Sometimes it’s the artwork that sells you on a character more than the story. Doc Savage, the Shadow, Conan—my appreciation of those characters all started with the cover paintings. With Star-Lord’s first appearance in Marvel Preview #4, it was this frontispiece by Berni Wrightson.
I just think this is magnificent. Peter Quill blasting out the brains of an alien against the backdrop of—another planet—another moon? The whiteness of that object highlights Star-Lord in the foreground, a very clever page design that Wrightson probably whipped out and thought nothing more of it. Nuff said.
Wow, I have never seen that great Berni Wrightson piece before -- thanks! I've actually had the pleasure of talking to Wrightson on a transatlantic phone line almost twenty years ago. In 1990 I was working as Associate Art Director for Norway's Book-of-the-Month Club, and some editor decided we should publish Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" novel in a nice hardcover edition. I had much earlier bought a signed/numbered 10-print limited edition portfolio of Wrightson's superb pen-and-ink illustrations for that novel, so I showed those pages to the editor -- and I was then instructed to, somehow, buy the rights from Wrightson for using a dozen illustrations in our edition. So I called Marvel in NYC, explained all, some editor there reluctantly gave me Wrightson's home phone number -- apparently, some fans could be annoying stalkers! -- and then I phoned up BW, explained our Norwegian book project, and offered him my budget of $1,000 for the usage rights. He happily agreed right away -- it was pure windfall profit for him, natch! And then we published the book some months later -- and I sure hope the accounting folks did the right thing, and paid him and sent him a few copies (I didn't get to follow up, alas, as I had by then quit that job.) So that was the story of my little brush with Wrightson's pen-and-ink greatness!