Swords of the Swashbucklers #10 (1987) “The Prince” complete

This space pirate series written by Bill Mantlo follows an Earth girl, Domino Drake, who joins Captain Raader's crew of space pirates contending against an evil galactic empire, The Colonizers. It started with an oversized Marvel Graphic Novel and then ran for twelve issues from Epic Comics. Jackson Guice designed the characters and drew the first four issues. Geof Isherwood took over as chief penciler after that, inked by Ricardo Villamonte. This tenth issue is the most unusual of the twelve, for three reasons:

First, it's a full-on homage to the samurai films of Akira Kurosawa. The main character resembles popular Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune, whose filmography of 180 films includes 16 appearances under Kurosawa. To honor the medieval Japanese setting, Isherwood adopts the convention that the blue-skinned aliens of this story have the stylized design of characters from the Edo period (1603-18067). In order to fulfill his vision exactly, Isherwood inked all 31 pages himself; this necessitated penciling duties on issues #9 and #11 to be given to Colleen Doran.

Second, almost all the pages bleed to a black border. This in part was showing off printing technology available in an Epic Comic that wasn't used in a typical Marvel Comic of that era. But Isherwood makes it a story element, as can be seen from the battle scenes on pages 14-18, as the border gradually fills with blood.

Third, the series' main character Domino Drake barely appears; instead, this story belongs to Captain Raader and focuses on her relationship with the alien prince.