History
The magazine was initiated under editor Rick Marschall in 1979 under the title Odyssey, and originally set to launch as an issue of Marvel Super Special, Marvel's early graphic novel line. After Marschall learned of at least seven other magazines titled Odyssey, the project was renamed Epic Illustrated and launched as a standalone series. Marschall was replaced by editor Archie Goodwin in the autumn of 1979, several months before the first issue was published.
The anthology featured heroic fiction and genre stories, primarily fantasy and science fiction, but in a broad range of styles. Established mainstream-comics talents as X-Men's Byrne-Austin pencil-ink team, John Buscema, and Jim Starlin, were featured, as well as independent-press creators as Wendy Pini and The Studio's Jeffrey Jones, M.W. Kaluta, Barry Windsor-Smith, and Berni Wrightson. Goodwin commissioned stories by many new artists, including Steve Bissette, Pepe Moreno, Jon J. Muth, Rick Veitch and Kent Williams. The full-color magazine format, which was a first for Marvel, allowed for a broader range of color than the traditional three-color printing process, and many of the stories, and all the covers, were painted. Fantasy artists who did not normally work in the comics field, such as Richard Corben, Frank Frazetta, The Brothers Hildebrandt, and Boris Vallejo contributed covers.
Epic Illustrated also included an occasional Marvel Comics protagonist, such as the first issue's Silver Surfer story by Stan Lee and John Buscema, and Vanth Dreadstar, who first appears in issue #3.Each issue usually featured a main story, a number of regular serials, and anthological shorts.
Read more about this topic: Epic Illustrated
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Modern Western thought will pass into history and be incorporated in it, will have its influence and its place, just as our body will pass into the composition of grass, of sheep, of cutlets, and of men. We do not like that kind of immortality, but what is to be done about it?”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)
“Gossip is charming! History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“One classic American landscape haunts all of American literature. It is a picture of Eden, perceived at the instant of history when corruption has just begun to set in. The serpent has shown his scaly head in the undergrowth. The apple gleams on the tree. The old drama of the Fall is ready to start all over again.”
—Jonathan Raban (b. 1942)