Amazing Adventures

Marvel has published several series with the name Amazing Adventures. In 1988 they published an 80-page one-shot subtitled "Tales of Exotic Places, People, and Times By Some of the Top Talents in Comic Art." It actually does live up to the billing and contains several interesting, non-super hero stories in an anthology format. The selections are far more "adult" than normal Marvel comics at the time, both in terms of violence (rape, mutilation, etc.) and time-period (Nazi Germany, the Dark Ages, etc.). Formats like this which allowed mainstream creators to "breathe" after spending so much time on standard super-hero stories were rare in the 1980s, before things opened up with DC's Vertigo line and creator-owned series in the 90s. One can see why Marvel didn't repeat this particular experiment: at a $ 4.95 price tag, this comic was about 6 times what a normal comic cost in 1988, and I don't imagine many of Marvel's readers wanted to spend that much on something with unknown characters set during various historical periods. Anyway, it's worth picking up cheap, though even today I probably wouldn't spend $ 4.95 on it (or $ 6.50 in crazy Canada!).