July 5th, 1975 - 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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Have you ever fallen in love with someone you shouldn't have fallen in love with?

10cc haven't.

They've never been in love with anyone.

Or at least they haven't, if you believe what they tell you.

And, this week in 1975, they were telling you it from a lofty height.

It's true. Their most famous song was still keeping them aloft at the pinnacle of the UK singles chart.

But what of the accompanying album chart?

It had a brand new Number One.

And that was the Carpenters' Horizon which is a record I couldn't claim to have ever heard of but it seems plenty of other people had very much heard of it and they clearly liked what they'd very much heard of it.

My Spider-Senses tell me this is the Beetle-related tale in which John Romita and Sal Buscema get to to re-tell Spidey's origin, as the boy wonder mithers about Gwen Stacy having left him to move to London.

I do believe that's followed by a tale which retells the origin of Iron Man, thanks to Gene Colan and Johnny Craig.

Once that's done, Shellhead finally defeats the Melter, by making his gun over-heat from overuse.

And Spidey and Irony aren't the only ones delving deep into their origins, because so is Don Blake, as he tries to work out just who he is and why.

It's trouble for Shang-Chi because Denis Nayland Smith's gone and got himself kidnapped - and the master of kung fu's sister may be the villain behind the deed!

But there's really big trouble for the Avengers because Egghead, the Mad Thinker and Puppet Master have got their hands on a satellite and are using it to extort money by threatening to blow up cities, with its massive great death ray.

But what's this? Local crime boss Barney Barton wants in on the Avenging action?

And he's an old friend of Hawkeye?

But how can this be possible? Surely a man of Hawkeye's quality would never have hung around with any criminals during his days as a criminal.

Dr Strange meanwhile, finds himself having to visit a small but sinister town on the coast, at the insistence of a man called Ethan Stoddard...

I've never read this one but I like to think it's a tribute to the legendary movie Horror Express.

I have no reason to think it is.

But I do believe Jack Russell wraps up his first encounter with Taboo and recruits a new ally, in his daughter Topaz.

And Frankenstein's Monster finds himself paying a visit to a warehouse which houses the deadly crime syndicate we know only as ICON.

Not yet having managed to get beneath the Planet of the Apes, space explorer Brent manages to get himself shot in the shoulder.

Fortunately, Doctors Zira and Cornelius are available to help - and to tell him what happened to Taylor and the others. 

Adam Warlock, meanwhile, finds himself up against a fancy fiend called Apollo who I remember having a submarine and turning out to be a pig!

Porcines are nowhere to be found in the latest chapter of Marvel's version of Golden Voyage of Sinbad. Instead, our hero finds himself facing a statue of Kali - and its six arms of death.

Despite what the cover tells us, that's no thing in a temple. It's the dreaded Cancellation Monster that's closing in on our hero because it's a fearful reality that this is the last issue of Marvel UK's weekly Savage Sword of Conan comic!

Refusing to go down without a scrap, the barbarian and Fafnir complete their adventure on Bal-Sagoth, just in time for a volcano to destroy the island.

Meanwhile, King Kull's having trouble with A Kingdom by the Sea!

Drama ploughs into overdrive when Dr Doom's henchman has the Shaper of Worlds turn him into Nazi super-heel called Captain Axis. A man who has more than enough power to destroy the Hulk, with his bare hands!

Or has he?

And brace yourself. It's the news we've all been praying for. It's the death of Mike Murdock!

And it all happens during Daredevil's climactic battle with the Exterminator and his Ani-Men!

But, on a mysterious island, Alicia Masters is about to meet a mysterious being known only to the world as Him!

The Stranger's back, and causing no end of trouble for the board-happy misery.

It seems the Surfer's latest attempt to break free of Galactus' space barrier alerts the Stranger who promptly plants a bomb on Earth, designed to kill all life on the planet

That, to me, seems a slight over-reaction to the Surfer trying to break through Galactus' space barrier.

Elsewhere, we experience yet more of The Origin of Professor X!