Marvel Magazines

Magazine Management, the magazine and comic-book publishing parent of Marvel Comics at the time, released a number of magazine-format comics in the 1970s, primarily from 1973 to 1977, in the market dominated by Warren Publishing. The line of mostly black-and-white, anthology magazines predominantly featured horror, sword and sorcery, and science fiction. The magazines did not carry the Marvel name, but were produced by Marvel staffers and freelancers, and featured characters regularly found in Marvel comic books, as well as some creator-owned material. In addition to the many horror titles, magazines in this group included Savage Sword of Conan, The Deadly Hands of Kung Fu, Marvel Preview, and Planet of the Apes.

The magazine format did not fall under the purview of the comics industry's self-censorship Comics Code Authority, allowing the titles to feature stronger content than mainstream color comic books, such as moderate profanity, partial nudity, and more graphic violence.

In addition to original content, many issues included reprinted material, including a number of horror stories from Marvel's 1950s predecessor Atlas Comics that originally were published before the 1954 introduction of the Comics Code.

The magazine line was Marvel's second attempt, following the two-issue superhero entry The Spectacular Spider-Man in 1968, at entering the comics-magazine field dominated by Warren Publishing and smaller publishers like Eerie Publications and Skywald Publications. The magazine format did not fall under the purview of the comics industry's self-censorship Comics Code Authority, allowing the titles to feature stronger content than mainstream color comic books, such as moderate profanity, partial nudity, and more graphic violence. The first title was Savage Tales, which debuted in 1971 and was immediately cancelled. Roy Thomas, a Marvel writer-editor who become the company's editor-in-chief in 1972, recalled that:

...
Wikipedia