Marvel Preview #9

Marvel Preview #9 brings Earl Norem's painted cover to vivid life, depicting a bare-chested, impossibly muscular man bursting through a crumbling brick wall with arms outstretched, while a frightened woman cowers at his feet and a wide-eyed bystander looks on in the background. Billed right on the cover as "the FIRST and GREATEST superhero of all time," Man-God is adapted from Philip Wylie's influential novel Gladiator — a literary source that gives this 1976 black-and-white magazine a distinctive, grounded edge among Marvel's Curtis line. With Roy Thomas scripting and Tony DeZuniga and Dan Adkins handling the interior art, this oversized format is a compelling showcase for one of pulp fiction's most formidable figures.