The Marvel Lucky Bag - September 1974.

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It's the Marvel Lucky Bag but just how lucky are we going to be?

Conan lands his first giant-size comic - and does it with an adaptation of Robert E Howard's Hour of the Dragon, as rendered immortally by Roy Thomas and Gil Kane.

That's followed by a trio of articles/features entitled Acheron: A Revisionary Theory, The High Point of the Empire of Acheron and Conan the Unconquered. Clearly, good news for all fans of Acheron there.

And we finish off with a reprint of Thomas and Smith's The Twilight of the Grim Grey God!

In news that could make any man rise from his coffin, Dracula gets his second giant-size offering!

And so it is that, in this issue's 68 pages, Chris Claremont and Don Heck treat us to a thriller titled Call Them Triad... Call Them Death!

Strangely, the rest of this issue consists of non-Dracula reprints from the 1950s and early 1960s, as conceived by Stan Lee and various artists. Those yarns bear such titles as The Girl In the Black Hood!, On With the Dance!, The Sweet Old Ladies, Vampire at the Window and Drive of Death!

But what's this? The Human Torch gets his very own mag?

But which Human Torch is it?

It turns out it's both of them!

In our first adventure, Johnny Storm must tackle a villain called the Destroyer who's determined to ruin an amusement park.

But why would he want to do such a thing?

It would appear to all be part of a plot by commies.

And that revelation may have tipped you off that this is a reprint from the early 1960s.

We then encounter the original Human Torch in Horror Hotel! A tale centred around an establishment terrorised by a, "Man-killing beast."

This one is, of course, reprinted from 1948's The Human Torch #33, though whether the man-killing beast turns out to be a bunch of commies, I cannot say.

There's no stopping the march of the merry Marvel martial arts mania.

Thus it is that the Deadly Hands of Kung Fu gets its own Special Album Edition.

I get the feeling this may be the one in which Shang-Chi, Iron Fist and the Sons of the Tiger all find themselves playing their part in foiling a UN based plot by Fu Manchu, without ever realising they are and without ever encountering each other.

On top of this, we find articles with such titles as The Rising and Advancing of a Spirit, Kaii-Yaaahhh!, Fu Manchu, Sax Rohmer and Shang-Chi, The Chinese Mechanic and Shaolin Flashback.

History is made, as the first-ever Marvel Treasury Edition hits our spinner racks.

And what a way to do it, with a John Romita cover and a string of tales that include the debut of the Green Goblin, John Jameson getting uncontrollable super-powers, Ross Andru's first-ever stab at the character, the death of George Stacy and the time Spidey came to blows with the Human Torch after gatecrashing Dorrie Evans' birthday party.

Not to mention more pin-ups and featurettes than you can wobble a web-shooter at.

Neal Adams provides an action-packed cover for a mag which suffers the production issues that often seem to befall Marvel's black and white publications.

As planned, we get the first part of a story called The Damnation Plague but, if I remember correctly, illness striking one or more of its contributors necessitates the rest of the issue being padded out with reprints including a Jann of the Jungle yarn and that tale in which a woman who looks like Mary Jane Watson tries to tempt our hero with her body, having failed to flatten him with her tank and to frighten him with her husband.

There's also a tale called Dragonseed, starring someone called Marok the Merciless.

After 72 issues, the Sub-Mariner's comic hits its final instalment and does so in unlikely style when it functions as Part Two of the tale begun in Aquaman #56.

It involves our hero going blind while encountering an alien made of slime.

Can even the avenging son overcome such odds?

And will he even need to?

For those who just can't get enough Shang-Chi in their lives, the master of kung fu also gets his own giant-size book.

In it, we discover Death Masque, Frozen Past, Shattered Memories and Reflections in a Rippled Pool.

I can provide no facts about what happens in any of them but I wouldn't be surprised at all if every single one of them involves assassins trying to kill our hero.

And, for those whose need for Chinese villains can never be satiated, we're also granted a reprint of The Coming of the Yellow Claw from that fiend's 1956 eponymous debut issue.

I don't know anything about this one but I know it's called Deathwatch! and I like the cover.