September 20th, 1975 - Marvel UK, 40 years ago this week.

Taking advantage of the late sunny weather, I've been murdering my privet today. It was an epic battle described by one eyewitness as shear lunacy.

But what of our favourite comic company?

Were its heroes, on this day of forty years ago, battling evil on a similarly epic scale?

Were they too vetting their hedges?

Or were they merely hedging their bets?

For some reason, this cover holds a special significance for me.

What that significance is, I have no idea but, every time I see it, it resonates with me as though it should stir a fondly-held memory of whatever it was that was happening at the time.

The Grandmaster's still up to no good and proving he's no mate of the Avengers.

The Hulk gets to go to Counter-Earth.

I don't have a clue which tale the Fantastic Four story is. For the dedicated nostalgist, it is always frustrating that the cover blurbs so often give little idea as to what the back-up strips are about.

Lilith make her first appearance on the cover and it would seem that Tigra makes her first appearance within the covers.

I won't make the obvious point about the phrase, "Were-Woman," meaning, "Man-Woman," as I believe that millions of others have also raised that issue over the years. Somehow, it never seemed to matter how many people pointed that out to Marvel, via their letters pages, the company still carried on using the phrase.

Forget snakes on planes, Tom Sutton's tale of apes on ships continues apace.

I wonder if the Warlock tale is one of those inked by Sutton as well? If so, Planet of the Apes was quite the Sutton fest at the time.

That reminds me, I have to do a post about Tom Sutton's Charlton covers, at some point, as they were rather fabby and proved he was one of the great cover artists of his era.

Galactus is looking somewhat worried there. To be honest, although I've never read the tale, I suspect that the prospect of the Surfer going on the rampage doesn't worry him quite as much as the cover suggests.