June 1st 1974 - 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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This week in 1974 saw no change atop the UK singles hit list, with the Rubettes' Sugar Baby Love retaining its Number One status.

However, it was a case of normal service being resumed as soon as possible on the corresponding LP chart, with Rick Wakeman's reign at the summit being ended after just one week, thanks to the Carpenters' Singles 1969-1973 regaining the top spot it had ceded to him just the week before.

Holy smoke. It was starting to look like nothing could keep the silky-smooth siblings of soft-centred song away from the peak of the charts.

It's another all-time classic, as the Hulk meets the mighty Mogol, a dynamic strongman sent to the surface world to recruit our hero for the benefit of Tyrannus.

But is he friend?

Or is he foe?

And what is his shocking secret?

Meanwhile, I do believe Daredevil's currently blind, in the Savage Land and having his first encounter with a wannabe Tarzan called Ka-Zar.

But is he friend?

Or is he foe?

And what is his shocking secret?

Finally, I suspect the Thing has joined forces with the Frightful Four and now wants nothing but to destroy his former colleagues.

Well, at least we know if he's a friend or a foe.

But what's this? It seems that this week's back cover offers us the chance to win a fishing rod by the simple act of recognising the silhouettes of various boats from history. One of them is the Titanic and one of them is a Viking longboat.

Doing this feature has made me realise I only seemed to get every other issue of The Avengers during this period.

And thus it is that here's another one I didn't have.

However, I do know Shang-Chi's still in the Everglades and still hanging around with both the Man-Thing and a David Carradine clone. 

However, he's also hanging around with a couple of assassins who want to kill him.

That's assuming the Man-Thing doesn't kill them first.

I'm fairly certain the Avengers are, at last, putting a stop to the schemes of the Living Laser, especially the one that involves him taking over a South American country.

And Doctor Strange is up against the might of Kaluu.

Unless I miss my guess; this week, we get Part One of the thriller in which Mysterio abducts Spidey and convinces him he's trapped inside a model of a funfair, after being reduced to the size of a true arachnid.

Meanwhile, Iron Man must deal with his mightiest foe yet, the Scarecrow whose super-power is...

...crows!

Yes. He's a normal man with three pet crows. How can even a genius wrapped from head to toe in armour and equipped with repulsor rays, jet boots and roller skates hope to stop such an opponent?

Clearly, he can't.

And that's bad news for Tony Stark because the villain wants to steal some of his top-secret plans and sell them to Fidel Castro.

Elsewhere, space awesomeness awaits us because, as far as I'm aware, Thor's battled his way to Rigel or thereabouts but now must prepare himself for an encounter with Ego the living planet!

And we finish with a yarn called Super-Hero Daydreams, a Marie Severin spoof from the pages of Not Brand Echh. In its three pages, it tackles the subject of what it would be like if we could transform ourselves into our favourite Marvel heroes at will.

The keen-eyed reader will have noticed that this week's cover claims Iron Man is battling the murderous Mandarin.

He isn't.