September 3rd, 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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As far as I'm aware, the late Beatle George Harrison only ever wrote one UK Number One single.

And that was My Sweet Lord.

However, this week in 1980, you could have been forgiven for thinking otherwise, as a song which sounded suspiciously like Harrison's Taxman hit the very top of the British hit parade.

That song was called Start and it was by The Jam.

Despite its blatant plagiarism, it is quite difficult to dislike.

Then again, that could be appropriate as, despite My Sweet Lord's blatant plagiarism, that is also a difficult song to dislike.

Over on the UK album chart, Roxy Music were still Number One with their LP Flesh and Blood.

Bruce Banner seems to be having some kind of nervous breakdown and thinks he's the Hulk being chased by a deadly female.

The X-Men find themselves in trouble with a neighbouring government when Weapon Alpha shows up to try and reclaim Wolverine for the Canadian taxpayer.

I've no idea what Luke Cage is up to and still have no recollection of him ever having even appeared in this book.

It's a watershed moment in the life of the titular Time Lord, as his book switches from a weekly to a monthly schedule. Surely, nothing can stop him now. Nothing!

Amongst all the other features, such as a re-tread of The Dominators and The Invasion of Time, we get an article profiling the show's first producer Verity Lambert.

Ultron's trying to get Jocasta to marry him but she's having none of it.

And so are the Avengers.

Some people have no sense of romance.

The original X-Men are still battling the Living Monolith - but the Sentinels are waiting in the wings.

And the Champions have to defeat the Griffin before they can hope to rescue the Black Widow from Titanium Man.

Spidey's failed in his attempt to prevent the Black Cat from robbing the local museum.

The Hulk's still converting the Living Colossus into the Dead Colossus.

Spider-Woman's in a scrap with Brother Grimm.

Most intriguingly, we get a reprint of the elderly tale Heaven is a Very Small Place in which the Hulk stumbles across an idyllic town where no one's hostile towards him, only for it to turn out to be a mirage.

And the She-Hulk's own father's trying to kill her with a laser cannon - one that's about to explode at any moment!

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess the Micronauts are facing the pulse-pounding menace of Psycho-Man.

Just what the denizens of the Battlestar Galactica are up to, I couldn't say.

I doubt it'll be as exciting as battling Psycho-Man, though.

It looks to me like Dracula's still lost his magic powers and is still in Transylvania, trying to get them back, while his former servants turn against him.

Bearing in mind that's a tale from right at the end of Tomb of Dracula's original run, it would seem the long-term future of this book is in some jeopardy.

Not only do we get the origin of the Black Panther and a battle with Klaw, we also get the Torch and Wyatt Wingfoot against Prester John and his Evil Eye that can't help causing trouble wherever it goes.

Buck Rogers and Tweaky may get this issue's big picture but, surely, the most exciting news of the month is there's going to be a Popeye movie starring Robin Williams.

OK, so maybe that wasn't as exciting a revelation as the makers had, no doubt, hoped it'd be.

I do believe this issue reprints chunks of the Amazing Spider-Man Annual #2, including our hero's mission to rescue John Jameson's space capsule as it plummets towards Earth, and Spidey's team-up with Dr Strange to thwart Xandu's attempts to steal the Wand of Watoomb.

Conan's up against the horror of the Red Tower, which can't be good news for him.

Then again, given Conan's track record, I suspect it's even worse news for the Red Tower.

On a small Pacific island, Nick Fury and his howling commandos find themselves outnumbered by the Japanese. What hope can there be for them?

And just who is that mysterious onlooker with the comedy English accent?

And can he possibly rescue them?

Han Solo gets himself frozen in carbonite.

Am I right in thinking that, in reply to Leia's declaration of love, he's much more vocal in this adaptation than he is in the movie version?

Monsters of the Cosmos gives us the tale of Magneto - but not the X-Men villain.

This one's a Lee/Lieber/Kirby tale of a man picked for an experimental space flight when he can't get work elsewhere because of his huge size.

I'm not sure huge size is a positive in an astronaut, given the need to get the rocket off the ground.

Gullivar Jones is still, no doubt, out to rescue his girlfriend from the local bully.

And, in this week's tale of the Watcher, a man steals a time machine, in order to discover and profit from the secrets of the future...

...only to be arrested, when he gets there, for stealing a time machine.

Frantic's still going.