by Barry Malzberg (story) and Ray Lago (art)
from Open Space (Marvel) Issue 1, December 1989
Open Space was an effort by Marvel to revive the sf anthology comic book concept, one that, by the late 80s, had pretty much died out.
Open Space was printed in a square-bound 'prestige' format, with a thicker paper stock for the cover and interior pages. It also had a correspondingly higher price of $4.95 an issue, which was rather pricey at that time.
The cover artists for issue 1 were Frank and Laura Kelly Freas.
It seemed like a favorable time to revive the concept; the Great Comic Book Boom of the early 90s was getting underway, and there seemed to be no limit to the amount of titles that comic shops were willing to display on their shelves. And, unlike the older anthology titles like DC's Strange Adventures, which tended to reprint stories first published in the 50s and early 60s, the new series from Marvel was not bound by the Comics Code.
Unfortunately, Open Space ceased publication after four issues (in 1999, Marvel capitalized on the popularity of Alex Ross by releasing an 'issue Zero' one-shot special). Which was a shame, because it had a good roster of writers, many of them stalwarts of the sf world.
Posted below is 'The Land of Nod' by Barry Malzberg, from the 'first' issue of Open Space. It features a surprise ending, and some good artwork from Ray Lago.
That story was a little confusing. Slowly over the course of it I got the sense of what was happening, but I was never totally sure. I can only guess that the bartender (Parks?) decided he would rather die in his bar when they set the Mars base to self-destruct than leave and go back to Earth. Maybe this is what happens when prose authors try to write for comics and don’t quite have a sense of communicating the story.
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