Forty Years Ago Today! The 1984 Marvel UK annuals for 1985.

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

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Christmas. It's a time for peace, love and goodwill to all men. A time for all who have minds to contemplate the year just gone and what needs to be done in the year to come.

But there's only one thing I care about at Christmas.

Presents!

And what's on TV!

Christmas Day 1984 saw BBC One deliver such festive treats as Pages From Ceefax, The Noel Edmonds Live Live Christmas Breakfast Show, Blue Murder at St Trinian's, Top of the Pops, Christmas Blankety Blank, Hi-de-Hi!, The Paul Daniels Magic Christmas Show, Just Good Friends, The Two Ronnies, Wogan and Some Like it Hot.

BBC Two, meanwhile, offered, among other things, Chaplin: A Dog's Life, Polar Bear Alert, Chaplin: Limelight, Telly Quiz, The Nutcracker, The Master of Mouton and The Italian Film: Kaos.

ITV had Dangermouse, Emu at Christmas, Bugs Bunny's Looney Movie, Top Pop Videos of '84, Jayne Torvill & Christopher Dean, The Man with the Golden Gun, A Tribute to Eric Morecambe, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Des O'Connor Tonight and The Christmas Night Thriller : Home for the Holidays.

And what of that other channel we had now that we were a fancy modern country with more than three stations? Channel 4 supplied us with The Story of St Francis, The Custard Boys, Jour de Fête, The Young Visiters, Brookside, Jean Sibelius, and Ian Breakwell's Christmas Diary.

The weird thing is I have no memory of having watched any of those shows.

But here's an oddity. A Marvel Superheroes Annual published exclusively for sale in British Home Stores. With offers like that, how on Earth did the retailer go bust?

Once we've bought this mighty tome, what can we expect of it?

We can expect plenty.

For a start, there's the unmitigated awesomeness of the first-ever clash between the Silver Surfer and Abomination. I'm sure I don't need to tell you this was the first Marvel Comics material I ever read, way back when it featured in the pages of IPC's TV21 in the summer of 1971.

There's also a tale in which Spider-Man teams up with Thor but I have no more details on what happens in that epic than that.

I do, however, know we get a text story bearing the melodramatic monicker Pit of Doom.

Also, Ms Marvel must battle the Vision when someone plots  to steal a truck loaded with a Top Secret cargo.

A second text story sees the Fantastic Four battle robot duplicates of themselves.

And, following a text adventure starring the Hulk, the Original X-Men must survive a meeting with the Sentinels, thanks to the pencils of Neal Adams and words of Roy Thomas.

On top of all that, Sal Buscema gives us a thriller in which Spider-Man must crack the mystery of who killed a scientist left alone in a locked room with nothing but a computer for company.

For those who prefer space fantasy to super-heroics, the Return of the Jedi Annual shows up to treat us to plenty of reprinted Marvel goodness.

Sadly, I can shed little light upon the exact contents of this tome, other than to reveal it contains an adventure labelled Chanteuse of the Stars.

If there's one thing we can always depend upon, it's the presence of a Hulk Annual on our book shelves.

And we launch it with the Watcher demanding to know, "What If Rick Jones Had Become the Hulk?"

From what I can remember, such a thing would lead to a Hulk who speaks in nothing but Stan Lee style teen-speak. And if that isn't the best kind of Hulk we could hope to encounter, I don't know what is.

That's followed by a seven-page text story in which our hero's attacked by an army of androids sent by The Maker to capture him so the villain can study his strength, in order to make his androids even tougher.

If I'm not mistaken, wasn't that the plot of the Hulk's initial meeting with the Leader?

Next, we find a six-page text masterpiece in which a scout for the shape-changing alien race the Sprulku, investigates whether Earth is ripe for conquest. Needless to say, an encounter with the green grappler quickly convinces him it isn't.

I'm sure I'm not alone in noticing that "Sprulku" contains many of the same letters as "Skrull."

Finally, as the cover hints, we encounter the Hulk's first punch-up with the Rhino, when the thick-skinned miscreant's contacted by the men who gave him his costume and now can offer him a newer and better one.

That, of course, doesn't prevent our hero from quickly beating him into a coma.

As any fool knows, where there's a Hulk annual, there's bound to be a Spider-Man one.

Romance is in the air when the webbed wonder must deal with the return of the Black Cat who, having escaped from a psychiatric institution, tells the wall-crawler she wants to help him fight crime.

And be his girlfriend!

I would like to declare he has the good sense not to hook up with a woman who's just escaped from a lunatic asylum.

But, of course, he hasn't.

Next up, there's an eight-page text story called Eight Legs Hath the Spider.

That's one page for every leg.

That's followed by an eight-page text story called Lord of Light.

And we close the annual  - and this post - with a drama in which Spider-Man and the Black Cat have conflicting emotions about their new status as lovers.

And it's a conflict which leads to her, seemingly, leaping to her death in the river!