Black Goliath #1.

The world of comics has never been short of larger than life characters, and few of them have come larger than Goliath.

Or, at least, a whole bunch of Goliaths, as the Marvel editors of my youth seemed to feel it vital to have at least one giant human walking the Earth in those days.

And so it was that, in 1975, we got the launch of Black Goliath starring Bill Foster, a character who'd made his debut in the pages of The Avengers in the 1960s. Back then, he was just a friend and colleague of Hank Pym but now he's perfected Pym's growth formula and has used it on himself.

Obviously, unlike previous Marvel Goliaths, he has to have his colour in his name because that's how Marvel did things back then and he has to walk around bare-chested because that's what all black super-heroes of the 1970s did.

So, now that he has a super-hero name aimed at the visually impaired, and a bare chest, just how does he fare in the debut issue his very own comic?

Well, quite badly really.

It all begins with Bill doing the Captain America thing and revisiting his childhood neighbourhood, in order to complain that it isn't the same as it used to be - and also to complain that it is the same as it used to be. Clearly, he's a man who's difficult to please. He also gets to complain about having super-powers.

But, of course, it's not long before he gets to use them when he's stopped by would-be muggers, leading to a bout of street lamp bending and more existential angst about whether he wants to be a super-hero or not.

Happily a hospitalised Hank Pym soon points out that he can be both a scientist and a super-hero, and he decides to use his gigantism to thwart a series of radium thefts that have been happening around the city. As he has a bucketful of radium lying around in his lab, Bill has the sense to know it's likely to be next on the hit list and so he waits for the thieves to arrive.

And arrive they do, in the form of Atom-Smasher and his henchmen. Atom-Smasher's henchmen are generic nobodies - although they do seem more erudite than most lackeys - but Atom-Smasher is a man with a difference. He's a man with tiny stars whizzing in circles around his head, which must get quite distracting.

Admittedly, they're obviously not meant to be stars. They're meant to be protons or electrons or neutrons or whatever bit of an atom it is that's supposed to whizz around in circles.

Needless to say, faced with such a foe, it's not long before Black Goliath's making mincemeat of...

...oh. Hold on. Our hero proves to be singularly useless at dealing with Atom-Smasher and by the final panel, having put up no fight whatsoever, he's on the brink of doom.

Clearly, this is going to be the shortest run of any comic book ever.

What strikes you about this book is just how gloomy it is. Bill really is a sad sack, having an almost Surferian gift for being depressed by every single development in his life. He's depressed by being a super-hero. He's depressed by being a scientist. He's depressed by change. He's depressed by a lack of change. He's depressed about, seemingly, every person he's ever known in his entire life.

Bizarrely, the one moment in the comic when he's not depressed is in the scene which introduces his lab assistants who are the sort of morons whose antics would push anyone normal into a suicidal state.

Anyway, it's a competent but unexceptional tale, solidly drawn by George Tuska and written by Tony Isabella. It's perfectly readable and there's nothing actively bad about it but, with its gloomy hero, terrible supporting cast and workmanlike plot, there's nothing that would particularly grip you either. In that sense, it's an almost perfect representation of the majority of books Marvel was churning out in the 1970s.

The one exception to that claim is the villain Atom-Smasher who, presented here, has no noticeable personality or charisma but his powers, whatever they actually are, are at least intriguing and give him some potential. Granted, he's basically a knock-off of Radion but he is a villain that things could be done with.

Random comics I have owned. Part One.

In the recent past, I've done posts devoted to such things as Batman comics I've owned, Superman comics I've owned, horror comics I've owned and Fantastic Four comics I've owned. But, hold onto your hats, dear World because I'm not through yet.

Here's where I launch an exciting new feature; where I post comics-that-I-can't-be-bothered-to-categorise that I've owned.

Can the internet take such a strain?

Only the next few minutes will tell.

It always seemed an odd thing for me that Jack Kirby was writing and drawing a comic based on 2001. Clearly, his love of grand concepts and visual spectacle made him a good fit for the title but the glacial sterility of the film seemed massively at odds with Kirby's action-packed instincts.

Was the comic any good?

I can't really remember. But I know, from my Googlings, that it did inspire some great splash pages from him, at the very least.

I don't like to be critical of a new hero but you know you're in trouble when, by your fourth issue, you're reduced to fighting Stilt Man, a foe whose devastating super power is having extendable legs.

This cover's by Jack Kirby. At the time, I never noticed. For some reason, I was convinced that all 1970s non-Kirby mags that had Kirbyesque covers were sporting frontispieces drawn by Rich Buckler doing his Kirby thing. Oh what a fool I was.

This one came in one of those sealed triple-packs Marvel were so keen on for a while. I'm not sure what the other two comics were that came with it. Possibly an issue of The Defenders and something else.

As for this comic, I have vague memories that it involved a Mary Whitehouse type character, trying to clean up the nation. If you're a reader who's unfamiliar with Mary Whitehouse, consider yourself very lucky.

I only had two issues of Nova - this being one of them - but encountered most of his adventures in the pages of Marvel UK's Rampage and Star Wars comics. I sort of enjoyed it when it was drawn by Sal Buscema but, like a lot of others, found it more of a challenge to read when Carmine Infantino took over.

More importantly, I seem to remember having one of my school exercise books wrapped in the cover taken from a spare copy of this issue.

DC's greatest villains get together to cause mischief.

At the time, I knew little of most of DC's villains. It did seem an interesting concept though and I always wanted to get my hands on the second issue; although I assume that, being villains, they never got very far in their dreams of victory.

I have absolutely no memory of the contents of this comic. The truth is I always preferred DC's mystery and horror mags, as Marvel just seemed to use their own equivalent mags to reprint old Lee and Kirby horror tales, which were never really my cup of tea.

I recall really liking this one, though don't recall what actually happened in it. I suspect that a large part of my enjoyment of this mag came from having read DC's unhealthy-looking 1970s take on the character and finding Marvel's more robust version far more in line with my tastes.

Plus, how could you not love that Gil Kane cover?

The thing I remember most about this one is the nipples.

Yes, Reader, it's true; Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes #241 was the first super-hero comic in which I ever encountered characters whose nipples protruded through their costumes. This may not sound like a big deal but, at the time, I was much impressed by such anatomical accuracy.

Other than that, the story was quite fun, with a distinctly retro vibe to the artwork - as the floating brain with eyeballs and tentacles might suggest.

There was also a Timber Wolf back-up tale that left you in no doubt he'd been remodelled to be more like Wolverine than ever before.