Random comics I have owned. Part Three.

Suffering shads! It's the return of the feature that's left the internet in tatters, as I once more drone on randomly about comics I've owned.

Just what'll be turned up by this veritable Pick and Mix?

Only a rifle through Steve's Lucky Bag of Confusion can tell us...

Superman's definitely in need of a good slap on this cover.

Inside, Hawkman quits the Justice League, and Eclipso might be involved.

Other than that I can recall little of the contents.

It's always nice to see a Nick Cardy cover though.

It's one of the few Original X-Men stories I ever liked, as the merry Marvel mutants find themselves on trial in the court of Factor 3.

I seem to remember that Ross Andru drew this issue, which could explain why it appealed to me more than their tales usually did.

Some bloke builds a big gun to commit crimes with and Thor has to stop him, in a tale of squabbling siblings.

The issue that introduced me to DC's man of mystery.

From what I can recall of this tale, the Phantom Stranger's called in to try and help establish whether a defendant's plea of insanity is genuine or not. Needless to say, there's a twist at the end.

It's the story we all wanted to see, as Conan takes on Kull.

Red Sonja and Belit, meanwhile, continue their bickering.

It's one of my fave Marvel monster tales, as Grogg causes no end of bother.

Sadly, we still get no answer to the enduring mystery of where Marvel's giant monsters buy those underpants from.

It's the only issue of Swamp-Thing I ever owned. It's from after Bernie Wrightson left the strip but that doesn't mean it lets us down on the pictorial front, thanks to some lovely interior work by Nestor Redondo.

It had stylish artwork by Howard Chaykin but I always remember this as being one of the few American comics I had as a child that I could never get on with.

Random comics I have owned. Part Two.

Quiver, mortals! It's time to cower once more before the raging power of nostalgia - because it's time for Part Two of my random look back at various comics I used to own when I was barely more than knee-high to a Kurrgo.

It's one of my childhood faves, as Superboy re-encounters a child genius with a knack for landing him in trouble.

I recall nothing of this book's contents. I do however still dig that cover.

But just what is the way in which the Flash dies?

Purchased from an indoor market in Blackpool, in the summer of 1972, this was one of the first American comics I ever owned.

As you can guess, it has the Angel vs Red Raven, as they meet in the latter's city in the clouds.

Yet another of my very earliest American comics, as Cap and Falc come up against a scientist who turns himself into a talking gorilla.

The gorilla was fine but I remember being most taken at the time by the colour scheme of Cap's costume.

A comic strip artist inadvertently creates a winged bad guy who I seem to recollect has plans to conquer the world.

Exactly how it all plays out, I don't remember. Did the artist foil the villain's mighty plans by erasing him/redrawing him/spilling ink over the paper he'd originally been drawn on?

The Phantom Stranger meets Frankenstein's monster.

Despite my lack of enthusiasm for DC's take on the monster, I do remember enjoying this one.

I seem to recall there being some sort of demonic possession thing going on and some typically rugged artwork by Jim Aparo inside.

I believe the cover to be by Mike Kaluta.

I'm pretty sure this is the first colour Conan comic I ever owned, as our hero comes up against a gold statue of a scorpion that inconveniently comes to life.

The cover's always driven me up the wall. I'm convinced John Buscema borrowed Conan's pose from a Jack Kirby panel but I've never been able to work out in which comic that panel first appeared.

Hooray! Marvel's reprint mag gives us Kraa, who I seem to recall being surprisingly helpful in a crisis and coming to a sad end.

Poor old Kraa.

The sanity-challenging terrors of Where Monsters Dwell #2!

As everyone knows, the biggest disappointment in my life is that none of my experiments into things that man should never know has ever ended in total disaster. How I long to inflict Graggsloo, The Thing From The Sewage, upon mankind.

Fortunately, in my younger days, I had Where Monsters Dwell to compensate for such disappointment.

Where Monsters Dwell was one of the 1970s comics that Marvel used in order to reprint their pre-super-hero era monster tales.

Many were the terrors that were thus inflicted upon the youth of the Bronze Age.

And surely there was no finer issue of that mag than issue #2, in which three creatures of indescribable menace are unleashed upon an unsuspecting world.

In its breathless pages, we meet Dragoom, The Flaming Invader; Taboo, The Thing From The Murky Swamp; and Sporr, The Thing That Could Not Die.

Dragoom's a giant fire creature, come to Earth to rule it, having escaped a prison on his own planet. For all his power, it has to be said Dragoom must be the stupidest alien outside of the skrulls, as he proves himself incapable of telling the difference between members of his own species and cardboard cut-outs.

Taboo is cut from a far sneakier cloth.

Allowing himself to be discovered in an Amazonian swamp, he then gives mankind a sob story in order to trick it into giving him all its scientific secrets.

Fortunately, mankind isn't as dense as Dragoom had been and humanity tricks Taboo with the aid of a hydrogen bomb.

Let's face it it, any trick that involves a hydrogen bomb isn't likely to end happily for its victim.

Despite this unfortunate end, Taboo did somehow manage to return to fight the Hulk many years later.

But, of course, the true star of Where Monsters Dwell #2 is Sporr, The Thing That Could Not Die.

Totally ignoring all common sense, a scientist decides to rent the Transylvanian castle in which Frankenstein did his infamous experiments.

He then proceeds to try and create giant chickens.

Outraged by his plans to create giant chickens, the locals, complete with flaming torches, storm his castle and stop him.

Sadly, thanks to their actions, an amoeba grows out of all control and rampages around the countryside, threatening anyone who wears lederhosen, until the scientist dispatches it in one of the quicksand pits for which Eastern Europe is famous.

A more sophisticated man than me - or indeed a less, or even equally sophisticated one - might say such tales are all a load of hokey old bunkum, knocked out on a conveyor belt.

And of course they are.

Even Stan Lee, who may or may not have scripted this issue's tales, has said so over the years.

But there's something oddly charming about it all, a hint of a more innocent age of story-telling where, seemingly, no one had the slightest grasp of either logic or science.

On top of that, such mags were a way for 1970s readers to see just how Marvel had been in the days before it'd become the powerhouse publisher we knew and loved.

But, at this point, I must make a confession.

Despite my love for them, none of the creatures in this issue is my favourite from this title.

That honour has to go to Grogg, the giant, underpant wearing, dragon from Where Monsters Dwell #27.

But that is, of course, a whole other story...