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

Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon.

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This night in 1980 was a huge evening for one particular Scotswoman.

That woman was Sheena Easton.

And that's because it was the night BBC One broadcast an edition of their show The Big Time, a series which set out to help members of the public achieve their ambitions.

19-year-old student Sheena Easton had contacted the show, asking them to make her into a pop star.

So they did. Next thing she knew, it was, "Next stop: James Bond and Prince."

Who would have thought it was so easy to become an international singing sensation?

But, of course, to really rule the roost, she was going to have to see-off Don McLean and the Rolling Stones.

That's because the first of those two acts was still topping the UK singles chart with his smash hit Crying, while the latter now ruled the British LP chart with their latest platter that mattered Emotional Rescue. 

The Rolling Stones were so old they could still recall pre-decimal money.

But, then again, we all could because, unbelievably, even though Britain had gone decimal in 1971, it wasn't until this week in 1980 that the sixpence coin was finally withdrawn from circulation. At last, people could buy things without ever again having to worry about multiplying by six.

The Fourth Doctor's still battling the Time Witch, and Sharon discovers she's no longer a teenager.

We get a five-page article dedicated to some of the Doctor's non-monstrous foes, including, by the looks of it, the Master and that annoying pirate with the robot parrot.

In their own strip, the Daleks are still causing trouble for the Soliturians.

And, finally, the Cybermen are still in lumber on Planet Goth, requiring, it seems, the Cyber-leader to blow himself up!

The Avengers are trying to prevent a nuclear holocaust in a tale I can't quite remember properly, despite having read it not that long ago.

Elsewhere, Cyclops is trying to clear his name of murder - by tracking down the man he's accused of having killed!

The Champions are up against the peril of Rampage. And I don't mean the magazine.

The Trapster's successfully invading the Baxter Building by pretending to be Spider-Man.

And it looks like the Hulk's still up against the Gardener.

Just what's occurring in the strips belonging to the She-Hulk and Spider-Woman, I could not say.

The Micronauts and Battlestar Galactica are in this book.

That is all I can say.

I can say a lot more about this issue, though.

In a Ghost Rider tale drawn by George Tuska, Johnny Blaze is heading into Mexico for an adventure that has its roots, several years earlier, in an exploding dolphin. 

Dracula's in Greenwich - the New York one, not the London one - and, stripped of his vampirism by Satan, has taken to mugging people to survive.

This is a sequence of events which soon attracts the attention of his daughter Lilith.

And, in our second Ghost Rider tale of the issue, the demented pencil of Frank Robbins gives us a team-up between Johnny and the Son of Satan.

My Sherlock Holmes-like powers of deduction tell me Spidey and Dr Strange are combining their powers to tackle the menace of Xandu.

But we also get a reprint of the legendary team-up between Shang-Chi and Spider-Man, as Fu Manchu flings his blanket of crime over New York City.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess this book reprints the epic Galactus Trilogy.

This means we get two pocket books this month whose covers feature villains' disembodied heads and hands as they menace heroes.

I've little idea what occurs in the Conan tale but I do know that, in the back-up strip, Frank Thorne's Red Sonja takes on a bear god.

The Howling Commandos are still rescuing an English scientist from the Germans. You can tell he's English because he talks like Dick Van Dyke.

I've suddenly remembered why I hated reading Howling Commando stories.

My knowledge of the other strips, this week, is zero.

As you'd expect, we get yet more about George Lucas' latest epic.

But we also get a look at the new, "Improved," Flash Gordon.

I think I've said this before but that's a film that's a lot more fun to remember than it is to actually watch.

Always enjoyable to watch is Ray Harryhausen's Mysterious Island, and we get an acknowledgement of that, with a look at that very film.

Frantic.

It still exists.

And Luke Skywalker still exists!

And he's still fighting giant metal camels on Hoth!

Seriously, Marvel has managed to make the first ten minutes of this film last for about two months.

Elsewhere, Man-Wolf's still having adventures in Outer Space.

The strip A Martian Odyssey has been renamed Monsters of the Cosmos and features a man stuck on Mars, with an overgrown space chicken.

Meanwhile, this issue's tale of the Watcher involves a world about to be destroyed by a rogue planet, with not enough room on its only spaceship for everyone to fit on board. 

Fortunately, the tale's hero works out a way to shrink the entire population, so they can all get in it and escape.

Hold on a minute, that's the plot of an old Fantastic Four story!

But this one is reprinted from a 1959 issue of Journey into Mystery. 

I will never again trust Stan Lee to be original.

It would appear the Hulk escapes from a desert island.

But islands are nothing. The X-Men find themselves on another planet and having to fight a thinly-disguised Legion of Super-Heroes, with the fate of the universe at stake!

It seems we also get the origin of Luke Cage, presumably meaning Dr Strange has lost his place in the mag.

I blame Xandu.