Forty years ago today - August 1984.

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

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Is our hero about to be greeted by doom?

It's possible. I am, after all, getting the feeling my knowledge of this month's fare is uncomfortably limited.

But I shall plough on and see just what memories those covers can unearth.

I'm struggling to recall anything that happens in this one but I do know that, like the rest of Zodiac, Aquarius is out to kill our gang of misfit protagonists - and that he fails.

Also, I happen to know Tony Stark and Rhodey are starting to get jealous of each other, thanks to their rival claims to be Iron Man.

From what I recall of this, the Red Ghost has a serious case of agoraphobia and hits upon the genius idea of recruiting soon-to-retire burglar the Black Fox to commit robberies on his behalf. 

There are only two problems.

One is that the Black Fox doesn't want to do it.

And the other is that Spider-Man doesn't want him to do it either.

With the wallcrawler getting in the way of things, it can only end in a punch-up between man and apes.

Here's an occurrence we never saw coming.

Conan bumps into his old friend Fafnir - who we've not seen since the days of Barry Smith - and it turns out the giant beardy bloke didn't die at the siege of wherever it was when he lost his arm.

In fact, he carried on without it and now has a plan to acquire a brand new one.

Sadly, that plan involves getting a witch to rustle him up a replacement appendage and - to the shock of no one but he and Conan - the demonic limb she gives him turns out to have a mind of its own.

And it's not even a nice mind.

It's a weird one when Daredevil finds himself besieged by robot children created by the dead mother of Death-Stalker.

And not only do they insist on going wherever he goes, they also insist on exploding in an irresponsible manner!

My memories of this adventure are very very vague indeed but it seems various Avengers find themselves at one of Sersi's legendary parties where the inevitable trouble breaks out.

Cap and Nomad are still being plagued by the Red Skull's Sisters of Sin and I do believe it turns out that, for several weeks, the brainwashed Nomad's been surreptitiously drugging Cap in a way that's now made him revert to his true age.

Can there be any hope of survival for the geriatric crimefighter?

All I recall of this issue is Hulkie's on the rampage across America, in search of Dr Strange, and that all attempts to reason with him are doomed, thanks to the manipulations of Nightmare.

The seemingly infallible Answer is still testing Spider-Man's abilities, on behalf of the Kingpin.

Needless to say, this means threatening to blow up the Black Cat.

It's an incident-packed issue, as Cyclops' future daughter Rachel Summers finds herself in our timeline and targeted by an ancient and powerful vampiric mutant called Selene.

Meanwhile, infiltrating government agencies leads Mystique to discover that a brand new character called Forge has developed a weapon which can remove super-powers.

It's bad news for Wyatt Wingfoot when a huge great big death ray from the sky starts scything a gigantic trench across his reservation.

And it turns out to be bad news for everybody else, as well, because that death ray then sweeps across the United States before reaching New York.

It appears to be the work of someone called Terminus, the latest threat from outer space.

But what is his/hers/its purpose? And what can be done to stop him/her/it?

Things get action-packed for Thor, with the Dark Elves out to capture the Casket of Ancient Winters from a man called Roger Willis.

However, it's not going well for our heroes, with Malekith capturing Thor's current girlfriend Melodi and threatening to kill her if they don't hand over the object.