July 6th 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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By the end of tonight, the United Kingdom may well have a new boss but, back in the old days, there was only one leader of the pack.

And that was Marvel UK.

Let's find out just what it was electing to give us in this week of exactly fifty years ago.

It can't be good news for everybody's favourite martial artist when, if the cover's to be believed, he must meet the wizard of the whirling doom!

In fact, as far as I'm aware, he must face two of them! And no one wants to meet two whirling dooms!

Regular readers will, no doubt, be shocked to discover this week's adventure involves him going for a stroll - only for a pair of assassins to turn up and try to kill him!

You'd think he'd have learnt by now to stop taking strolls.

I recall little of this week's Avengers tale but I do know it involves the return of Hercules to Marvel UK, and a dastardly plot by the Enchantress.

Dr Strange, meanwhile, is still in search of Clea and is now recruiting the help of someone called Veritas who only tells the truth. In my opinion, this makes him a convenient man to ask.

It's a living nightmare for Bruce Banner, with the Hulk still separated from him, still mindless and still out to flatten him. Can the pair be reintegrated before its curtains for them both?

But no matter how dramatic that tale may be, even it pales before what's going on at the Baxter Building.

That's because we've reached a historic moment - the wedding of Reed and Sue. And, after all they've been through, who could begrudge them their big day?

Well, it seems Dr Doom could and because of that, he makes sure every super-villain who's at a loose end begrudges it too.

It can only mean one thing; a whole heap of wrongdoers descending on the event and being met by an equally whole heap of heroic fists.

Daredevil's absent from this issue - apart from in his capacity as a guest artist in the Fantastic Four's strip - his place taken by the Sub-Mariner in a short adventure which involves him encountering a gang of undersea mutant outcasts and offering them a home in Atlantis.

Only for his own city guards to chase them off.

Can it be that Atlanteans are as bigoted, small-minded and prejudiced as the surface dwellers?

Subby has to come to terms with the fact that it might.

As we can see, the Green Goblin is back and out to claim revenge upon Spider-Man.

I do believe this may be the issue which features the famously tense dinner at Norman Osborn's place, in which he gets more and more menacing as the evening progresses.

Just as Daredevil's strip is absent from this week's Mighty World of Marvel, so Iron Man is notably missing from this book.

However, we do have Thor finally getting to Wundagore, meeting the High Evolutionary's New Men - and then being there for the birth of the murderous Man-Beast!