July 9th, 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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What's that? A place where nobody dared to go?

The love that we came to know?

It can only be that magical place mankind knows as Xanadu.

Surely, Kublai Khan never suspected, when he established his summer capital in Inner Mongolia, that, 700 years later, it'd be a Disco sensation.

But it was!

And, in this week in 1980, Olivia Newton-John and ELO proved it, as their record of that very name reached the top of the British hit parade, giving the band their first and last UK chart-topper.

I'll happily declare that, for me, it's a song whose appeal has only been enhanced by the passing years, and still makes me wonder if I should condescend to try watching the movie it came from.

It's bad news in the Baxter Building where the Wizard, Electro, Sandman and Trapster are in the process of sneaking up on Reed Richards, without warning.

What hope is there for our stretchy super-doer?

Spider-Man. That's what hope.

And what hope for the other stars of this week's comic?

Beats me. I don't even know what threats they're facing.

We get the start of a, no doubt, thrilling new series called Dragon's Claw featuring monks.

After that, there's a three-page feature on spaceships that have appeared in the show.

There's also a single-page article about Doctor Who actors who've appeared in Star Wars.

The only one I can think of, off the top of my head, is Michael Sheard who turned up in a zillion episodes, as about a zillion different characters, and who ended up being strangled to death by the power of Darth Vader's brain.

We get a Lee/Ditko tale reprinted from Strange Tales #90, in which an ageless scientist remains on Earth - after everyone else has left - in order to repopulate it, with a woman. 

The mind-boggling twist is that their names are Adam and Eve!

And we finish off with more from the Daleks' strip.

Don't ask me what happens in it but it's written by David Whitaker, which practically makes it canon, as far as I'm concerned.

Deep in the heart of Germany, Rocky Stone and Bull McGiveney are taking on the German army while waiting for support to arrive.

I'm assuming the support is Nick Fury and the Howling Commandos, as it's their strip.

Unfortunately, they're not in time to prevent Bull getting hit by a bullet. Is it curtains for the man?

And just how rocky are things going to get for Rocky?

2,000 weeks into Marvel's adaptation of the movie, and Luke's still on Hoth, still fighting those robot camels.

Elsewhere, an exciting new strip makes its Gil Kanetastic debut.

And that's Gullivar Jones: Warrior of Mars.

But, hold on a minute, he was in Marvel UK's Planet of the Apes comic, years ago. What a swizz.

But it is weird how I've no recollection of him ever having been in this comic.

Meanwhile, under the book's Monsters of the Cosmos banner, we get Part One of a thing called Clete which is reprinted from Unkown Worlds of Science Fiction #1.

And we finish off with I Come From the Shadow World, a Lee/Ditko offering in which a malevolent silhouette arrives on Earth, out to do some spying in preparation for invasion.

He is, of course, destroyed by someone turning the lights on.

But is he a member of the race of shadow creatures which once turned up in a Herb Trimpe drawn Hulk tale?

The keen-eyed reader will have noticed a certain absence.

It's true. Poor old Man-Wolf has lost his place in the book.

Will he ever get it back?

Only time will tell.