Fifty years ago this month - January 1968.

January 1968 was a great month for all fans of mysteriously fast toys, as Mattel's Hot Wheels were launched. How I recall the sight of them whizzing around and looping the loop, thanks to tracks attached to door handles. God alone knows what children who didn't have door handles did. Their childhoods must have been in tatters.

Speaking of iconic cars, it was also the month that saw the launch of the Ford Escort. I don't know if there was ever a Hot Wheels version of the Ford Escort but, if there was, I'm sure it was suitably awesome.

Elsewhere, Daniel Day-Lewis' dad was made Poet Laureate and Harold Wilson launched the, "I'm Backing Britain," campaign.

That campaign may not have changed the world but it famously inspired Paul McCartney to write a song called I'm Backing Britain which he then renamed I'm Backing the USSR and then renamed Back in the USSR. How one person's intentions can lead to another person's totally unpredictable outcomes.

The all-new, all good Black Knight reveals himself to the world and tries to recruit the Avengers' help in evicting Magneto from his house.

Needless to say, they're in no mood to listen to him and are more interested in engaging him in fisticuffs.

It's a miracle that any super-villains ever got thwarted, the amount of time Marvel's heroes spent fighting each other.

On the art front, I'd say this is my favourite George Tuska drawn Avengers tale.

If Daredevil thought he was having problems with the Trapster, he didn't know not nothing, as the story climaxes with the arrival of Dr Doom and his nefarious body-swapping plans.

I do believe that that creature is one of the Mad Thinker's evil androids, though I don't know quite what his plan is.

Is there a scene in this issue where Ben and Alicia are ambushed by it in a restaurant?

Putting my fashion hat on, I really didn't like Sue's costume in this period. As Coco Chanel once said, "Never wear a skirt over your gender-neutral overalls."

It's the shock of the century, as Spider-Man loses his memory, thanks to a stolen nullifier short-circuiting his spider-sense, and Doc Ock convinces him he's his partner in crime. Will our hero discover the truth before it's too late?

I don't know what's going on there but that doesn't look like Nightmare.

For that matter, that machine doesn't look like something Nightmare would use.

It's a tale familiar to all readers of Son of Origins of Marvel Comics, when Shellhead finds himself up against the villain who believes in giving everyone a fair crack of the whip.

He was also, of course, in the movie Iron Man 2, in which he demonstrated a remarkable ability to survive being run over by cars, in a way that was never explained. Even a Ford Escort would have been useless against him.

It's one of my favourite Marie Severin covers, as the Hulk finds himself up against that secret organisation whose name I've forgotten, whose evil plan was something or other.

Weren't they the people who were responsible for inflicting the Boomerang on us? I'm not sure they were the highest level secret organisation ever.

Hooray! The Wrecker makes his wall-shattering debut!

I always liked the Wrecker. For some reason, I always liked it when Thor came up against thuggish opponents like the Wrecker, Crusher Creel and Ulik. They always seemed more compelling than more sophisticated villains.

It's one of my least favourite comic book stories of all time, as the X-Men come up against Frankenstein's Monster, who turns out to be a robot built by aliens, over a hundred years ago, as some sort of space ambassador.

All in all, it feels more like a Marvel story from the early 1960s than the late 1960s.