Marvel Premiere was one of three tryout books proposed by
Stan Lee after he transitioned from being Marvel Comics' writer and editor to its president and publisher, the others being
Marvel Spotlight and
Marvel Feature. The advantage of such tryout books was that they allowed the publisher to assess a feature's popularity without the marketing investment required to launch a new series, and without the blow to the publisher's image with readers if the new series immediately failed.
Doctor Strange took over the series with issue #3 and writer
Steve Englehart and artist
Frank Brunner began a run on the character with issue #9. The two killed Dr. Strange's mentor, the
Ancient One, and Strange became the new Sorcerer Supreme. Englehart and Brunner created a multi-issue storyline in which a sorcerer named Sise-Neg ("Genesis" spelled backward) goes back through history, collecting all magical energies, until he reaches the beginning of the universe, becomes all-powerful and creates it anew, leaving Strange to wonder whether this was,
paradoxically, the original creation. Stan Lee, seeing the issue after publication, ordered Englehart and Brunner to print a retraction saying this was not God but "a" god, so as to avoid offending religious readers. The writer and artist concocted a letter from a fictitious minister praising the story, and mailed it to Marvel from Texas; Marvel unwittingly
printed the letter, and dropped the retraction order. In 2010,
Comics Bulletin ranked Englehart and Brunner's run on the "Doctor Strange" feature ninth on its list of the "Top 10 1970s Marvels".
Iron Fist first appeared in issue #15, written by Roy Thomas and drawn by Gil Kane. Other introductions include the Legion of Monsters, the
Liberty Legion,
Woodgod, the
3-D Man, and the second
Ant-Man (Scott Lang). The series also featured the first comic book appearance of rock musician
Alice Cooper. Though
Adam Warlock,
Doctor Strange, and
Iron Fist were all given their own series following their tryout in
Marvel Premiere, many of the later features were never meant even as potential candidates for a series. In some cases, such as the Wonder Man story in issue #55 and the Star-Lord story in #61, the writer simply wanted to do a story featuring that character and there was not a more appropriate place for it to be published. and the
Black Panther in issues #51–53. == Issues ==