September 5th, 1979 - Marvel UK, 40 years ago this week.

There wasn't much of interest happening in this week of forty years ago, At least, not in the real world, where it matters.

There was, however, big news from the world of Marvel UK.

What was it and is it going to be revealed in the paragraphs below?

Stay tuned to find out.

I do note that Britain's Number One LP that week was In Through the Out Door by Led Zeppelin which was their last studio album. Interesting that, despite their huge album successes, the Zep didn't have a single make the UK charts until 1997 when Whole Lotta Love reached the dizzying heights of Number 21, making them, possibly, the most celebrated one-hit wonders of all time.

The Hulk gets relegated to a supporting role on his own cover, as Merlin seeks to bring Captain Britain back from the dead. He's been seeking to do this for weeks. I'd give up on it if I were him.

The Hulk, meanwhile, is on the vessel of those Ditkoesque aliens I mentioned last week, and causing nothing but chaos there.

Ant-Man and the Wasp find themselves having to deal with the worst kind of menace known to mankind - a jazz trumpeter.

The Eternals are going on and on and on about the Uni-Mind.

In the second Hulk strip of the issue, Bruce Banner and the Falcon have been kidnapped by the Corporation and it's up to Captain America to rescue them both.

And this is the big news I mentioned earlier because it's the launch of a brand new monthly, as Marvel Superheroes hits the stands!

Admittedly, It's not that new, because it continues the numbering of the recently departed Marvel Comic which was once known as Mighty World of Marvel.

I can't recall if I had this particular issue and can't remember what tales are in it but I do remember reading the Neal Adams X-Men stories in this mag, at some point.

It is possible the Avengers are fighting Graviton in this issue. If so, I did have it.

Can a comic get any more exciting?

Not only do we get the Rocket Racer in this issue but we get the Big Wheel as well! All Marvel needs do is fling Paste-Pot Pete into the mix and it'll have  a masterpiece on its hands!

Other than that, I don't have a clue what goes on inside this book.

I'm doing very badly this week, because this is yet another comic whose contents I barely have a clue about.

However, it looks like Red Sonja's guest-starring in Conan's strip, which is always an exciting thing.

But, "Conan's Ladies," Portfolio, what a rare and exotic treat that sounds like being.

I'm guessing that Red Sonja, Valeria and Bêlit are featured in it.

But will there be anybody else? Will we get Tascela? Will we get... ...erm... ...er? I must confess I've now run out of Conan related females whose names I can recall.

Hooray! Buck Rogers is on its way! Who can forget the adventures of the disco dancing adventurer from the present, trapped in the future, with just a woman called Wilma and a robot for company?

Don't ask me what's happening in the main strip because I don't have a clue.

From its title, I'm assuming the X-Men tale's the one in which Havok and Polaris attack an airport - because it's written by Chris Claremont - and the X-Men have to stop them.

But how has Eric the Red returned? And what can he be up to?

Dr Strange's battle with Xander seems to have been going on for even longer than Merlin's been trying to resurrect Captain Britain.

It's yet another comic whose contents I know nothing of.

However, I assume the Guardians of the Galaxy are still having trouble with the Topographic Man.

The Marvel Lucky Bag - September 1969.

Are you a werewolf?

If so, you'd have felt you were well within your element in September 1969.

It might not have seemed that way at the start of the month, with In the Year 2525 by Zager and Evans ruling the roost on the UK singles chart but that piece of catchy apocalyptica  was quickly dislodged by the equally catchy apocalyptica of Creedence Clearwater Revival's Bad Moon Rising.

Admittedly, I don't think the song's actually about werewolves but, somehow, it always feels like it should be.

Over on the LP chart, Jethro Tull's Stand Up began the month on top but was promptly replaced by Blind Faith's Blind Faith. Sadly, for the Faithsters, their triumph was to be short-lived, as they were soon dethroned by the brand new Beatles album Abbey Road which was destined to spend 17 of the next 18 weeks in the top spot.

It's a disaster for Charlie, as Captain Marvel gets his red and blue uniform in a tale that can only be called a confused mess which often doesn't even have the right speech balloons coming from the right characters' mouths.

It all involves a plot by Ronan or the Intelligence Supreme or some other bloke or all of them or none of them to do something or other. Exactly what, I don't recall. Not that it made sense back in the days when I could recall it.

Needless to say, Marvy finds himself up against a giant robot in this issue because he always seemed to find himself up against a giant robot in his early tales.

Dr Strange battles Nightmare in an attempt to rescue Eternity from him - and recruits the help of Juggernaut, along the way.

Juggernaut vs Nightmare doesn't seem like an obvious conflict. Did Nightmare even have a physical presence?

Apparently, everyone at SHIELD's decided Nick Fury's a traitor. Can he prove his innocence?

I'm betting he can.

Still determined to capture the Surfer's gleaming soul, Mephisto turns the Flying Dutchman into a cyborg and sets him loose on the streets of New York.

This was the point at which the comic switched from being a double length bi-monthly to a normal length monthly title, as evidenced by this issue's instalment halting, randomly, halfway through the action, due to a 40 page story being converted into two 20 page stories.

Aliens try to kidnap Namor, for reasons I'm not familiar with, while, back in Atlantis, a treacherous plotter seeks to get his hands on the throne.

It's the launch of a brand new book, as Marvel's equivalent of all those DC horror anthologies hits the spinner racks.

Famously, the first tale of this issue's drawn by Jim Steranko. Notoriously, the second is credited to Johnny Craig but is clearly 95% drawn by John Romita.

It's more Romita action, as Marvel gives us a whole new romance comic.

Queue various weepy tales of girls who all look like either Mary Jane Watson or Gwen Stacy, and a whole pile of valuable life lessons about the preeminent value of soppiness above all other human activity.

Fifty years ago this month - September 1969.

Have you ever suffered from a major mistrust of janitors?

If so, September of 1969 was where your phobia began because it was in that month that Scooby-Doo first aired, bringing a sense of numbing dread and terror into our childhood lives. At least, it did once Scrappy-Doo showed up.

Also that month, the United States' first ATM was installed in Rockville Centre, New York. Famously, the first customer of such a machine in Britain was the vaguely sinister On The Buses star Reg Varney, in June 1967. Whether the American machine had an inaugural customer of equal acclaim isn't known.

It may have been the start of a new era in banking but, in music, it was the beginning of the end of an era. At a meeting between John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and Beatles manager Allen Klein, John Lennon announced his intention to quit the group.

However, it was also the month in which the band released their Abbey Road album which went on to be seen as a classic despite receiving mixed reviews at the time.

Cap finds himself trapped in the body of the Red Skull and stranded on an island populated by a bunch of ageing war criminals who want to kill the Red Skull.

And only turning an unemployed bird-fancier into a human fighting-machine, in the space of about ten minutes, can save him.

Even though I remember Death's Head very well, I can never remember anything much about the story. Was Karen Page kidnapped in it? Did the villain turn out to be her uncle or her father or something?

The Mole Man's plot to defeat humanity with his house may have been thwarted but now the FF have a bigger problem on their hands, as the Skrulls kidnap Benjy in their quest for the perfect gladiator.

Bruce Banner's talent for blundering into trouble continues to impress as no sooner has he found himself in a South American country than he has to take on Maximus, the evil Inhumans and their giant, mind-control robot.

I think this is the one in which a Life Model Decoy takes Tony Stark's place and our hero has to sneak back into his own factory by pretending to be a Tony Stark lookalike who's been hired by Midas to commit some act of espionage or other.

Along the way, he finds time to fall in love with Madame Masque.

Hooray! The Lizard's back and about to bite off more than he can chew when the Human Torch shows up to join in with the fun.

I'm assuming this is the one in which Thor catches up with Galactus, and the Big G tells him his somewhat underwhelming origin as a man who got exposed to radiation and promptly developed super-powers.

How on Earth did Jack and Stan think of such a ground-breaking concept?

Having said that, this is one of those tales where the story Jack's telling with his pictures is clearly not the one Stan's telling with his words. Jack's pictures seem to be showing the Watcher accidentally creating Galactus, whereas Stan's words claim he's merely observing the villain's creation.

I'm struggling to remember what happens in this one, other than that Sauron's in it.

Ultron's made himself indestructible and even the Avengers' assault on his secret base can't stop him.

August 29th, 1979 - Marvel UK, 40 years ago this week.

Was there ever a rise to comedy stardom more unlikely than that of Hinge and Bracket; two young men dressed as old women, constructing comedy dialogues around the works of Gilbert and Sullivan for the entertainment of a nation that, by and large, would struggle to name more than one Gilbert and Sullivan song? And that's assuming it didn't think that song was Alone Again (Naturally).

I would suggest not but, on this evening of forty years ago, BBC Two was broadcasting Hinge and Bracket: A Gala Evening from the Opera House, Buxton.

The BBC described it as, "The musical event of the season, as an augmented ensemble and choir assist Dr Hinge and Dame Hilda in a glittering gala of music which includes works by Gilbert and Sullivan, Novello and Elgar."

It's the sort of act you couldn't imagine taking off today. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

To the shock of absolutely no one who reads this blog, I know next to nothing about the contents of this week's issue.

I do know the Tagge family are putting in an awful lot of appearances lately, for a bunch of people I've no recollection of.

What I do know is the Guardians of the Galaxy have had to make a forced landing on a mysterious world.

I believe the, "world," in question may turn out to be the Topographical Man, that enigmatic entity who's so large he dwarfs entire solar systems.

On the strength of that, maybe he should try meeting up with Adam Warlock.

Meanwhile, Vance Astro's fulfilling his function of falling out with everybody he knows.

I've just noticed that, mere weeks after merging with Spider-Man's comic, Marvel Comic has been expunged completely from the book's title. What an inglorious end for the company's flagship publication.

Or is it?

More news on that subject next week, I should venture to guess. But what can it be? What?

As for the contents of this week's book, I'm drawing a near blank.

Obviously, I do know the Rocket Racer's back. I've deduced this from the subtle clues on the cover.

Is this the one where his mother's in the same hospital as Aunt May and it all leads into the Big Wheel going on the rampage? If so, what a treat we all have to look forward to.

That's a very Steve Ditkoesque pair of monsters on that cover. In fact, I'm all but certain they're a direct swipe from one of his ancient monster mags.

Regardless, in a UK originated tale, Bruce Banner's been kidnapped by aliens who demand he reveals all he knows about the Earth. I think we can all guess what happens next.

Elsewhere, Merlin's trying to bring Captain Britain back from the dead.

The Eternals are still faffing about, getting nowhere in response to the arrival of the Celestials.

Ant-Man and the Wasp are still up against a robot Cyclops in their quest to foil an alien invasion.

In this tale, it's revealed the Wasp can talk to real wasps. I can't remember her ever using this power again in any other tale I've ever read.

Meanwhile, in our second Hulk tale of the issue, the Corporation have made contact with Moonstone, thanks to her current psychiatric role at Gamma Base.

2000 AD - July 1981.

I have to start today's contribution with a public service announcement, as Charlie Horse as requested I post the following image as a buyer's guide for any readers who may wish to learn more about the mysterious phenomenon that is Archie Comics.

But what of July 1981, that magical period when the whole of Britain seemed to be going to hell in a handcart?

The month kicked off with Michael Jackson's One Day in Your Life at Number One on the UK singles chart but it soon lost its perch to the uber-zeitgeistosity of the Specials' Ghost Town which did my sanity a great favour by keeping Stars on 45 Volume 2 away from the top spot.

Sadly, even the Specials couldn't stay at Number One forever and, in the last week of that month, they were deposed by the power and majesty of Shakin' Stevens' Green Door.

Over on the album chart, July began with Disco Daze and Disco Nites hogging the limelight before it was replaced by Cliff Richard's Love Songs which stayed at Number One for the rest of the month.

All around the world, people are raging, "Is there no escape from Cliff on this site?"

Clearly, there isn't.

But, that month, there was also no escaping from riots. Even as the Specials were lamenting the social, industrial and political decay of our towns and cities, civil unrest broke out in Southall, Liverpool, Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Coventry, Leicester, Derby, Manchester, Woolwich, London, Leeds, Ellesmere Port, Luton, Portsmouth, Preston, Newcastle, Southampton, Nottingham, Bedford, Edinburgh, Stockport, Blackburn, Huddersfield, Reading, Chester, Aldershot, Bradford and even High Wycombe. To be honest, it'd be easier to list the places that weren't rioting.

Still, it wasn't all fighting. It did stop for long enough for Prince Charles to marry Diana Spencer in front of a domestic audience of 30 million people, the UK's second-highest TV audience of all time. This is possibly because everyone had a record number of TVs at the time, thanks to all the looting they'd been doing.

Elsewhere, Donkey Kong was released.

But what of 2000 AD; the reason we're all here?

It was still giving us Strontium Dog, Judge Dredd, Mean Arena, Tharg's Future Shocks and Meltdown Man. All except for Prog 222 which gave us the return of Nemesis the Warlock which took the place of Strontium Dog.

I must confess that, in all the years I spent reading it, I never once managed to work out what Nemesis the Warlock was actually about and was generally baffled by the whole thing. What was he even supposed to be? Was he a space horse?

I do have to say the cover of Prog 220 seems a little political but perhaps I'm reading too much into it.

August 22nd, 1979 - Marvel UK, 40 years ago this week.

Who can explain the phenomenal appeal of Cliff Richard, the most successful chart artist in British history; more than 100 hit records, 67 Top Ten singles, 14 Number Ones, and the only singer to have scored a UK Number One in five consecutive decades?

Who can explain it?

Not me, that's for sure.

But I must at least acknowledge it because, in this week of 1979, the top of the UK singles chart was claimed by Cliff's We Don't Talk Anymore, giving him his tenth Number One, a mere 21 years after his chart debut. To do this, he had to knock the Boomtown Rats off the top spot and expose the oft-repeated lie of Punk having blown away the older generation.

Granted, I Don't Like Mondays was hardly Punk and Cliff was only eleven years older than Bob Geldof at the time.

And the weird thing is he's still only eleven years older than Bob Geldof.

At last, we get the showdown on Tatooine, even if I do keep reading that blurb as, "Slowdown on Tatooine." I like the idea of a slowdown on Tatooine. It's not good to have too much excitement in your life.

Elsewhere, the Guardians of the Galaxy are still on the planet that resembles New York, and are now arousing the wrath of the locals.

I don't have a clue what's going on in the Star-Lord strip but I do know that, in this issue's Tales of the Watcher, astronaut Derek Wolfington finds himself up against Kraggoom the cloud monster who bears a remarkable resemblance to Diablo the smoke monster, recently seen battling the Hulk.

Speaking of the Hulk, that behemoth finds himself up against Xemnu the Titan, who was the one who set Diablo on him in the first place.

It's a good job our hero didn't have to face Kraggoom as well. If Derek Wolfington couldn't stop the thing, what chance would the Hulk have?

This exciting climax features the US military happily depth-charging the dam which contains Xemnu's base.

Isn't depth-charging a dam somewhat irresponsible? Wouldn't huge numbers of people be killed by its destruction?

Elsewhere, in another dimension. Merlin disposes of a dark god, as the Black Knight tries to return Captain Britain from the dead.

High on a hilltop, we get to meet the Russian-based Eternals. Needless to say, they're as smug and glib as all the others of their species.

We also get the conclusion of the tale about what would have happened if Rick Jones had become the Hulk. For once, there's an actual happy ending.

And I still don't have a clue what Nick Fury's up to.

This is it! Spidey's climactic battle with Carrion and his homicidal amoeba!

Meanwhile, the Watcher asks, "What if someone else had become Nova?" Daredevil meets the Torpedo, Odin's still on Earth, in mortal form, and the Thing teams up with Skull the Slayer, in order to fight a bunch of dinosaurs and try to convince us we should be interested in Skull the Slayer.

I, personally, feel the attempt fails.

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.