November 2nd 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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It's time, once more, to fling ourselves into a look at what Marvel UK was up to half a century ago.

And the thing that suddenly leaps out at me is that, of their five titles, the two newest cost a full one pence more than their older ones do. What kind of madness is this?

And is it a portent of things to come?

It's trouble-a-go-go, as Silvermane finds himself getting younger and stronger by the minute, thanks to a serum knocked up by Curt Connors.

Still, not to worry. It's not like there's a track record of Curt Connors' serums going horribly wrong.

And, speaking of the man, I do believe he's managed to transform himself into the Lizard again!

There's also trouble for Iron Man. Unable to remove his armour, thanks to his dicky ticker, he's suspected of having murdered the officially missing Tony Stark.

And, meanwhile, Hawkeye decides to launch an attack on Stark's factory and abduct Pepper Potts!

Thor's still up against Replicus - and still getting nowhere in his struggles with it.

Fortunately, mob leader Slugger Sykes is available to sabotage the alien robot by flinging himself at its control panel and blowing himself and its creator to pieces.

But all of that pales into insignificance when compared to the chance to win ourselves one of these fancy modern colour TV things that everyone's talking about, these days.

Apparently, you can win it by playing Charades.

I'm not sure exactly how you play Charades via the medium of the comic book but you could clearly never accuse Marvel UK of lacking optimism.

I do detect the arrival of Doc Samson who's out to both cure Bruce Banner of being the Hulk and Betty Ross of being Lalique.

But, once he's done that, will he be able to resist the temptation to use all that drained-off Gamma energy to turn himself into a super-strong hero?

I think we can all guess the answer to that question.

Especially with his surname being Samson.

Elsewhere, having halted the threat of the Tri-Man, Daredevil now has to contend with the latest plans of the Masked Marauder and the gallivanting Gladiator.

The Fantastic Four, meanwhile, find themselves in an atypical tale when an aggrieved but bald scientist decides to assume the identity of the Thing, in order to gain access to the Baxter Building and bump off Reed Richards.

Will Reed spot the deception in time?

And will he even need to?

Iron Fist has finally managed to reach the office of Harold Meachum but, once he gets there, Meachum's poor health leads our hero to decide not to kill him.

Then a ninja shows up and does it.

Meaning Fisty's going to get blamed for the slaying. It seems that, when you're a Marvel martial artist, you just can't get a break.

But, hooray! Ant-Man is fighting against his own ants, thanks to the Whirlwind having shrunk him down to insect size.

Dr Strange, meanwhile, finds himself trapped in one of the Ancient One's nightmares.

And I think we can all guess which villain that's likely to cause the reappearance of.

In Transylvania, Frank Drake manages to accidentally revive Dracula and must then watch in horror as the fiend kills his girlfriend Jeanie and turns her too into the undead.

Still, at least the locals have turned up with flaming torches, to set fire to things.

I think Jack Russell's lycanthropic alter-ego has to fight an actual real-life wolf, this week, for reasons I can't recall.

And Robert Walton IV is still trying to liberate Frankenstein's Monster from the block of ice he's living in lately, while telling the cabin boy just how the creature came to be.

No painted covers for us, this week.

And that's not the only shock to our system. Having had the whole of last issue dedicated to the adventures of Charlton Heston; this week, only a third of the book is dedicated to them.

Instead, we discover a whole new world, as Gullivar Jones is accosted by a man on a flying carpet who transports him to Mars and an adventure even John Carter could only envy.

And then, we round off the issue, with Kraven the Hunter deciding he wants to defeat Ka-Zar and Zabu in a tale drawn by Jack Kirby.