October 17th, 1979 - Marvel UK, 40 years ago this week.

This is it! After weeks of anticipation, the most momentous moment in the history of human history has happened. We've finally reached the week, forty years ago, when, thanks to Marvel UK, it happened.

But what is it? And will it kill us?

Read on to find out.

But first, let's see what was happening on the pop charts at the time.

The big news on the singles front was that the Buggles' Video Killed the Radio Star hit the Number One spot in Britain by dethroning the Police's Message in a Bottle.

If that was bad news for the reggae-tinged trio, things were going far better for them on the album chart, where their brand new album Regatta De Blanc smashed straight in at Number One and knocked Blondie flying from that perch, in the process.

Over on TV, this afternoon of that week, Birmingham's greatest cultural gift to mankind - Pebble Mill at One - gave us the spectacle of Are You Being Served's Mollie Sugden preparing her favourite dish, in the foyer. There's something about that combination of words which sounds plain bizarre.

Meanwhile, that evening, BBC One was showing the Star Trek episode The Apple which I'm fairly certain is the one in which David Soul and his people are living in happiness, contentment and harmony until Captain Kirk comes along and blows up their god, leaving them with no food, water, social structure, means of governance or even basic survival skills, and then flies off, abandoning them to sort out the total mess he's made of their world, while congratulating himself on another job well done.

I don't have a clue what's happening in the main strip or why everyone's looking so startled but I do know, "Sister Domina," sounds a bit saucy. Has kinkiness finally entered the world of George Lucas?

In The Guardians of the Galaxy strip, the Silver Surfer finds himself tackling the Badoon as they try to conquer modern day New York.

You guessed, it's the story which, confronted by the Dreaded Deadline Doom, recycles an old Surfer tale, with a few panels of the Guardians tacked on at the beginning and end of it.

I have no news of either Star-Lord or the Watcher.

Ant-Man's still trapped at ant size.

But it's not all disaster because, while he's running around with his dog, achieving very little, Spider-Man's sorting out the bad guys, elsewhere and then provides Hank with a cure for his current rabies problem.

However, that doesn't solve his problem of being ant-sized.

The Eternals are still fighting the Hulkbot.

We get more of Captain Britain's origin.

The real Hulk is being reunited with Egghead's niece Trish Starr.

And we get the epic Nick Fury moment where the Hate-Monger accidentally steps out of an airlock and into space.

Well, they do say hate is blind.

Hold on to your TARDIS, time and space lovers because we've finally reached it - this week's big announcement, as Doctor Who Weekly hits the racks for the first time and a whole planet celebrates!

I say that but I don't remember ever seeing a single issue of it for sale anywhere. But it's still going strong, as Doctor Who Magazine, forty years later, so someone must have been able to buy it.

As for the contents, we get all the stuff you'd expect from such a comic, including Doctor Who strips, photos and features but we also get a Chris Claremont written adaptation of War of the Worlds.

War of the Worlds? If this had been the mid 1970s, Marvel UK would have redrawn the Martians as Daleks, the human villains as Sea-Devils, the tripods as Drashigs and renamed the protagonist, "Monstermurderer."

Personally, I would have paid good money to read the adventures of Derek Monstermurderer.

Among the Doctor Who stuff is a Dave Gibbons drawn tale of what seem to be robots from space, in Roman armour, invading modern day Britain.

I do believe that's the resuscitated John Jameson who's kidnapping Jonah, thanks to the machinations of some evil scientist or other.

And when John Jameson's around, we all know that can only lead to trouble of the furry kind.

What else happens in this book?

I have no idea.