Fifty years ago this month - March 1971.

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Did you know that all that glitters is gold?

I did but only thanks to Led Zeppelin.

I know because they told me so.

Or at least they would have, had I been in Belfast fifty years ago this month. 

For it was in that city, right then, the band performed Stairway to Heaven in public for the first time.

Thanks to them, I also know not to be alarmed if there's a bustle in a hedgerow.

It's advice that's served me well and I have, thus, yet to be alarmed by any bustles I've ever encountered in any hedgerows.

What served Joe Frazier well, that March, were his fists, as he beat Muhammad Ali, on points, at Madison Square Garden, in the scrap billed as The Fight of the Century.

Rather more peacefully, it was also the month in which The Ed Sullivan Show aired its final episode.

As if all that wasn't epoch-making enough, March 1971 also saw the founding of Starbucks, in Washington State.

But comics. What of them?

We get a masterclass in how not to put together a book, as Lee and Buscema cobble together the tale of Janus the Nega-Man by recycling panels from a rejected story Jack Kirby drew before seeking-out the bright pastures of DC.

I'm going to put my neck on the block and say I don't feel it's an experiment that worked.

Gwen Stacy's gone to London to give birth to Norman Osborn's twins, and Aunt May manages to get herself kidnapped by the Beetle who's then foiled by his deadliest foe yet, a swimming pool.

John Romita's pencil also gives us a retelling of Spider-Man's origin.

I do feel this to be one of Spidey's weaker offerings from this era.

Trapped on an alternate Earth, the Avengers unite with the Squadron Supreme to take on Brain-Child, that world's deadliest ankle-biter.

In one of the very first American comics I ever owned, Captain America and the Falcon grapple with a human gorilla.

I cannot deny it, the colours and design of Cap's costume felt, to my innocent mind, like an entry into an almost drug-fuelled wonderland.

New York's lost the use of its eyes and it's up to Daredevil and a bunch of normally sightless people to defeat the culprits who turn out to be the Smasher and his gang.

I'm assuming this isn't the same Smasher as the one who turned up, once, in Spider-Man's comic, as that Smasher didn't seem to have the brains to lead any kind of gang.

Is it another Hulk classic when Bruce Banner finds himself in pursuit of Space Moby Dick while having to survive the lethal ambitions of the Abomination.

If you don't like stories like this, you don't like stories.

Nor do you like space monsters.

Nor the Abomination.

Nor the Hulk.

Or Bruce Banner.

It's another of those Iron Man yarns I've no memory of ever having read, even though I'm sure I must have.

I do know, though, that it features Nick Fury and Zodiac.

As always, I must confess that any story which features either Nick Fury or Zodiac is going to struggle to lodge itself in my mind.

Especially if it's in the pages of Iron Man.

I think this is the one that ends the saga in which Odin's hand is eating galaxies.

If I recall correctly, Hela's got Thor all dead and done for, until her lackey the Silent One sacrifices himself to save our hero.

But I don't care about that. All I care about is Hela's in it and looking as fabulous as ever.

So, that's all the main Marvel comics seen to but what of their distinguished competition?

Is it up to anything thrilling?

Too right it is. Jolly Jack may be being ill-served by The Fantastic Four, this month but why should he care about that? Over at DC, he has two brand-new books out!

In the first issue of The Forever People, not only do we get a guest slot from Superman, drawn as only Jack - and a hard-working correcting artist - can draw him but the main cast arrives on Earth, ready to have a, doubtless, magnificent set of adventures.

Meanwhile, Jack's New Gods also makes its debut.

I've read the plot summary of this issue, on the Grand Comics Database, and I don't understand a word of it.

I do, however, think this might be the issue which gives us the first-ever full appearance of Darkseid.