Marvel Comics Super Special #3

Marvel's oversized Super Special format gets a spectacular showcase here, as Bob Larkin's painted cover pulls you straight into Steven Spielberg's landmark 1978 film — two figures running hand-in-hand down a darkened road toward a massive, blazing alien spacecraft hovering above a mountain in a fiery sky. Billed as "The Illustrated Collector's Edition," this full-color adaptation brings the Columbia Pictures/EMI production to comics form, with the interior work handled by the formidable team of writer Archie Goodwin, artist Walt Simonson, inker Klaus Janson, colorist Marie Severin, and letterer Gaspar Saladino. For fans of the film and of late-'70s Marvel ambition, this is a genuinely compelling artifact of both worlds.