Sheffield's Most Wanted. Part 18: Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind. Marvel Super Special #3.

It's back! That legendary feature where I talk about comics I never had as a youth but always wanted.

And that means it's time to get cinematical!

How well I recall the adverts for Marvel Super Special #3. Then again, it's hard to forget them, as they seemed to be a regular feature on the backs of Marvel UK's mags for months - if not years - on end.

But, even without that, how could anyone have forgotten them, seeing as the book featured a movie close to the hearts of all of us who love to make mountains from mashed potatoes?

In retrospect, exactly why I wanted this adaptation, I'm not sure, bearing in mind that I'd already seen the film and it was therefore hardly likely to contain any surprises for me.

I suspect my interest was almost entirely down to Bob Larkin's thrillingly dramatic cover and the never-ending appeal of flying saucers and little grey men. Not to mention the flat-topped mountain whose shape so reminded me of the slag heaps of South Yorkshire and the North Midlands that I was so familiar with in my youth. You see? If Steven Spielberg had grown up where I did, that film would have had a whole lot less mystery and glamour.

Then again, if he'd grown up where I did, E.T. would have been called Ee! Tea! and been a much different experience.

All that aside, my critical faculties tell me there's an obvious problem with doing a comic book adaptation of Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

And that's that the whole movie hinges on a piece of music.

Bearing in mind that the one thing that comics can't do is music, how could it possibly be viable to do a comic book adaptation of it?

I have no idea.

Given that I've still never seen a copy of the thing, I fear the matter will have to remain as great a mystery to me as the true motives of the alien visitors who kidnap me from my bed every night and subject me to their nightmarish experiments.

I wouldn't mind but they're experiments in comedy improv.

Reader, words cannot express the dread horror of it all.