Christmas 1977 - Marvel UK annuals, 40 years ago this month.

It's Christmas Eve!

And that can only mean one thing!

That it's time to get all over-excited and start feeling at our wrapped presents to see if we can guess what they are.

But we don't need to guess what they are - because it's 1977 and we all know what we're going to get.

We're going to get Marvel UK annuals!

Admittedly, I only got one Marvel UK annual that year but that's not going to stop me listing all of them here.

But first, there's need for a quick look at what else was happening that Yuletide. Mull of Kintyre was still at Number One on the UK singles chart, while, across the Atlantic, the Bee Gees held top slot, with the not-at-all Christmassy How Deep Is Your Love.

Meanwhile, on TV, Christmas Eve, saw BBC Two give us the original movie version of MASH.

Elsewhere, that morning, BBC One gave us Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe (which he didn't). That afternoon, they gave us, Soviet Gymnastics Spectacular and White Christmas. While, that evening, we received The Duchess of Duke Street, The Dick Emery Christmas Show and that good old festive standby Starsky and Hutch.

On Christmas Day itself, BBC Two's late film was The Big Sleep.

That morning, BBC One gave us National Velvet before serving up such treats as Are you Being Served, Top of the Pops, Billy Smart's Christmas Circus, Basil Brush Through the Looking Glass, The Wizard of Oz and The Mike Yarwood Show, featuring that legendary studio performance of Mull of Kintyre by the aforementioned Wings.

But surely the most Herculean televisual feat of that Christmas Day was by Morecambe and Wise whose show attracted a gigantic twenty eight million viewers, which, needless to say, is one of the highest viewing figures ever for a TV show in Britain.

I must confess that I'm somewhat confused. I'm pretty sure the cover to this relates to the tale in which Peter Parker sets out to discover what happened to his parents and discovers the Red Skull was behind it all.

However, I could have sworn that that tale was included in the previous year's Spider-Man annual. Did they reprint the same story in two consecutive years or is my memory misleading me?

Britain's greatest super-hero since Billy the Cat and Katie may have had his comic cancelled and recently had his name removed from the cover of Spider-Man's comic but that, bizarrely, didn't stop him having an annual.

As far as I can tell, the book reprints early Herb Trimpe drawn stories.

It also appears to include a pin-up of Dr Strange, which seems a little random and anomalous.

Hooray! I had this one - although I didn't get it at Christmas. I got it in my summer holidays.

If I remember right, it features the Gil Kane drawn tale in which Mar-Vell merges with Rick Jones and then gains revenge on Yon-Rogg.

It also gives us an adventure that features Luke Cage against Moses Magnum, a villain who always gave heroes more trouble than he probably should have.

I'm pretty sure that, despite the cover image, Daredevil doesn't appear in this annual at all, although the Hulk does fleetingly appear in a quick Rick Jones flashback.

If I remember correctly, The Titans comic was cancelled in 1976. Needless to say, with true Marvel UK logic, that didn't prevent it getting an annual for 1978.

I have no idea which tales are featured within, although my Sherlockian intellect tells me that Annihilus may be involved.

This is a very odd thing. Up until I Googled for info on this year's books, I had never before been aware of this annual's existence. Equally, I can pass no comment on its contents.

I can say, however, that the colouring on Goliath's costume is a little odd. He's also missing his antennae, which were always my favourite part of it.

A vaguely Starlinesque cover that appears to not be the work of Jim Starlin, unless he was drawing under the pseudonym of, "Gary Brodsky," which I suspect he wasn't. I assume that Brodsky was Sol Brodsky. I know not who Gary was.

Again, of the contents, I know nothing.

Anyway, that aside, Merry Christmas to you if you celebrate Christmas. Happy Hanukkah if you celebrate that. Happy Kwanzaa if you celebrate that. Happy Pagan Winter Solstice Feastings if you celebrate that. Happy Holidays if you celebrate nothing much in particular. Happy Normal Day That Means Nothing To You if you don't celebrate anything. Happy Pointlessness if you're a nihilist.

No one can accuse this site of not covering all bases or of not spreading the love around evenly.