My adventures in DIY - and Giant-Size Marvel canvas prints.

 To be honest, despite being an internationally reputed blogger, I don't get much excitement in my life. I always wanted to be an explorer but quickly realised that everywhere on Earth had already been discovered - and that anywhere that hadn't, probably didn't have a nice hotel.

But sometimes, excitement enters even my life.

And today was one such day.

For, today, I went to well-known DIY superstore B&Q to look at fence posts, buy a fancy new LED light bulb and one of those little screw-caps you put on the bottom of your boiler to make sure it shall never drip all over your kitchen floor.

I thought this would be the limit of my excitement on such a visit.

But I was wrong.

Why?

Because, barely had I walked in though the door than I noticed something. For £19.98, they're selling walloping big canvases that reproduce classic Marvel covers.

Amongst others, they had Jim Steranko's cover for Giant-Size Hulk #1, Dave Cockrum and Gil Kane's cover for Giant-Size X-Men #1, a Captain America cover and a montage featuring a zillion and one other covers. Truly they were the most magnificent things I have ever seen in my life.

Suddenly I was torn. Should I buy five fence posts or should I spend the money instead on three of those canvases?

In the end, I bought neither. Nor did I buy a light bulb. Nor did I buy a little screw-cap for my boiler. Instead, I popped across the road and bought a packet of Clubs.

When I say, "Clubs," I of course mean the well-known brand of biscuits, not the things you use for beating seals to death. I must confess there are few seals choose to live round my way and, even if they did, I doubt I'd beat them to death, as they have happy smiley little faces, like babies.

Anyway, there you are. If you desire to have giant canvas reproductions of classic Marvel covers on your walls, you know where to go.

Here's a photo of the montage canvas, which I've purloined from B&Q's Pinterest page. As I'm giving them a plug - and possibly boosting their trade - I assume they won't mind me borrowing it.

Marvel's heroes. On the wall. Off the wall.

I've bemoaned in the past my lack of childhood super-hero wall stickers but, thankfully, stickers aren't the only things we can stick to our walls.

We can also stick posters to them.

The truth is that, somehow, despite my voracious comic-reading habits, as a child I only ever had two comics-related posters on my bedroom wall.

One was the one that came with Marvel UK's Planet of the Apes #1, and the other was the John Buscema poster that came with the first issue of The Titans. I'm proud to say I still have both those posters.

There were, however, another set of posters that always impressed me greatly.

And those were the six that frequently appeared on the back of Marvel UK's weekly comics in the early to mid-1970s. I can't remember ever seeing them advertised in the American comics and, therefore, what the story was behind them, I have no idea.

All I know is they were things of beauty, with a level of anatomical accuracy not always found in super-hero figures, suggesting that real-life models may have been used.

Who painted them?

I don't know.

The Hulk's face has a touch of the John Romita about it. The Thor figure's lean build, and pose, looks to be in the Neal Adams envelope - although I'm not convinced the painting style is. The mad thing is that, despite their obvious desirability to any true lover of the radiation-affected, I never nagged my dad into buying them for me, even though we could have had the lot for a mere 90 pence.

Then again, for all I know, taking inflation into account, 90 pence could probably have bought you a semi-detached house in the middle of London back then.

Still, if I missed out on such treasures, at least I have my Titans and Planet of the Apes posters to keep me warm at night.