Plot
"Warriors of the Shadow Realm" is an unusual (and beautiful) piece of comic art that was originally published in the "Marvel Super Special" anthology. While Marvel hyped this as a "Lord of the Rings"-style epic, it's really much closer to simpler, fairytale-like storytelling. In fact, much of the story parallels the later cult film "The Dark Crystal" and Weirdworld itself reminds me a bit of H.P. Lovecraft's Dreamlands. The gorgeous artwork was unlike anything Marvel was putting out at the time, combining airbrushed effects with John Buscema's pencils to create a type of painterly effect that is more commonly associated with "Heavy Metal" or some of the Warren magazines. The story might not be the strongest or most coherent, but the artwork is sublime. If you've got a thing for 1970s-style fantasy artwork or Roger Dean dreamscapes, you're going to have hours of fun with "Warriors."
However, "Warriors" wasn't the only appearance of "Weirdworld" in the Marvel Universe. Writer Doug Moench wrote several stories set in that fantasyland. All the stories feature the adventures of two elves (Tyndall and Velanna) as they tangle with double-crossing wizards, giant swamp snakes, hidden prophecies, ancient quests, and the like. It does get repetitious after a while, which explains why the series has a very small cult following. Most of this is strictly G-rated (like most of Marvel's output during the era), although Mike Ploog's artwork in the earliest stories bring this the closest to psychedelic poster art than anything Marvel had published since the original "Doctor Strange." The artwork from the last published stories (not by Ploog or Buscema, of course) is often outright ugly, but a lot of mid 1980s Marvel artwork was like that.