The Marvel Lucky Bag - January 1979.

What do we want?

The Past!

When do we want it?

Now!

And that can only mean it's time for me to once more investigate what Marvel's less glamorous titles of the 1970s were up to, as I take a look at some of the company's more offbeat offerings which bore the cover date of January 1979.

Unbelievably, the Human Fly's comic is still going.

Not for long, however. As far as I can make out, his comic now has just two issues left to live. All of which proves that you can survive standing around on top of a jumbo jet but you can't survive reader apathy.

When it comes to this issue, it would appear that our hero's latest job, as a human cannonball, leads to nothing but trouble for him.

It would be nice to imagine that it transpires that the carnival he's signed up with is actually the Circus of Crime and that, now, having discovered its true intent, he has to thwart its latest attempt at criminality but, sadly, I've encountered no evidence at all to suggest that any such thing happens.

Hooray! The Micronauts make their microscope challenging debuts, with the tale of what happens when Commander Rann wakes from suspended animation, only to discover that Baron Karza's taken over the whole Microverse.

As I've said before, I never knew what to make of The Micronauts when the strip turned up in Marvel UK's Star Wars Weekly. On the one hand, it was clearly much better than it should have been. On the other, it was about toys.

Did this mean I should like it?

Did this mean I shouldn't like it?

I could never decide.

And yes, I did always misread the villain's name as, "Baron Khazi." I can only blame Carry On films for being a bad influence on me.

But it's interesting to see that Karza is the figure depicted in the corner box, rather than any of the strip's heroes, which is the equivalent of putting Doc Doom in the FF's corner box, or Kang in the Avengers'.

I do believe this Treasury Edition reprints Buscema and Alcala's magnificent Iron Shadows in the Moon - but in colour.

How could anyone not want to own such a thing?

This book also reprints Alex Niño's highly memorable People of the Dark from Savage Sword of Conan #6.

I'm including this purely because it's a blatant homage to Frank Frazetta's painting The Mammoth, a fact which gives me remarkable pleasure.

Not that it does Sonja any good. Like the Human Fly, she has just two issues to go before she meets her doom.

I really don't know what Tarzan's doing to Zabu there but it's probably best not to consider it too deeply.

Hooray! Not content with giving us one Star Wars rip-off - with the Micronauts - this month, Marvel gives us a second, as we get an adaptation of the pilot of the TV show that wanted to be Star Wars so badly that it hurt.

My main memory of both this adaptation and the original pilot episode is that whenever those women with four eyes and two mouths appeared, it made my brain hurt as it instinctively battled to turn them into women with two eyes and one mouth.

Strangely, there were two versions of this book published at the same time. One was the version, depicted here which, if I remember rightly, had a magazine-type format, while the other was in the form of a Treasury Edition.