Forty years ago this month - January 1975.

I can think of nothing at all clever or informative to say to launch this post. So, instead, let's take a look at what our favourite Marvel heroes were up to in the month when work on the second attempt at a Channel Tunnel was abandoned for financial reasons.

Were our heroes following a tight drill?

Or were they instead finding it all a bit of a bore?

The Legion of the Dead leave the Avengers feeling positively mortified, as the Celestial Madonna Saga lumbers on and on and on and on.

It's doing these covers each month that makes me realise just how protracted that storyline really was.

I'm pretty sure this is the one where Conan defeats his foe by dissolving his feet. You have to hand it to the battling barbarian, he can use his brain sometimes.

I've no idea what's going on. Is this the fake Captain America who was running around smashing commies in the 1950s? Or was his return featured in another story?

You have to hand it to Daredevil. There aren't many Marvel heroes who'd manage to take two issues to defeat the Owl.

Then again, the Owl is, by his own reckoning, "All-powerful."

I seem to recall that this issue features the return of a foe from the old Strange Tales Human Torch/Thing series. I forget, though, what the shock reveal is as regards his true identity. I had it in my head that he's really Reed Richards but I get a feeling I was recently told otherwise.

Hooray! Zzzax is bax.

Iron Man becomes Irony Man - doomed to die at a comic book convention.

Spidey's still up against the Grizzly - with the Jackal causing all sorts of mischief behind the scenes.

I'm sure I've read this one in the not-too-distant past but can't quite recall what happens in it. Does Loki turn someone into a caveman who has baffling amounts of strength for a caveman?