January 2nd, 1980 - Marvel UK, 40 years ago this week.

Have you ever been stuck on a train with a mummified caveman who's been possessed by an alien, while a Rasputin lookalike blunders around being weird?

If so, this night in 1980 must have felt like they'd made a movie of your life because that was when BBC One had the good sense to broadcast the magnificent madness of Horror Express, surely the greatest faux Hammer film of them all.

That's right. That means it's even better than The Creeping Flesh and The Blood Beast Terror.

How we gasped as Christopher Lee played a good guy, Peter Cushing played someone else, and Telly Savalas played a Cossack captain determined to completely take over the movie, despite only showing up halfway through it.

But it's time now to climb into our own Horror Express and ride it into the Dark Tunnel of Nostalgia, to see what other triumphs were dwelling within that fateful week.

I've not the slightest idea what happens in this issue's Star Wars tale but I'm working on the assumption that Han and Chewie still have an unconscious Wookie in their cargo hold.

Why they have it, I cannot say.

How they dispose of it, I also cannot say.

Whisper it quietly but I think the Guardians of the Galaxy may have finally defeated the Reavers of Arcturus and are now getting a bit of rest and recuperation.

Deathlok, on the other hand, is in no such mood for relaxation. He's in a right old mood.

And that mood gets even worse when he stumbles across a copy of Frankenstein in an abandoned library and takes it personally.

Which tale the Watcher's telling us this week is unknown to me but I'm sure its moral will well serve all who read it.

The Hulk and Goldbug arrive in El Dorado, unsuspecting of the sinister scheme which has been hatching there.

Ant-Man finally manages to stop the Wasp being homicidal - but they're still stuck at insect size!

We're getting yet more backstory about Captain Britain and the Black Knight.

The female Defenders are still trying to tame the Red Rajah.

The Silver Surfer's in the realm of Mephisto and resisting all offers and temptations his diabolical host can throw at him.

Britain's leading sic-fi mag's taking what appears to be a major look at the new Star Trek film which is packing cinemas across the globe.

It looks like we'll also be getting some coverage of Dark Star, which is always a thing to appreciate. After seeing that film, beach balls were never the same again, for me.

I've no recollection of the Gamma Monster the Hulk has to face this month and I'm not sure what the connection is between it and a Frankenstein-themed cover.

I do, of course, recollect the X-Men tale, in which, having crashed a space shuttle, Jean Grey bursts out of the sea, as Phoenix, and the X-Men promptly go on holiday to Ireland, causing some serious leprechaun action of the inevitable kind.

I don't have a clue what Phaseworld is or why it dies or why Dr Strange is mixed up in it all.

Typhon decides to get revenge on Hercules by kidnapping the Beast in order to force Iron Man to fight Hercules.

Doesn't this just mean the villain's now going to have to contend with Hercules, Iron Man and the Beast? Doesn't this make him worse off than he was in the first place?

Speaking of being badly off, the X-Men are in a bind. They've been ordered to disband, by the FBI, but they have to undisband when an evil force starts summoning all mutants to converge in one place for unknown sinister purpose.

Dr Doom's making his millionth attempt to form an alliance with the Sub-Mariner and trying to impress the crown prince of Atlantis with his robots, not suspecting that those selfsame machines are on the brink of turning against him.

We also get an interview in which Jarvis reveals what its like working for the Avengers.

Hooray! There's a Dalek on the front cover!

Granted, it's on fire but I'm sure that'll prove to be a mere minor setback to it in its plans to rule the universe.

Inside, the Doctor's still having trouble with the City of the Damned.

Now that the War of the Worlds adaptation's over, we get the start of an Invisible man adaptation. How big a part did the Invisible Man play in the defeat of the Martians?

Who can know?

Well, HG Wells can but he's not saying.

We also get a picture story about K-9's finest hour.

Presumably, that was on one of the few occasions when he wasn't left behind inside the TARDIS because no one could work out how to get him to work outdoors.

There's yet more sword and sorcery shenanigans from Britain's Number One receptacle of that genre.

We also get an interview with Boris Vallejo which I suspect would have been my highlight of the issue, if I'd had it.

It's an ever-loving calamity, as Spider-Man has to face the burglar who killed Uncle Ben - without the use of his powers.

Despite the claim on the cover, I'd have thought that, if Spider-Man was ever going to lose his powers before a fight, the best possible time would be for a scrap with the man who killed his Uncle Ben, as he's basically just some bloke.

Anyway, there's an obvious point here. And that's that Peter Parker could simply call the police in and leave it to them, what with the criminal being just some bloke.