The Fantasy Scenarios of Marvel's Epic Illustrated

 

Throwing its hat into the ring with publications such as Heavy Metal, Weirdo, Raw, and heaven knows how many horror magazines, 1980 was the year that saw the launch of Epic Illustrated, Marvel's comics anthology magazine which brought a variety of talent to its pages from such notables as Harlan Ellison, Frank Frazetta, Robert E. Howard, Neal Adams, Berni Wrightson, and Pepe Moreno and Rick Veitch (both new artists at the time)--along with familiar names from Marvel such as Bill Sienkiewicz, Marv Wolfman, Marie Severin, John Byrne, Doug Moench, Denny O'Neil, Bill Mantlo, Frank Brunner, Archie Goodwin (Epic's Editor), Barry Windsor-Smith, Rich Buckler, Stan Lee, Craig Russell, Ralph Macchio, Terry Austin, Roy Thomas, Stan Lee, et al. Epic, not bound by the Comics Code and opening its door to more explicit content than what's normally found on the comics page, offered an outlet which no doubt appealed to its contributors, who retained ownership of their material and were paid royalties.

In addition, many stories were continued from issue to issue, effectively allowing their creator(s) a gap of 2-3 months to turn in their pages. Yet that leeway would work against one such tale, "The Last Galactus Story"--consisting of nine installments, but its last unfortunately coinciding with the magazine's cancellation in 1986 before it could see print. Epic's twenty-sixth issue bears a splendid cover by Bill Sienkiewicz (pictured above) which represents that story, while inside we find the story's first installment by John Byrne and Terry Austin.

Byrne would later provide on his blog a synopsis of the intended tenth installment, which visually would have been something to see:

"At the virtual End of the Universe, Galactus is confronted by a Watcher. This Watcher turns out to be the same one who witnessed the "birth" of Galactus in our universe. The Watcher (not Uatu) was eventually driven mad by the accumulated guilt he feels for the acts of Galactus. He has been trying to move galaxies to somewhere Galactus cannot find them, but has been destroying them in the process. Galactus and the Watcher battle -- a huge cosmic confrontation that stretches over centuries, as the universe falls into near total entropy. Finally, to defeat the Watcher, Galactus sucks all the remaining energy out of the Universe. Nothing is left but Galactus and his loyal herald, Nova. Realizing at last what his purpose is, Galactus cracks the seal on his suit, starts to remove his helmet, and in that instant all the energy he has absorbed explodes out of him. He becomes the "big bang" of the next universe, and when the smoke clears, we see Nova has been reborn, as that universe's Galactus."

Stan Lee (with artist John Buscema) also contributed his own Galactus story, this one involving the Silver Surfer and taking place at the end of the universe... but what lies beyond?

And it wasn't at all surprising to find writer/artist Jim Starlin contributing material to its pages.

In its first year, Epic was published seasonally and thereafter shifted to bimonthly publication from that point on. Its selling price then at $2.50 an issue, combined with with its expensive printing process and reportedly poor sales, led to the magazine closing shop after 34 issues in 1986. But what an impressive step forward for the genre, and a successful experiment that's seen its stories appear in other collected works through the years. In addition, Epic Illustrated led to the Marvel imprint Epic Comics launching in 1982, which operated under the same freedoms and benefits for its contributors and consisted of titles such as Jim Starlin's Dreadstar, Frank Miller's Electra Lives Again, Havok & Wolverine: Meltdown by the Simonsons with artists Kent Williams and Jon Muth, and Swords of the Swashbucklers by Bill Mantlo and Jackson Guice.