September 22nd, 1973 - Marvel UK, 50 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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Roy Wood's Wizzard are, perhaps, best remembered for two songs; See My Baby Jive and perennial Yuletide favourite I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day.

It is, therefore, easy to forget they had other major hits as well.

And one of the biggest was a thing called Angel Fingers which proved just how big it was by hitting the Number One spot on the UK singles chart, this week in 1973. It has to be said it was noticeably similar to all their other hits.

The British album chart, meanwhile, was seeing an assault from an act of a whole other style, with the Rolling Stones' Goat's Head Soup smashing straight in at Number One. Who would have thought, back then, that fifty years later to the week, they'd still be around and still bothering the chart compilers?

Wait! What's this? A brand new mag's hit our newsagents? And it stars the team who've recently been dominating The Mighty World of Marvel at the Hulk's expense?

It's true. A brand new era starts for the UK imprint. One which even goes so far as to bring us the magic of glossy covers. Truly, things will never be the same again.

Well, not until 1979 when Dez Skinn will consign glossy covers for weeklies to the dustbin of history, sensing that what British readers want most from their comics is a drastic reduction in quality.

And I must declare that this issue arrives with more cover blurbs and fonts than I've ever before seen on the front of a comic.

But what actually happens inside the thing?

Plenty happens.

For one thing, we get the return of Captain America after the Sub-Mariner throws a mysterious block of ice into the sea and it turns out to contain the hero, trapped in suspended animation since World War II.

Retrieved and thawed out by the Avengers, Cap helps the gang tackle a space alien who's blundering around New York, turning people to stone.

As if that's not enough melodrama for any human being to withstand, we also get the origin of Dr Strange when top surgeon Stephen Strange damages his hands in an accident and seeks the Tibetan-style help of a mysterious and aged mystic....

No signs, though, of glossy covers for Spidey. His mag is still as matt as matt can be.

He's also lumbered with a rubbish villain when failed fighter Joe Smith tries his hand at acting, dresses up as a robotic monster and is zapped by enough electro-chemical mayhem to send him on an orgy of destruction.

Elsewhere, Thor's about to encounter a villain of far more staying power than that, thanks to the arrival of the maddening menace of the Absorbing Man.

And our tale of Asgard, this week, involves Thor and Loki, as boys, invading the castle of a bunch of storm giants, in order to steal stuff from them.

Now that the Avengers have gone, Hulkie-Baby can return to bossing Marvel UK's flagship title.

And he immediately finds himself up against the Space Parasite who, after watching a TV show about our hero, visits Earth to steal the jade giant's power, so he can use it to further his plans for interplanetary conquest.

Sadly, for the villain, representatives of his home planet take against him and decide to blow up his spaceship.

Meanwhile, the Fantastic Four must fight three criminals who've been recruited by Dr Doom to help him destroy the team.