics ran letters pages. Lee has noted in the past that he was taken a little by surprise that their superhero books generated fan mail, as prior Marvel comics didn't. But the volume grew quickly -- Lee noted in
FF #13 that they received "hundreds" of letters every month, presumably across their whole line. One year later, and they were getting enough mail to have a letters page
Sgt. Fury!
I point this out to say that, while mail was an integral part of the interaction between fans and comic creators, as well as among fans themselves, it was a new phenomenon once upon a time. It grew quickly because it was the first real communication a lot of people had with creators and other fans, and that Lee thought enough to help facilitate that in the letters pages speaks to where his talents in promotion lay.
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