The Marvel Lucky Bag - November 1972.

Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon. 

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Who doesn't love a good musical?

Me.

Unless it's Annie.

However, if I did like musicals, I'm sure I'd have been delighted with November 1972 because it was a month which unleashed not one but two major musicals.

Admittedly, when I say, "major," I've only ever heard of one of them.

Those two movies were 1776 and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

It has to be said that one of those films has a subject matter that seems to lend itself less well to the musical genre than the other. However, as I've never seen 1776, I cannot attest to that film's artistic success or failure.

Maybe it features Alex Harvey's Boston Tea Party.

I like to think it does. I suspect it doesn't.

Other notable films to escape from Hollywood's backlots, that month, were Daughters of Satan, Asylum and The Mechanic. I do believe I've seen all three of them, though I struggle to decide which is best.

Marvel's lurch into trying to get girls to read their comics smashes us in the face when the Cat makes her senses-shattering debut.

For reasons I can't remember, Greer Nelson agrees to take part in an experiment - and emerges from it with the powers of a cat.

However, all is not as it seems and it turns out the experiment's benefactor Mal Donalbain wants her to use her powers to commit robberies on his behalf.

Greer's not having any of that nonsense and soon disposes of the bounder before setting off to carve a new life for herself as a genuine super-heroine.

It's not a great comic but I have to say that Marie Severin/Wally Wood cover makes it worth buying.

Hooray! A new horror comic hits our spinner racks!

And, to my surprise, only one of its tales is a reprint.

In our first adventure, travellers encounter a man who's human at night but becomes a wolf by day.

In our second adventure, a sadistic prison warden faces an inmate uprising and attempts to flee downstairs. But can he survive the deadly fumes contained within the building's execution chamber?

In our third and final tale, a construction accident kills a passer-by but, before he dies, he dreams of performing heroic deeds.

That last one sounds a bit rubbish.

Stephen Strange is still going through his prolonged venture into the world of Lovecraftian horror but still escapes the threat of being sacrificed to Sligguth.

Only to discover the slumbering evil of Shuma-Gorath!

He thinks he's got problems? While all this is going on, the Ancient One gets carried away by the Shadowmen of sunken Kaa-U.

Marvel's Brand new humour mag's back, and supplies us with yarns entitled Tales from the Creep, Tarz an' The Apes! and Brawl in the Family. It all sounds like cracking stuff.

It's not just issue #1 of The Cat that's giving us female action, this month; as Night Nurse too makes its debut. Sadly, like that other book, it's doomed to survive for just four issues.

Linda Carter, Georgia Jenkins, and Christine Palmer are all studying to be nurses but Linda's boyfriend will only marry her if she renounces her medical ambitions.

Needless to say, when the city's power goes out and Georgia's brother tries to hold the hospital's generator hostage, Linda realises that becoming a nurse means more to her than marriage ever could.

I'm starting to get a feeling this could be a comic to rival the power and majesty of DC's Lady Cop.

And that's not a thing I ever say lightly.

My memories of this one are vague. I suspect that Subby encounters a giant sea monster that's awoken from wherever it's been for centuries.

It is also a speaking sea monster, which means it does an awful lot of boasting about how unbeatable it is.

In a shocking twist, it turns out not to be unbeatable.