Fifty years ago this month - April 1967.

April 1967 was one of the most important months in the history of  humanity. Not only did Sandie Shaw win the Eurovision Song Contest with her classic hit Puppet on a String but television first broadcast the Star Trek episode City on the Edge of Forever, which was possibly unique in casting Joan Collins as a good guy.

But there was even more excitement than that, because that month also saw the start of Expo 67 in Montreal.

Granted, I know nothing about Expo 67 but its geodesic dome showed up in an issue of Spider-Man and that's good enough to convince me it must have been important.

Clearly, with such things going on, the Marvel comics that bore the name of that month upon their front covers were going to have to go some to match that level of epochalityness.

Did they manage it?

There's only one way to find out.

Hercules finds himself up against the Mad Thinker's Triumvirate of Terror - the only member of which that I can recall being Hammerhead who was a  bloke with a metal hat, who liked to run into people. I suspect he was no relation to the character of the same name who liked to fight Spider-Man.

Needless to say, such buffoonery couldn't triumph against the Prince of Power.

Speaking of Spider-Man, is this the one where Daredevil's fighting Stilt-Man but then Spidey shows up and offers to fight the villain on DD's behalf, so DD can tackle the Masked Marauder - and then Spider-Man proceeds to demolish Stilt-Man with no difficulty whatsoever?

That really didn't reflect well on Daredevil, bearing in mind what a meal he always made of stopping Stilt-Man.

Is this the one where the Sandman breaks into the Baxter Building, in an attempt to steal Mr Fantastic's scientific secrets and ends up unwittingly unleashing Blastaar upon the world?

I always liked Blastaar. He was suitably unpleasant.

It was also nice to know there was more than one villain living in the Negative Zone, a place that, from previous showings, had seemed somewhat short on inhabitants.

I believe this is the one where we start with a totally baffling flashback to that story where the Green Goblin hired Kraven to kill Spider-Man.

I remember being genuinely mystified while reading it, because I had no recollection of any such tale. It was only once I got the Internet that I had it confirmed to me that no such story had ever existed. What kind of madness had Stan Lee succumbed to when he wrote this issue?

I'm pretty sure the story also features Mary Jane in a chequerboard dress. This may not be a key plot development but it was a classic example of John Romita's design genius.

That's really not a cover that tells me anything about what happens inside, other than that Hydra are involved, which isn't that great a shock, bearing in mind it's a SHIELD. story.

A mystery villain (in a Captain America story? I wonder who that could be?) hires the Swordsman and Power Man to give Cap a good clobbering.

Needless to say, they fail and it all ends up with Manhattan being kidnapped in a giant bubble. How many times have we seen such a sequence of events occur, over the years?

Although I've heard of him; never having read a story featuring him, I've never really been sure who Byrrah actually is.

I'm taking it, from the blurb, that he's a revived villain from the Golden Age?

Sif's wielding a replica of Thor's hammer. I know such an object features in the story, thanks to the trolls having made one, possibly for Ulik but does she actually get to use it?

Come to think of it, whatever happened to that replica? Was it ever seen again?

Cobalt Man makes his debut, as a kind of evil version of Iron Man.