The Marvel Lucky Bag - July 1970.

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The very definition of the word, "frustration," is having been a member of the band Free in July 1970.

That's because their track All Right Now spent the entire month stuck at Number Two on the UK singles chart; behind Mungo Jerry's In the Summertime and then Elvis Presley's The Wonder of You. It does seem strange to see Elvis at Number One in 1970 but I suppose it's a reminder of his enduring appeal.

But he's not the only one with that trait because, just a couple of weeks ago, in 2020, Bob Dylan was top of the UK album chart and, wouldn't you know it, exactly 50 years ago, he managed the self-same feat, thanks to his LP Self-Portrait.

However, he was soon robbed of that pinnacle by Simon and Garfunkel whose Bridge Over Troubled Water quickly reclaimed the Number One slot he'd so rudely taken from them.

Speaking of rude, the evil Commander Kraken captures Lady Dorma and Diane Arliss and tries to use them as leverage to force Subby to join his band of not-so-merry pirates.

You do have to feel sorry for Diane Arliss. She seems to blunder from one watery crisis to another, which is quite an achievement for a land-living gal.

A spy has a great idea.

He decides to use shrinking pills, so he can spy on people more easily.

With a grim inevitability, he loses those pills and ends up permanently stuck at that size. I think I can guess which film Stan was watching before he wrote that one.

We also get a story called The Ghost Beast. Of it, I know little but do know it was written and pencilled by Wally Wood.

There's also a Tom Sutton helmed tale whose details I'm mostly ignorant of.

And we finish with a venture called The Scream From Beyond which has the privilege of being introduced to us by an, "Onscreen," Gene Colan.

As if Marvel wasn't giving us enough horror this month, we get the launch of yet another monster anthology.

In it, we get I Am The Brute That Walks. A weakling scientist develops a growth serum, so his girlfriend will like him better.

With another grim inevitability, the serum turns him into a giant monster.

I've no news on whether his girlfriend now likes him better.

Meanwhile, Kragoo shows us an alien, with the power to possess the bodies of others, visit Earth, on a mission of conquest.

Unfortunately, the space dolt takes possession of a statue and discovers he now can't move.

Finally, Fear in the Night tells of a human and a robot who crash-land on an alien world inhabited by a monster. Now, one of them must make the ultimate sacrifice.

Not having read the tale, I'm going to guess the tale's robot is the one who chooses to make the ultimate sacrifice, proving that he is the most human of us all.

We may be getting the debut issue of Where Creatures Roam, this month, but its near-namesake hits its fourth issue.

In Behind My Doors Waits... Medusa! A store owner has a statue he claims is a burglar, turned to stone by the dreaded Gorgon.

Is he telling the truth?

And just what lies behind that locked door of his?

In I Met the Thing on Midnight Island, a sailor finds a note written by a castaway but, when he gets there, finds only a monster. 

Finally, at the tale's conclusion, he discovers the monster was, in fact, the castaway.

In I Was Trapped in Nightmare Valley, evil trees plan to conquer the world but are destroyed by an erupting volcano.

And, in The Monster in My Cellar, a fiction writer inadvertently wills a deadly fiend into existence.

I'm pretty sure this one was reprinted in Star Wars Weekly, at some point.

I haven't read it but I'm convinced we're in for another 20 pages of sobbing, and learning valuable lessons, as love once more preys upon the sanity of attractive young women.

We don't get just a new monster mag, this month. We also get a new humorous one.

Admittedly, I'm assuming it's humorous, based purely on the cover. For all I know, it could contain a descent into madness from which Lovecraft himself would recoil.

Regardless, I must confess I've never heard of this comic before. I can say, however, that the stories within are reprinted from a book originally published in 1949.