Another great one was HOWARD THE DUCK magazine, that ran for 9 issues, right after Gerber had left the series. Disney had sued Marvel, alleging he was an infringement on Donald Duck, so as a settlement Marvel began to differentiate between the two by having Howard the Duck wear pants.

Mantlo had taken over after Gerber's departure as writer, and the first magazine issue sported Michael Golden art for the entire issue, inked by Klaus Janson (an interesting collaboration, but I honestly would have preferred a different inker, who didn't mask Golden's linestyle). The main penciller on the series was Gene Colan (as he was on the preceding comic book series) but his art was greatly enhanced by inkers Dave Simons and Bob Mcleod.

The stories were pretty average for the most part up till issues 5 and 6, when Golden came back and did 2 more issues, with very detailed inking by Bob McLeod.

Issue 5 has a story that parodies Marv Wolfman's angry departure from Marvel. He's been writer/editor of both the TOMB OF DRACULA comic book, and simultaneously at the end the TOMB OF DRACULA black-and-white magazine, published roughly the same years as HOWARD THE DUCK magazine. The Wolfman-parody-character storms out of Editor-in-chief Jim Shooter's office and breaks his legs in the process, and then is bitten by a vampire, and seeks vengeance for the rest of the story as a paraplegic vampire. A fun and beautifully illustrated story with a lot of twists.

Issue 6 has Howard interdimensionally return to his home Duckworld, where everything is the same as earth, only with ducks instead of people. On this world, Nixon (as Duxon) is still president, along with Spiro Agnew. "Duxon" had permanent five-o-clock shadow, and it was funny as hell to see the unlikely image of a duck with razor stubble. But it somehow worked, and added to the sleaziness of the corrupt duck president. Howard appeared with Beverly on the Johnny Duckson show, with a duck Johnny and a duck Ed McMahon, famous duckworld writer Truman Capoultry, and many other fun parallel touches.

Marshall Rogers was just off his collaborative Englehart/Rogers Batman stint on DETECTIVE COMICS 471-479, and did a great Batman parody in HOWARD THE DUCK 8, with Howard and Bev in a costumed mall security role worthy of Gary Coleman.
Also great in issue 8 was a one-page Howard story by Dave Sim, around the time Sim was developing to the peak of his talent. (This issue came out the same cover-date as CEREBUS 22.)

Also great on issues 6-9 were beautiful air-brushed covers by John Pound.

A nice, if brief, run. I think Marvel's magazines were at their best in this era, from 1979-1981. HOWARD THE DUCK issues came out the same years as exceptional work in MARVEL PREVIEW/BIZARRE ADVENTURES, HULK, TOMB OF DRACULA, and the first few issues of EPIC ILLUSTRATED and Marvel's Graphic Novel line had begun.
MARVEL SUPER SPECIAL was more hit and miss, but had some really nice art, particularly two Williamson adaptations of EMPIRE STRIKES BACK and REVENGE OF THE JEDI.

And of course, SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN, at that time done by Michael Fleisher and John Buscema, mostly inked by Chan and Nebres, that ended up out-surviving all of Marvel's other magazines. So for Marvel, it began and ended with SAVAGE TALES and SAVAGE SWORD.

In some ways I actually preferred the Fleisher stories (roughly 60-120) to Roy Thomas' (who did issues 1-59), because Fleisher was less prose-heavy and quicker to get to the action. But he arguably had the luxury of more easily continuing what Roy Thomas had firmly established. I thought it was a rather consistent continuation by Fleisher, after Thomas left.