The Marvel Lucky Bag - October 1976.

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All moving pictures contain pictures but not all moving pictures are moving.

And shall we be moved by the films that were released this month in 1976?

That depends on how we feel about such offerings as Marathon Man, Alex & the Gypsy, A Matter of Time, Burnt Offerings, Car Wash, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution and Carry On England.

I must confess to only having seen Marathon Man and Carry On England, which are, of course, remarkably similar films investigating similar themes. However, tempted as I am to claim that Carry On England is the superior of the pair, sanity obliges me to declare Marathon Man to be my Steve Does Comics Film of the Month.

However, given that I know so little of the other movies, visitors to this site are free to express alternative viewpoints.

This is the sort of thing I want to see in my local newsagents, as Marvel gives us its adaptation of Jules Verne's Mysterious Island.

I can announce that I've never read the book but I have seen the film and that's enough to make me intrigued by the comic.

Between them, Jules Verne, Otto Binder and E. R. Cruz build a 48-page tale in which a bunch of people from the United States' Civil War end up on a strange island with giant crabs, giant chickens, giant bees, giant octopuses, the woman who did Anita Pallenberg's speaking for her in Barbarella, and Captain Nemo.

Granted, I don't know for a fact that any of that stuff's in the book or in the comic but it's in the movie and we all know that movies are always the real version of things.

I've no idea what The Red Badge of Courage is but those people on the cover look like they could be in Mysterious Island and, whatever it is, it gets its very own adaptation, courtesy of Irwin Shapiro, Stephen Crane and, again, E. R. Cruz.

After giving us its take on Dracula, for several years, Marvel finally gives us its take on Dracula.

But, this time, it's Bram Stoker's Dracula. The book made famous by Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Bram Stoker, Naunerle Farr and Nestor Redondo are the people responsible for this and I'm going to guess it tells the tale of a Transylvanian count who decides to move to Whitby and hang out there with all the Goths.

Can it be true?

Has it really taken all this time for Dr Strange to get an annual of his very own?

Yes it can when Marv Wolfman and Craig Russell supply us with the 35-page adventure ..And There Will Be Worlds Anew! in which something happens but I don't know what.

It's the team-up that probably no one saw coming, as Bashful Benjy unites with the company's latest team.

And it all happens when, in 1942, the heroes battle a horde of super-powered Nazis out to recover a canister of vibranium that I'm assuming could change the course of the war!

Dr Strange may have an annual but Howard the Duck has a Treasury Edition.

And does so with such offerings as Five Villains in Search of a Plot!, The Duck and the Defenders, The Way It All Began!, Frog Death!, Hellcow! and Howard the Barbarian.

Needless to say, most of this material's reprinted from other sources.

However, there is some new content in that lot.

And the Sorcerer Supreme's not the only one blessed with an annual - because Marvel Team-Up's also landed one. One in which Spidey and the X-Men are attending a secret summit about man-made mutation, when their plane's brought down by a bunch of researchers transformed into Hindu gods!

It's not a first issue but it is, as far as I'm aware, a first appearance for Howard Chaykin's Monark Starstalker, in which the interplanetary bounty hunter's tracked a deadly criminal to the world of New Canaan and tries to bump off his quarry.

I do recall this being one of the few comics I didn't get along with in my childhood.

At last, we're going to get the answer to the question, "Who'd win a fight between Iron Fist and Shang-Chi?"

And it happens when the pair are are separately lured into the London sewers by messages from Fu Manchu.

But because even that might not be enough for lovers of martial arts mayhem, we also encounter Rip Off at the O.K. Box Office, an article by none other than dauntless Don McGregor.

And truly our cup is spilling over because there's also the presence of the Sons of the Tiger epic Flesh of My Flesh!

The Champions never do much to attract my attention and I don't know if this issue's any different.

However, I do know Rampage stops by the Champions' office - looking to deliver a message about the Black Widow - but his exo-skeleton explodes!

And then a press conference by the Angel's gatecrashed by the Griffin, Titanium Man and Crimson Dynamo!