The Marvel Lucky Bag - September 1970.

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September 1970 saw the release of two famous movies.

The first was Five Easy Pieces and the second was Tora! Tora! Tora! 

I've seen them both.

I can remember little about either but am willing to acknowledge them as classics, despite that.

What I do remember is Tears of a Clown by Smokey Robinson.

And that's a good thing because it started that month at Number One on the UK singles chart.

Soon, however, it was deposed by Freda Payne's Band of Gold which spent the rest of September at the summit.

Over on the UK album chart, the month kicked off with Creedence Clearwater Revival's Cosmo's Factory on top before being usurped by the Rolling Stones' Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out. That, in turn, lost pole position to Simon and Garfunkel's Bridge Over Troubled Water, an LP which had already experienced several spells at Number One.

Unless I miss my ever-loving guess, the Inhumans are still convinced the Fantastic Four have fired a deadly missile at their home - and decide to take the battle to the Baxter Building.

I'm sure everyone quickly realises their mistake and they all end up friends again.

And that the Inhumans finally realise Maximus is behind it all, what with him always being behind everything.

I don't know what happens in the Black Widow tale but I do know Hawkeye and the original Red Guardian appear, so I'm assuming it's an issue replete with flashbacks.

But, hold on, what's this? At exactly the same time the Inhumans are in New York, fighting the Fantastic Four, they're also in the Great Refuge, fighting the Silver Surfer?

It's the sort of paradox to drive a man mad.

And a surfer.

And it does drive him mad, because, by the end of the tale, he's vowing to destroy humanity.

It's all part of the great new direction Jack Kirby wants to take the strip in.

Except, Jolly Jack will soon be gone and, by the Surfer's next appearance, Norrin's forgotten all about it and is back to being a good guy again.

It's the fight that had to happen. The crown prince of Atlantis must battle the self-declared prince of power.

It's all down to our protagonist being hypnotised by a servant of Zeus.

Happily, Subby soon breaks free of the spell and the heroes unite to fight a bunch of giant monsters that are now terrorising a Greek village.

Apparently, this tale follows-on from events in Ka-Zar #1, which doesn't seem like the most obvious crossover in the world.

Thanks to Lee, Lieber and Kirby, the world must fend off the challenge of Titano the monster that time forgot!

We also get an Allyn Brodsky/Barry Smith/Herb Trimpe 7-page epic called The Scream of Things.

And, as if that wasn't enough, we get the Wally Wood tale Of Swords and Sorcery.

All in all, it sounds like a varied issue.

It's starting to look now like Marvel's returning to its roots as a giant monster company.

We kick off with I Spent Midnight with the Monster on Bald Mountain in which a sculptor creates two statues, one good and one evil. Unfortunately, lightning hits the evil statue and it comes to life.

I'm guessing the sculptor fixes it all by getting lightning to hit the good statue, so it can come to life and fight the evil one.

After that, we get I Dared Defy the Floating Head. I can't help feeling this issue doesn't feature stories with the greatest titles ever.

It would appear a giant floating head turns up in New York, claiming to be part of an alien invasion but it all turns out to be a hoax staged as part of an attempt to loot the city.

Next, we get I Am the Man Without a Face in which a bigot discovers the hood he dons when he sets out to harass gypsies cannot be removed - ever!

And we finish off with He Waits For Us in the Glacier whose sleeping alien wakes and looks forward to humanity wiping itself out with nuclear weapons, so he and his race can take over the Earth.

I think there's a lesson there for us all.

Taboo's back!

And, this time, he's stopped by members of his own race who view him as a deranged criminal rather than their advance scout for interplanetary invasion.

Next, we get The Strange Magic of Master Khan in which pirates who steal a sorcerer's ship find themselves shrunk and trapped in bottles.

In We Met in the Swamp, a hermit helps a bunch of aliens, in return for a chestful of treasure but ends up with just a chestful of air, as that's what the aliens view as precious.

And, finally, I Lived a Ghost Story sees a prospective buyer's attempts to spend a night in a haunted house thwarted, to the relief of the estate agent who is, himself, one of the building's resident ghosts.