April 20th, 1977 - Marvel UK, 40 years ago this week.

As mentioned previously on this very site, in this week of 1977, the World Snooker Championship moved to the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, creating something of a television, social and sporting phenomenon. Who could forget Hurricane Higgins, Whirlwind White, Steve (Interesting) Davis, Steady Eddie Charlton, Boozy Bill Werbeniuk, Cyclone Sanders, Tornado Thompson, Breezy Bob Blenkinsop, Dust Devil Darren, Gusty Gordon, Pyroclastic Density Current Palmer, Gentle Zephyr Jensen, Mid-Atlantic Depression Morgan, El Nino Ellinson and all those other people whose names I can't be bothered to make up?

I don't have a lot more to say than that on the subject, as I've already pretty much shot my bolt on the matter in the earlier comments sections. All I'll say is, "Happy fortieth birthday, Crucible World Snooker Championships and long may your cue stay chalked."

The other big event that week was the BBC's Sky at Night celebrated its 20th birthday. Who would have thought it'd still be going all these years later? The Radio Times summary for the event was as follows:

 In April 1957, The Sky at Night began. It could not have started at a better time. Within months the Space Age opened, with the launch of Sputnik 1 and, over the next few years, astronomy saw some of the most spectacular advances of all time. Today, 20 years later, men have visited the moon. Rockets have flown past the planets and even landed on some of them.

Reading that really does bring home the astonishingly accelerated nature of the Space Race - the fact that just twelve years separate the first man-made object to enter orbit, and men walking on the moon. Also that, just twenty years after Sputnik, moon landings were already a thing of the past.

"Gadzooks!" I hear you cry. "That's incredible but is there anything in existence that could possibly tie snooker, astronomy and Marvel Comics together in a way that brilliantly allows you to lead into a look at what Marvel UK was up to in the week that bears today's cover date?

No there isn't.

Therefore I'm not going to bother looking at them this week.

Oh, alright then, I am.

It looks like Captain Britain's decided to tackle common street thugs - the kind who go out armed with a gun and a stick.

However, I do believe the dastardly Lord Hawk and his robot bird are already starting to rear their ugly head inside the comic.

I also believe the FF are busy fighting Galactus, and Nick Fury is still up against that Hellhound.

I think Spider-Man and the Torch are also teaming up to fight someone but don't ask me who.

Fury is still doing everything it can to keep its titular hero off the front cover. It's almost like they thought he'd put people off buying the comic.

I think the Hulk is still inside Glenn Talbot's brain.

I don't have a clue what's going on in the ape tale but it would appear there's a serious level of mutant-bashing going on.

It seems rather hard on mutants. Have they ever tried to just sit down and negotiate with them?

For a moment there, I did think the phrase,"Spidey Strikes!" was contained in a speech balloon emanating from our hero. I did like the idea that Spider-Man would shout, "Spidey strikes!" as he kicks people. It's the sort of thing I'd do if I had spider powers.

As for the comic, I believe this is the start of the tale that sees the webbed wallcrawler battling his own car, at the behest of the Tinkerer.

While I was glad to see the return of the villain after all those years, I wasn't glad they'd retconned him to claim he wasn't really an alien and had only been pretending to be one in his previous appearance.

I don't like it when aliens turn out to not be aliens. It makes the world seem that little bit more mundane.