The Marvel Lucky Bag - December 1970.

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Wait!

What's that?

It's the sound of someone knocking!

And I'm not the only one who can hear it - because Dave Edmunds can too!

And it's lucky he can because, thanks to that sound, in December 1970, he grabbed the Number One spot on the UK singles chart, and he heard it so clearly that his was the only record that topped the hit parade that month.

That record was, of course, I Hear You Knocking, in case I was being a bit vague there.

Over on the UK album chart, Led Zeppelin started the month at Number One with Led Zeppelin III but then had to make way for the power and majesty of Andy Williams and his Greatest Hits package.

Led Zeppelin and Andy Williams. It's a rivalry as old as time itself. 

The cinemas, that month, saw the release of a whole slew of movies, possibly the best-known being Little Big Man, Love Story and The Aristocats. I must confess I've only seen two of those movies and neither of them is Love Story.

Thanks to Gerry Conway and Barry Smith, Ka-Zar and Garokk the petrified man return to the Savage Land to discover Zaladane's making a bid to take the place over.

Not only has she destroyed Tongah's village but, now, she's attacking the domain of the Lizard-Men!

And Ka-Zar's not the only one with a battle on his hands because Dr Doom has to defeat not one but two threats to his throne, in the Faceless One and the Doomsman.

I remember the Faceless One being the villain with a multi-legged goldfish bowl where his head should be. The Doomsman is, of course, just a man wearing bandages.

Readers of the Fantastic Four's monthly mag have only just got over the terror of seeing the hordes of Atlantis trying to invade New York and, now, thanks to this annual, they're going to have to watch yet another watery attack on the city, this time reprinted from the pages of the team's very first annual.

Also reprinted from that annual is a whole mountainload of pin-ups of the FF's deadliest foes.

Sadly, Jack Kirby's retelling of Spider-Man's first encounter with the FF, which was in that first annual, is not also replicated here.

Someone at Marvel clearly thinks Ka-Zar has the potential to be a people pleaser because he's still appearing in two books a month.

This one sees a reprint of Daredevil's first visit to the Savage Land, a visit which leaves him blind and at the mercy of a caveman, as the Plunderer makes his not-totally-overwhelming debut.

On top of that, we get the Angel in solo action. I don't know what happens in the story but it does appear to be an all-new adventure for the pinioned powerhouse.

Spidey has his first-ever meeting with the Chameleon when the two-bit spy frames him, as only the Chameleon can.

Then we get the wallcrawler's first meeting with the Vulture when the winged wrongdoer keeps helping himself to other people's money.

There's then a limited villain's gallery before A Guy Named Joe shows up for Steve Ditko's final Spider-Man tale.

Subby heads off to Lemuria, in order to forge an alliance against the untrustworthy surface-dwellers but finds its inhabitants also can't be trusted, as they're now being led by the luscious Llyra who can mentally control all sea creatures.

Can Namor defeat the azure aggravationist? And just what is the stunning secret she shares with her air-breathing twin sister?

The X-Men may be struggling to sustain a regular comic but that's not stopped Marvel from finally granting them an annual.

In it, the mutants blunder into the Avengers, in their attempts to stop Lucifer who's got his hands on an atom bomb that's wired to explode if his heartbeat doesn't do whatever it is his heartbeat's supposed to do.

The book's second half is dedicated to the Stranger's first arrival on Earth and his subsequent abduction of Magneto and the Toad.