Forty years ago this month - February 1973.

A wise man once said, "February made me shiver."

It was Don McLean; not to be confused with Don Maclean, the old Crackerjack presenter who's not to be confused with Bernie Clifton the other old Crackerjack presenter, the one who used to tell us it was Friday while sat upon the back of a majestic ostrich.

But will February of 1973 prove to be a similarly tremulous experience for the faithful Marvellite?

Or, like Bernie Clifton's ostrich, will we instead be forced to bury our despairing heads in the sands of time?

"You'll Kill Him! And if you do--!" says Cap but I've never read the tale and may thus never know to what he alludes.

The Disruptor displays his own special brand of bringing politics to the masses.

It's the long-awaited return of the Space Phantom.

I say long-awaited but, unfortunately, when I first read this tale, as a youth, I got the Space Phantom mixed up with the Space Parasite, and was somewhat confused as to why he'd changed appearance so dramatically.

At last, the Vulture finally shows up!

As mentioned last month, his arrival was delayed by the trials and tribulations of the postal service but it's worth the wait, as poor old Vulchy suffers a fate that shall long live in the memory of all who read it.

That Man-Bull. He's nothing but trouble.

It's another classic as the Hulk meets Tiger-Shark - who's always been one of my favourite villains - at Niagara Falls, which has always been one of my favourite gravity-driven water-dependent North American tourist phenomena.

Hooray! Jim Starlin shows up on Iron Man.

Is this the one where Thanos makes his debut?

My razor-sharp senses tell me this might be the issue where Quicksilver and Crystal get married. I predict it'll never last.

Maybe there's something wrong with me but every time I see the name Mercurio, I think of Lurcio, Frankie Howerd's character in Up Pompeii. It does undermine his sense of menace somewhat.

Somehow though, I suspect Thor will be tittering ye not if Mercurio gets his Freezing Hand on him. In fact, I suspect he'll be shivering like Don McLean.

You see? You think I just throw all that stuff into my intros at random but it's all a carefully planned mechanism, like a cuckoo clock of verbality.

Juggernaut's up to no good.