Epic stuff by John Buscema, Rudy Nebres...and Frank Frazetta

Epic Illustrated (34 issues between 1980 - 1986) was Marvels foray into the mature readers market. Designed to be Marvels answer to Heavy Metal it featured science fiction, fantasy and adventure strips printed in full colour on high quality paper and featured the work of top rated artists and writers. Sadly like Heavy Metal, Epic relied too much on explicit content with many strips focusing on nudity over storytelling. However, it did feature some interesting strips like the Silver Surfer tale below by Stan Lee which contained some exceptional art by John Buscema and Ruby Nebres ( coloured by Rick Veitch). All this wrapped up in a stunning Frank Frazetta cover.

The John Buscema art is rare in that it contains the work of one of the few inkers that big John approved of.

If you read the above pages you may have noticed I missed scanning a double page spread as my scanner isn't up to it at present.