Forty years ago today - December 1977.

As I sit here, typing this deathless prose, snow is falling from the skies, and the streets are being increasingly buried beneath a pure-white blanket. Faced with such nightmare horror, there's only one thing I can do.

And that's to rush straight out into it, leap onto my Time Toboggan and hurtle, full speed, down the Hill Of Nostalgia until I crash, face first, into the massive great snow bank that is 1977!

The Avengers are still battling against the nefarious schemes of Nefaria - which is a shame, as I always get this incarnation of him mixed up with Graviton and can't remember which tale it is in which what happens.

I think I may have just reinvented the English language in that last paragraph. That's how powerful Nefaria is. He even has the power to warp English into something unrecognisable.

It's another day at the office for Conan.

I'm slightly confused. At first I assumed the Human Torch in this issue was the revived Original Torch, destined, no doubt, to disappointingly pop his clogs at the end of the tale, as he seemed to whenever he was revived.

However, the character on the cover does look much more like the modern version and I therefore assume it is he instead.

I suppose that makes more sense, as it's hard to see how the original could be in a 1970s tale when his body was, at the time, being used by the Vision.

And speak of the devil...

Yes, no sooner have I finished crafting that earlier paragraph than the Original Human Torch does indeed put in an appearance.

My razor-sharp senses tell me this is a reprint of the 1960s tale in which the flaming fighter of fiendishness was resurrected by the Mad Thinker, only to turn against his resurrector in a tale that then led to the Silver Surfer meeting Quasimodo whose untrustworthy activities were enough to convince him that humanity needed to be taught a lesson.

Given that Quasimodo was blatantly not human, this seems like a strange conclusion for the Surfer to have drawn. But, then, you always got the feeling the Surfer was always looking for any excuse he could find to turn against humanity.

Regardless, I'm pretty sure the Original Torch pops his clogs at the end of this tale, just for a change.

It's good to see Doc Samson being as positive as ever.

To be honest, I find it very hard to believe the Rhino has just beaten the Hulk, seeing as the Hulk mostly swatted him like a fly in every encounter between the pair of them that I ever read.

Marvel's attempts to make a major character out of Jack of Hearts continues as he comes up against Iron Man. I wonder at what point they realised it was never going to happen?

In retrospect, it was quite tiresome how gun-toting psychopaths kept showing up in 1970s Spider-Man comics but it seemed exciting and modern at the time.

Hooray, it's the debut of one of the few super-heroes named after a pig.

Come to think of it, was he the only super-hero named after a pig?

Admittedly, when I say, "Hooray," I don't remember him being particularly sensational. My main memory of him is that he drove a big lorry and was constantly saying things like, "Ten-Ten," for no good reason.

Come to think of it, it's making me miss the gun-toting psychopaths now.

Still, if I recall correctly, he did help Spidey defeat Brother Power and Sister Sun, so he must had had something going for him.

I do believe this tale leads to a clash with the Man-Beast/Hatemonger, which is no bad thing.

I do believe that, in this tale, the Destroyer is being powered by the consciousness of Balder and is giving Thor a good slapping. Other than that, I can say little of what happens.

I do believe this is John Byrne's first issue on the strip, even though Dave Cockrum drew the cover.

At the time, of course, we had no way of knowing it'd be a permanent switch, nor have any idea of just how important it'd prove to be.

The change was a disappointment to me at the time, as it meant we didn't get to see Cockrum finish the story arc he'd done so much work on but it was always a pleasure to see the work of Byrne who was one of my favourite artists even before he took over the strip.