Once, twice, three times a maybe.

If you're in the habit of reading this blog with a calculator in one hand and a slide rule in the other, you'll have noticed that Steve Does Comics has smashed through an obstacle to compare with the famed Sound Barrier itself.

That's right, Steve Does Comics is now a walloping 3 megabytes big. Frankly I don't know how Google can take the strain. They're probably ordering a van-load of new servers right now. But that magical number 3 is all the excuse I need to look at what our favourite Marvel heroes were up to on their third ever appearance.

As we'll see, like Steve Does Comics itself, it's a totally random mixture of the inspired and the hopeless.

After two issues of behaving like you and me, the Fantastic Four suddenly start acting like proper super-heroes, getting themselves costumes, a fancy HQ and a flying bath tub.

They also get to come up against the disgracefully under-rated Miracle Man. I don't care what anyone else says about the Miracle Man, I still love him.

The Amazing Spider-Man celebrates its third outing in style as Spidey meets Dr Octopus for the first time ever. That's what Peter Parker gets for complaining there're no real challengers in this world for a man with the powers of a spider.

Still, it could've been worse. Our wall-crawling wonder could've come up against Man-With-A-Giant-Glass-And-Sheet-Of-Paper Man. Then he'd've really been in trouble.

The green goliath's membership of the Avengers doesn't last long as, faster than you can say, "Hulk smash!" he's turned against his former team mates and linked up with the Sub-Mariner to give them no end of trouble.

With his third appearance, the man without fear finally gets a super-foe of his own to fight as he comes up against what I suppose you have to count as his arch-enemy.

With his awesome power of gliding and not much else, the Owl's not exactly Dr Doom but he's still almost too much for DD to handle.

Everyone else in the world can say otherwise till they're blue in the face but I still prefer Daredevil's original costume to that fancy new red one he's been wearing for nearly fifty years.

The ever-changing feast that is the early run of The Incredible Hulk takes yet another turn as he develops the ability to leap but loses the ability to think, becoming nothing but a puppet of Rick Jones.

You can't get away from it, Lee and Kirby really were struggling to get the strip to work in its early days. Even the Ring-Master and his Circus of Crime couldn't get it going.

In his third outing, Thor meets his deadly ancient enemy Loki - even though Thor's only been around for three issues and therefore can't have an ancient enemy. I wonder how they'll ever get round that conundrum?

Personally, I'd love to read Filbert's Frightful Future but I fear I'll never get the chance.

Iron Man takes on Dr Strange but not that Dr Strange.

With his mind-control powers and his wholesome daughter, this Dr Strange was like the Puppet Master without the puppets. Was he ever heard from again? I'd like to think he was but suspect he wasn't.

The Blob makes his first ever appearance, and the world of comic books would never be the same again.

Well, OK, it would.

I don't know much about the Blob. Is he one of those villains you could defeat by locking him in a closet? I always feel any villain who can be defeated by being locked in a closet probably isn't worthy of the title, "Super."

In his third adventure, the mighty Ant-Man comes up against the Protector.

The Protector? He sounds nice - unlike that creepy sounding Ant-Man.

I love the tiny cannon sticking out of Ant-Man's house, capable of firing him all of two feet through the air.

And to think they called Henry Pym mad.



PS. A special celebration 3 megabyte Steve Does Comics No-Prize goes to the first reader to spot the "deliberate" mistake in this post. Never let it be said this isn't the Steve Does Comics Age of Megabytes.