There's no escape from - the House of Secrets.

As I roam the multi-layered splendour of Tinsley Viaduct, Sheffield's finest tunesmiths the Arctic Monkeys often lean out of their Rolls Royce to ask me, "Steve, how many secrets can you keep?"

Then they ask me, "Don't you know that you're in deep?"

Then they ask, "Stop making the eyes at me. I'll stop making the eyes at you."

And I say, "Why are you speaking in your own song lyrics?"

They say, "Your name isn't Rio but I don't care for sand."

And I say, "What the hell are you on about?"

And they say, "Dancing to electro-pop like a robot from 1984."

Then they wind up the window and drive silently on while affecting to have the accents of ageing northern working men's club Elvis Presley impersonators.

But, in answer to their question, I of course keep no secrets.

However, there is one place not so blessed with the quality Quincy used to pronounce as, "Nigh-eev-tay," and that's the comic that each month brought us terror in doses we'd be lucky to survive.

That can only mean one thing...

It's time to revive that ever-popular feature where I vainly try to remember what was in an issue of a DC horror mag I've not read in nearly forty years.

Mr Whippy turns Mr Drippy, as ice cream becomes you scream.

From what I can remember of this, we get a re-telling of Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court but starring an ice cream van driver.

Is this the one with the rather pathetic sideshow freak who eats live chickens?

If it is, this was the mag that first introduced me to the word, "Geek."

I remember this one containing the tale of an ageing ice dancer who gets her revenge on a man who can only be labelled a cad and a bounder.

Sadly, there was not a Zamboni in sight.

Another of those stories about a man who imitates a monster and gets his comeuppance, in what turns out to be a tale of unlikely romance and love at first sight.

Is this the one with the boy who disappears off into a fantasy land filled with unicorns and satyrs?

If so, it's another of those Blackpool-bought issues - and one of my faves.

I had a copy of this a couple of years ago but all I recall of it is that the cover story features a boy who takes up a dare to spend a night in a haunted house - with disastrous consequences.

I wrote a review of this very issue, right here.

I have a feeling this one contains a traumatic tale of a terrible tontine.

If it does, it's the mag that first introduced me to the word, "Tontine."

This means that, in its time, the House of Secrets introduced me to two new words. Who says comics aren't educational?

X-Men #1.

You have to hand it to Professor X. He might not be too mobile but he doesn't let that distract him from the task of being a complete and total nutjob. Not only does he set up a school for mutants but he sends the children in his care off to fight deadly threats to mankind. He doesn't even bother waiting till they've graduated from his You-Too-Can-Be-A-Superhero course before dispatching them. He just sends them the moment he feels like it. Why, he even sends a teenage girl into battle on her very first day at school.

But what did you expect? Wisdom? He is, after all, only seventeen years of age.

Yes it's true. In X-Men #1, it's revealed he was the child of a pair of scientists who worked on the first atom bomb. As the first atom bomb was exploded in 1945, X-Men #1 came out in 1963 and the human gestation period is nine months, that'd make him seventeen years old. Like Aunt May, who - as I demonstrated a while back - must only be in her mid-thirties, he must have led a tough life to look like he does.

The one good thing about this fact is it means his early infatuation with the teenaged Jean Grey suddenly doesn't seem so disturbing after all.

In X-Men #1, the menace our teen scientist orders his charges to face is Magneto who's decided to do what we all would if we had the power of a hundred fridge magnets, and take over a US missile base.

Needless to say, when confronted by a bunch of half-trained kids, Magneto soon folds and the world has cause to love the X-Men.

Apart from Professor X's criminal negligence, the main thing that strikes you when you read the tale is its obvious adherence to the Fantastic Four formula. We have the rough one, the sensible one, the walking thermostat one, the flying one and the fit bird. Thankfully though, Marvel Girl's power isn't completely useless like the Invisible Girl's was.

Magneto is of course straight out of the Dr Doom envelope, being a haughty megalomaniac with no idea how to talk to people, and even having a metal-covered face.

It's no secret that the only Marvel strips I never liked as a kid were Nick Fury and his Howling Agents of SHIELD and the original X-Men. But I must admit I've always liked the X-Men #1 because it introduces us to the mag's heroes and villain with a pleasingly linear clarity. Devoid of Magneto's hopeless team of sidekicks and schemings, there's nothing to distract us from a simple tale of good v evil.

It's just a shame it took another decade before the strip started to realise its potential.

The Horrific World of Monsters.

As I scale the glassy heights of Sheffield's Velocity Tower, in protest at inappropriate drilling for oil, people often lean out of the windows and say to me, "Steve, with what do you associate Christmas 1974?"

And I tell them, "With what? I'll tell you with what I associate it. I associate it with toffee. I associate it with Quatermass and the Pit - which may or may not have been on TV that Christmas. And I associate it with The Horrific World of Monsters."

Yes, it's true. For Christmas 1974, I was given that self-same book.

And what a magnificent tome it was, giving information about virtually every monster you could ever hope to encounter.

It had such Hammer and Universal standbys as Frankenstein's Monster, Dracula and the Wolfman.

It had dinosaurs.

It had Kong.

It had monsters from ancient mythology.

It had Japanese monsters.

It had British monsters.

It had real-life monsters like the Yeti and Nessie.

It even had Marvel super-heroes.

Granted, even at the time, it seemed a little strange to see the likes of Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four labelled as monsters but I didn't care. The inclusion of such characters meant we got reproductions of pages of artwork and pin-ups from said comics. How we thrilled as the Human Torch encountered Annihilus, and the Hulk met the Bi-Beast.

It was from that book that I learned of the existence of Angar the Screamer.

It was from that book that I learned of the dread Anthropophagi, those mystery cannibals whose mouths are in their chests

For a Dr Who fan like me, it was a treat, as it featured old stills of such Dr Who monsters as the Daleks, Cybermen and Ice Warriors at a time when we had access to neither repeats of the show nor recordings.

All in all, I do believe it may qualify as the greatest book ever written.

A bit of Googling tells me it was written by someone called Dulan Barber, of whom I know nothing. But I do recall the book was often advertised in American comics at the time, where it was re-titled The Monsters' Who's Who. But, whatever name it went by, it was thoroughly and totally monsterific.

Marvel Premiere #3. Barry Smith tackles Dr Strange.

One of the things you have to give Barry Smith about his early Marvel career is he clearly didn't believe in outstaying his welcome. Apart from his two-year stint on Conan, if he started to draw one of your favourite titles, you could be pretty much sure it wouldn't be long before he stopped drawing it. Daredevil, Ka-Zar and the Avengers all saw him managing noticeably short stints on them before vanishing without trace, and so it was with Dr Strange.

On his way home from wherever it is he's been, Dr Strange is almost run over by a lorry but saves himself with a quick burst of the old, "Hoary Hosts of Hoggoth."

But, returning to his Sanctum Sanctorum, he senses an evil presence.

Before long, he's in a world gone weird, his body's been possessed and he's up against an unknown foe.

It's then he realises that he didn't stop the lorry from hitting him at all and is now in a coma, trapped in the land of his old foe Nightmare.

Armed with this knowledge, he soon disposes of the threat and makes a full recovery - but not before discovering there are darker forces than even Nightmare behind it all.

It's a nice tale and beautifully drawn by Smith. The writing too seems more sophisticated than we sometimes credit Stan Lee with being capable of. No one's credited with the story's colouring, so I'm assuming it was supplied by Smith who does some rather lovely things with red and black at certain points in the tale.

To be honest, even though I read the good Doctor's adventures avidly every week in Marvel UK's Avengers mag, I remember virtually none of his stories, which can't be a good sign.

However, along with Steve Ditko's early haunted house tale, this is the one that's always lodged itself in my memory, which suggests it must have been a cut above the average.

The only disappointment is that Smith hung around for just two issues before being replaced by a whole string of other artists just after he'd launched the somewhat repetitive Shuma-Gorath storyline which seemed to consist mostly of Strange going to seaside towns to be threatened by vaguely identikit watery menaces. Given how stylish a start to it he'd made - and just how suited he was to the strip - it would've been nice to have seen just what Smith would have done had he managed to see the whole project through from start to finish.

Forty years ago this month - July 1973

Mere days ago, the Glastonbury Festival was in full swing.

And that means only one thing. Mere days ago, I was knee-deep in mud, enduring unsanitary toilets and supporting a young women on my shoulders as she waved her arms around.

Which is odd as I was in my local supermarket.

How we all thrilled to the likes of Professor Green, Arctic Monkeys, Dizzee Rascal, the Rolling Stones and Editors.

But what did the editors of Marvel comics have in store for us in the year when Glastonbury was mysteriously absent from the musical calendar?

I must confess this is one of my least favourite comic book covers of all time. The overwrought melodrama of it's always struck me as ludicrous.

I've never been that big on the story inside either. Mostly because of the vaguely comedic detonation system favoured by the human bombs.

Is that the Eel on the cover?

Are eels technically serpents?

Are they not technically fish?

Shouldn't he therefore be in the Piscine Patrol?

With Attuma?

And Tiger Shark?

Conan comes up against one of those pesky man-apes who seem to lurk in every Hyborean forest.

Hooray! A Daredevil story I actually remember, as Angar the Screamer gets up to confused mischief.

Angar actually gets mentioned in a book of monsters I got for Christmas one year when I was a child. I shall have to review that book at some point in the not-too-distant future.

That book was advertised in many comics of the time. Therefore, anyone who can name that book gets a great big Steve Does Comics No-Prize.

I really don't have a clue what's going on here.

Hooray! It's half man, half fish, all trouble, as Aquon makes his gluggery debut.

I first read this tale in the 1975 UK Marvel Annual.

More on that book, right here.

I don't like to knock but, to be honest, the promise of the Masked Marauder returning would rarely be enough to make me buy a comic.

The Green Goblin dies and, forty years later, I still haven't got over it.

Is that a Jim Starlin cover I detect?

Either way, Thor's about to kick some alien butt.

Fifty years ago today - July 1963.

"Woh oh oh oh, July, how I love you truly."

That's right. My unhealthy Shakin' Stevens fixation, that has made me an outcast amongst my fellow man, brings me to the seventh month of the year.

But will our favourite Marvel heroes be rocked and rolled by the fate that awaits them in July 1963?

Or will they be merely Lost in France?

Oh, no, hold on, that's Bonnie Tyler. I always get Shaky and Bonnie mixed up.

This is the story where I first encountered Ant-Man.

Because he leapt into action and rescued the Fantastic Four from Dr Doom's devastating masterplan, I got the impression he was the world's best super-hero and on a whole other level from the FF.

What a complete and total fool I was.

Loki's up to no good. And my razor-sharp senses tell me the United Nations may be involved.

One of my favourite early Spidey tales.

And one of my favourite Steve Ditko Spidey covers - as Dr Octopus makes his debut.

It's the team-up the word probably never demanded, as Paste-Pot Pete and the Wizard unite.

No wonder the Torch is concerned. I mean, who could hope to prevail against such weapons as a mirror and a pot of glue?

Update: Since I posted this, Joe S Walker's pointed out that this issue also features the first appearance of Dr Strange, so it's an historic comic indeed.

Was that the story where he first battled Nightmare?

Nightmare was no threat. How could he be? He didn't have a pot of glue.

Hooray! Kala makes her debut, as Iron Man faces the compulsory threat from beneath the Earth's surface that all Marvel heroes seemed to have to defeat at some point in their formative days.

When a hero goes into battle armed with a sewing needle, you know he has conceptual problems.

DC Comics' The Unexpected.

"Surprise surprise! The Unexpected hits you between the eyes!" There aren't many comics so awesome that Cilla Black has been moved to record a song in their honour - but DC comics' The Unexpected managed just that feat.

And deservedly so. With its tales of dread and terror, it was right up there with all those other DC comics that were virtually identical to it.

Of course, what set DC's horror titles apart from each other was they usually had some sort of gimmick; whether it be Ghosts' boast that all its tales were true; or having a host, such as Cain, Abel, Death or the three witches.

Off the top of my head, I don't recall what The Unexpected's gimmick was.

Perhaps it didn't have one

And perhaps that was the most unexpected thing of all about it?

Regardless, let's take a butcher's at the few issues of the mag I ever owned...

Issue #150 gives us one of my favourite Nick Cardy covers.

I have a memory of a tale that ends with a bunch of dead people playing cards in the skeleton of an unfinished apartment block.

I have a feeling it may have been drawn by E R Cruz.

I have a feeling this may have been the issue in which it appeared.

This is the first issue of the title that I ever got. And it's one of the pivotal comics of my youth.

Why is it so pivotal?

I don't know but I do remember it making a huge impression on me at the time.

Oddly, despite that, I can't remember anything much about its contents. I have a feeling there may have been a story about a youth ending up trapped inside a watch as a just reward for his wrong-doing.

I got this one in Blackpool. Possibly 1978.

Is this the one with the volcano whose lava flow dries in a shape matching the profile of its good-for-nothing victim?

If it is, I always like that one.

If it isn't, I still always liked that one.

I remember nothing about this issue at all other than that I got it on a Sunday, and the title The Horrible Harrow Formula .

What the Harrow Formula was, I have no idea but I can tell, just from its name, that, like the Unexpected itself, it's not a thing to be messed with.