Marvel Preview is a black-and-white comics magazine published by Magazine Management for fourteen issues and the affiliated Marvel Comics Group for ten issues. The final issue additionally carried the imprint Marvel Magazines Group.

Publication history

An umbrella title that showcased a different heroic-adventure, science-fiction, or sword-and-sorcery character in virtually every issue. The title introduced the Marvel Comics characters Dominic Fortune in issue #2, Star-Lord in #4, and Rocket Raccoon in #7. The vigilante character the Punisher, introduced as an antagonist in the comic book The Amazing Spider-Man, had his first solo story in issue #2. The magazine experienced scheduling difficulties, with various "Next Issue" announcements proving unreliable. Issue #2 promised an adventure of the Marvel superhero Thor in #3, but a Blade story appeared, with the Thor story remaining unseen until #10. As well, two different issues, #20 and 24, are dated "Winter 1980, at the start and end of the year." Issue #20 was to have included photographs from the Japanese Spider-Man television program, but instead featured Howard Chaykin's Dominic Fortune. In addition, Robert A. Heinlein's lawyers threatened legal action over the cover of Marvel Preview #11, which featured a blurb that described the Star-Lord content as "a novel-length science fiction spectacular in the tradition of Robert A. Heinlein," leading to the issue being pulled and reprinted. With #25 (March 1981), the title was changed to Bizarre Adventures, which ran for an additional ten issues before ceasing publication. To offset the dark tone of most of the stories, editor Denny O'Neil had writer Steve Skeates produce a humor feature called Bucky Bizarre to close out each issue. A story originally prepared for Marvel's Logan's Run comic book series was published in Bizarre Adventures #28 (Oct. 1981). The final issue, #34, was a standard-sized color comic book, featuring the cover-blurb, "Special Hate the Holidays Issue", with anthological Christmas-related stories, including one starring Howard the Duck.

Issues

Bizarre Adventures

Collected editions