Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction
Entry updated 19 February 2024. Tagged: Comics, Publication.
Black-and-white Comics-format magazine issued in 1975 by Marvel Comics through Magazine Management, which owned the company at the time. Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction was a high-quality production created by Roy Thomas and considered to be a continuation of his previous colour sf anthology comic, Worlds Unknown. The successor publication was equally short-lived, seeing only six issues plus a Special published in 1976. It featured graphic adaptations of stories by many sf authors including Alfred Bester, Harlan Ellison, Larry Niven, John Wyndham and Theodore Sturgeon. Bob Shaw's Slow Glass was used as a framing device, and his story "Light of Other Days" (August 1966 Analog) was adapted in the first issue (January 1975). Among the artists who contributed were Frank Brunner, Gene Colan, Richard Corben, Gray Morrow and Bruce Jones. Interviews with Alfred Bester, Ray Bradbury, Frank Herbert, and others also appeared, plus further nonfiction articles on sf. Some material was reprinted from older sf comics Fanzines.
Like all Marvel's 1970s black-and-white magazine-format comics, this title featured excellent cover artwork, if perhaps slightly below the level of that appearing on their horror-supernatural titles such as Vampire Tales. Thomas reported in the 1976 special that sales fell just short of justifying the magazine's continued publication, although the discontinuing of nearly all such Marvel magazines in 1975 has also been attributed to Stan Lee losing interest in them. [GSt/DRL]
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