Marvel Preview #24

Marvel Preview's oversized black-and-white magazine format gives Paul Gulacy's painted cover for this 1980 issue plenty of room to breathe, and the result is a striking collage of science-fantasy imagery. A confident, dark-haired man in a stylish open jacket stands arms-crossed at the center, flanked by a red-robed skeletal figure, a woman in a futuristic bodysuit, a sleek robot, airborne figures in white, a gleaming cityscape, and Earth itself floating in a starfield above. Titled "Two Hundred Years in the Future" and boasting that Paradox is "the most incredible character concept in the history of illustrated fantasy," this Bill Mantlo–written, Val Mayerik–illustrated magazine-length adventure looks like one of 1980's more ambitious science-fantasy experiments from the Marvel Magazine Group.