Starstruck #3

Three young women in matching green-and-pink uniforms — one blonde with a braid, one sporting tinted goggles, one seated to the side — crowd around a fantastical red scooter bearing a large cyclopic eye, its exhaust trailing steam, while a looming shadowy face peers down from the background. MW Kaluta's cover for this June 1985 Epic/Marvel issue has a wonderfully handcrafted, storybook-meets-pulp-sci-fi quality that sets Starstruck apart from just about everything else on the rack that year. With Elaine Lee writing and Steve Oliff's colors brightening every panel, issue #3 — subtitled "Here a Quark — There a Quark" — continues to make a strong case that this series was doing something genuinely inventive.