March 1st, 1978 - Marvel UK, 40 years ago this week.

This week in 1978 was a terrible time for anyone who was planning to tell someone to get lost - because February the 27th saw the United States launch the world's first global positioning satellite, Navstar 1. No doubt, that technological innovation will be of great use to me as I try to navigate the highways and byways of the dim and distant past, in this very post.

Clearly, the crew of the Millennium Falcon could do with a sat nav of their own. If the dialogue's to be believed, they've been trying to fly away from the star destroyers but, judging by the picture, they, instead, appear to be flying straight towards them. With smarts like that, you can see why Princess Leia tried to seize control of the rescue mission.

But who cares about that? What matters more is that we can win a Star Wars jigsaw.

I never had a Star Wars jigsaw. I did have a Doctor Who jigsaw that featured Jon Pertwee and his bright yellow car but, sadly, there was a piece missing from it. It is a trauma from which I have never been able to recover.

By the way, am I the only one who's noticed the startling mistake on the cover of this week's issue?

In a shocking twist that threatens sanity itself, Marvel UK uses a Savage Sword of Conan cover that's not painted by Boris Vallejo. I do believe this one has the look of Earl Norem's handiwork about it.

As for The People of the Black Circle, I am one hundred percent certain I've read the Robert E Howard original of that tale but I can't actually remember what happens in it. I think it may involve him being paid to deliver a princess to someone or other but I could be completely wrong.

I suspect I may also have read Worms of the Earth somewhere but I don't, for the life of me, know where.

I think I had this issue.

Or I had the US original.

Or I had both.

I do believe the Headmen are using some foul means to send everyone in the city mad, as a distraction, while they themselves commit a string of robberies.

I've just discovered that the Headmen first appeared in comics in the 1950s, a fact I was previously unaware of. Truly, the internet is a wonderful thing.

I do feel sorry for Nova, though. He never gets a mention on the cover. He may just be a Spider-Man knock-off but, surely, he deserves the occasional mention, to let us know he's still alive.

It looks like Doc Doom is still using the real fake Shalla Bal to cause trouble for the FF and Silver Surfer.

As predicted last week, the Hulk is about to have his second meeting with the Bi-Beast, aboard SHIELD's Helicarrier.

But, obviously, none of us care about that, because this tale, apparently, features a character called Louie the Lip.

I genuinely have no idea who that is. He sounds like the kind of small-time crook who'd turn up in a John Romita drawn Spider-Man story. This being a Hulk tale, I assume he's not a small-time crook, as the Hulk didn't tend to fight small-time crooks.

That's quite a nice cover by Larry Lieber, although that is quite an undignified pose for Spider-Man.

The man the White Tiger's trying to strangle looks familiar but I don't know why.

The fashion industry and its blame for my super-hero addiction.

As I lurk behind the rear exits of the Sheffield University Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre, hoping to be bombarded by stray nuclear rays, people often say to me, "But, Steve, given that Britain had a flourishing and honourable comic book tradition of its own, just why did you start reading American comics?"

Well, I could lie and say it's because, at the age of eight, I was attracted by the Nietzschean overtones of the super-hero genre, mixed with a need to contemplate just what the effect would be upon any society that is suddenly exposed to the emergence of a new breed of super-men, but the truth is it was because I liked the bright and colourful costumes.

I know this because my main memory of every single super-hero comic that I encountered during that initial spell of reading them, in the summer of 1972, is what I thought of the costumes.

The first super-hero comic I can remember owning was Amazing Spider-Man Annual #6 and the thing that had made me want to have it was the sheer red and blue webbiness of Spider-Man's outfit.

Shortly after that, I picked up my first issue of Batman whose main appeal was down to his bat ears, the arches at the base of his cape and the bendy spikes sticking out of his gloves.

Around the same time, I got an issue of The Flash. His predominant allure to me was that he had lightning sticking out of his boots, wings sticking out of his head and he somehow managed to store his costume in a ring on his finger.

The appeal of Captain America in my first exposure to him was not the fact that he was fighting a talking gorilla but that he was wearing the American flag and had wings sticking out of his head.

The appeal of Superman was the big "S" on his chest, and his boots.

The first issue of The X-Men that I ever read impressed me by featuring the Angel vs Red Raven. I could claim to have been gripped by the pulse-pounding drama of such a meeting but the reality is that what most gripped me was that the Angel's costume was yellow with red bits and Red Raven's costume was red with yellow bits, meaning that they, to some degree, mirrored each other.

Likewise, my first ever issue of Teen Titans impressed me mostly because Kid Flash had a costume whose colours partially reversed those worn by adult Flash.

I suppose I should also acknowledge that wings featured a fair amount in the physical appearance of a whole bunch of these characters. Whether that was coincidence or whether a subconscious desire to fly meant I was drawn to winged characters, I could not say.

Interestingly, only weeks after this comic-buying splurge began, I got my first issue of Mighty World of Marvel. Of the three strips printed in it, only one - Spider-Man - featured a costumed hero. The Hulk just ran around in his trousers, while the Fantastic Four were, at this stage, still operating in their normal everyday clothes. What gripped me about those tales was that they dealt with alien invaders and thus created a sense of a world in permanent danger.

It seems that, in mere weeks, I had evolved from liking super-heroes purely because of their costumes to liking them for how dark and menacing their world was.

Interestingly, I don't think that, at this point, I had any great interest in their powers.

The one exception to that was Mr Fantastic. That issue's Spider-Man tale featured the wondrous wall-crawler's early, failed, attempt to join the Fantastic Four and, while the Invisible Girl, Human Torch and Thing's powers didn't mean anything much to me, I do remember being highly impressed by the visual strangeness of Reed Richard's stretching prowess.

So, there you have it; if you ever want to create a comic that's irresistible to eight year olds, start off by giving everyone brightly coloured costumes with wings, then, after two issues, switch to doing "B" movie sci-fi plots involving alien invasion and, from then on, fill every issue with men who can stretch like elastic. My experience as an eight year old suggests that, for a child, this is an unbeatable chain of events.

February 22nd, 1978 - Marvel UK, 40 years ago this week.

Nothing of any great interest seemed to be happening this week in 1978. I will therefore leap straight into my look at what treats Marvel UK was giving us, and hope it proves able to compensate for the lack of real-world entertainment.

Too right it can - because it's all kicking off in Tatooine's Space Pub.

No doubt this means that we get to meet Han Solo for the first time in UK comics history. I can, though, shed no light on the question of whether Solo shoots first in the Marvel adaptation.

Not that that matters. I'm sure we're all more excited by the prospect of winning a Star Wars soundtrack LP.

Personally, I can only hum three bits of music from Star Wars - the theme tune, the thing the pub band seems to play on endless repeat, and the epic, mythic piece that starts up whenever anyone looks at the horizon - so I have no idea what the other thirty minutes of the LP sound like.

The Nameless One is back.

Quite what he's up to, I could not say. From what I can recall of him in other stories, he had a big thing about trying to gain access to the Earth, in an attempt to cause unimaginable unspecified mischief.  I therefore assume that that's his plan this time out as well.

I have a suspicion that this might be the one in which Dr Doom uses a fake Shalla-Bal to trick the Surfer into fighting the FF and then it turns out she was the real Shalla-Bal all along.

Or is it the other way round?

I'm not altogether sure. Frankly, it's all got far too confusing for me.

But, if she's the real Shalla-Bal, how did she get to Latveria? Was Mephisto involved? It sounds like the sort of thing he'd get up to.

It's clearly a big week for two-headed monsters because not only does Rampage see the return of the Nameless One but MWOM gives us the comeback of the Bi-Beast who's out to gain control of SHIELD's Helicarrier for reasons that are fuzzy within my mind.

I have a feeling this may not be the original Bi-Beast but a copy who was, presumably, activated by the death of the previous one.

The whole world may be talking about the Black Panther right now but Spidey's only concern is the White Tiger.

I must confess that I am starting to get a genuine sense of déjà vu these days. Within weeks of looking at these covers in the US version of this feature, I find myself looking at them again in the UK version. Surely it can only be a matter of months now before Marvel UK catches up with its parent company and the whole venture is doomed.

I believe I have said before that I don't really remember anything much about the White Tiger, other than his name and costume but I think he may be involved in a plan to steal some item of value, using a student protest for cover.

This, of course, has strong echoes of the storyline from Amazing Spider-Man #68 in which the Kingpin decides to steal an ancient tablet, using a student protest as a cover. A riot has always seemed like a strange venue for a crime. Won't there be police everywhere?

2000 AD - January 1980.

Make ready your thumbs and get set to twist your mind into knots - because, thirty eight years ago last month, the Rubik's Cube made its senses-shattering international debut, at the British Toy and Hobby Fair at Earl's Court, London. Never before had so much youthful intellectual power been spent on achieving something so pointless as getting coloured squares to match up.

Needless to say, I had a Rubik's Cube.

Needless to say, I lacked the patience or motivation to master it but I did, if I remember correctly, manage to complete it a couple of times.

Admittedly, that was before I realised you could complete one simply by getting a screwdriver, prising the blocks apart and snapping them back together again in the right order. If Ernő Rubik was so bright, why didn't he also set up a company making screwdrivers for breaking open his cubes? He could have doubled his profits.

But Earl's Court wasn't the only place that was seeing a historic debut that month.

Because Prog 149 of the greatest comic in the galaxy saw the arrival of a thing that was even more enigmatic, perplexing and traumatising than a Rubik's Cube.

And that was Judge Death.

Yes, it's true. Surely the most memorable villain ever to emerge from Judge Dredd's strip made his first appearance thirty eight years ago last month and immediately lodged himself in the minds of all comic fans. I am proud to say I was there when it happened and that I spotted his star potential at once.

As did everyone else, because it was obvious.

I am therefore proud to announce that I spotted what everyone else spotted.

It was a major life achievement.

Elsewhere that month, Prog 147 was giving us the results of their competition to design a space alien.

Needless to say, I remember nothing of this.

I do, however, remember once designing a space alien purely for my own pleasure. I decided to give it caterpillar tracks, instead of legs, in order to make it look less like an Earth creature. That is the sum total of my recollection of it.

Anyway, let's look at those covers and see how many memories they bring flooding back.

To be honest, they don't bring any memories flooding back.

So much for the claim that playing with Rubik's Cubes would sharpen our intellects.

February 15th, 1978 - Marvel UK, 40 years ago this week.

Listen. Do you hear those portentous bongs? Can you see the face of Big Ben, all lit up, in closeup?

You should do because this week of forty years ago saw the arrival of ITN's first ever female newsreader Anna Ford. How we gasped as a woman proved she could read out loud, just like a man can. It does seem amazing now that the hiring of a female newsreader would be big news but it's a reminder that the past is indeed a different country.

Elsewhere that week, ABBA were claiming the Number One slot on the UK singles chart, with Take A Chance On Me and Blondie were making their chart debut with Denis while Gerry Rafferty also had a new entry with Baker Street.

Perhaps the most anomalous song on the chart was ELO's Mr Blue Sky which was rapidly ascending. It does seem highly strange that arguably the most summery record of all time would be released in the depths of winter but maybe the record company thought we all needed cheering up.

They were wrong, of course.

We didn't need cheering up at all.

Why?

Because we already had the warm glow of the pages of Marvel UK to do that for us.

Hooray! It's the second majestic issue of the comic that's coming to us from a galaxy far, far away and a time long, long ago. Luke Skywalker gets to meet the Sand People, which implies that he may also be meeting Alec Guinness.

But what really matters is that we get a cardboard T.I.E. Fighter to go with the X-Wing Fighter we were presented with last week.

All we need now is to get our hands on next week's free cardboard Death Star and we can reenact the movie to our hearts' content.

Wait?

What's that?

They never gave away a free cardboard Death Star?

The tight-fisted...

Apparently, this story involves the Defenders being lumbered with a Gamma bomb that they have to get rid of.

I now have visions of Dr Strange running up and down the waterfront, with a Gamma bomb in his hands, desperately trying to find somewhere to dispose of it, Adam West style.

But I would assume this is one of those occasions where Bruce Banner suddenly comes into his own.

Come to think of it, I'm not sure I can remember Bruce Banner ever putting in an appearance in any of the Defenders stories I ever read. When it came to their strip, he seemed to be in Hulk form permanently.

It would appear the Defenders aren't the only people having problems with things that are in danger of exploding.

Admittedly, in the FF's case it's a man who's in danger of going kablooey.

And I now have visions of Reed Richards running up and down the waterfront, with Mahkizmo in his arms, desperately trying to find somewhere to dispose of him.

Not that we need care about that. If the cover blurb is to be believed, it's the mightiest FF saga ever.

That's the Galactus Trilogy put in its place.

This is either the climax of the Hulk's first fight with Jack of Hearts or it's the beginning of his second encounter with the Bi-Beast. Which of those it is, I could not say.

I predicted last week that Spidey and Moltie might end up in a burning, collapsing building, and it looks like I may well have been right.

Elsewhere, I believe the Captain America story may herald the arrival of the Red Skull's Fourth Sleeper who can walk around underground and fire great big force blasts out of his great big face. How can our hero hope to triumph? How?

Actually, I think he triumphed with the aid of a tuning fork but I don't quite recall how.

The Marvel Lucky Bag - February 1978.

Remember that scene in Flash Gordon, where Peter Duncan has to stick his hand in that tree stump and risk death, not knowing what nightmare toxic horror is going to be lurking in there?

Well, this feature is like that.

But with one difference.

Whatever is lurking in the Steve Does Comics' Tree Trunk of Nostalgia is bound to be nice, because it's produced by Marvel.

And it's the 1970s.

I don't know if I've read this one or not.

I do know that, "Stygyro," is a terrible name for a villain - possibly because it reminds me of little-remembered 1980s band Spyro Gyra who I recall inflicting some sort of easy listening cocktail music upon me when I was least expecting it.

I suspect it was a Spyro Gyra album that Peter Duncan found in that tree trunk. No wonder he keeled over and died.

I don't know. What? He's being attacked by a motorcyclist with a giant eyeball for a head? How would that man even pass his motorcycling proficiency test? He has no depth perception. He'd be crashing into things, all over the place.

For that matter, how's he even speaking? He's got no mouth. How's he even hearing things? He's got no ears.

I'm starting to think they haven't thought things through properly.

Hooray! It's the debut of the one significant character that I can remember coming out of Marvel's Godzilla strip, as Red Ronin shows up.

Not to be confused, of course, with Red Raven. You'd be a bit disappointed if you'd arranged for Red Ronin to turn up to tackle your thousand foot tall monster, and Red Raven showed up instead. Not least because you'd have to endure endless exposition about bird people, which seemed to be his sole topic of conversation.

At last! It's the debut of a comic book character like no other!

Well, admittedly, he's like Aquaman and the Sub-Mariner.

Unlike them, however, he had no staying power and his comic was cancelled after just seven issues. I suspect that Marvel readers were perfectly happy to settle for the one man from Atlantis they'd always already had.

I could be wrong but I think that, in this tale, Bereet's bag of tricks falls open and our heroes have to fight the various weirdnesses that lurk within it.

Whatever the tale's about, it has a Jim Starlin cover and that's good enough for me.

Of course, this villainous eyeball has a mouth. You see? Judo Jim, he thought things through.

I've never read White Fang, nor seen the movie adaptation of it.

I remember we had to read a section of it when we were at primary school but it involved him being savaged by a bulldog, which I didn't like, as I don't like my protagonists to be savaged by bulldogs.

It's this feature's obligatory reminder that not everything Marvel did in the 1970s involved super-heroes, as we get the company's take on the world's most famous ghost-busting dog.

Tragically, that dog made as big a mark on readers as the Man from Atlantis did and his book was cancelled after just nine issues.

There does seem to have been a trend for any 1970s Marvel comic based on a TV show to not even make it to ten issues before being dropped.

One of my happy childhood memories is of Ray Harryhausen's movie sending Lionel Jeffries to the moon to fight giant, talking ants and then kill them all with his Earth-born diseases.

Nowadays, in its first half, the film seems too whimsical for my liking and it takes too long to reach the moon but I still view it with fondness.

Interesting that the Selenites on that cover look nothing like the ones we were treated to in the film. It does make me wonder how they were described in the original book.

The wise-cracking duck takes on television clean-up campaigners.

And you can read my review of this very issue by clicking on this very link here.

Forty years ago today - February 1978.

Snow is battering hard at the walls of Chateau Steve Does Comics. I therefore have no choice but to seek refuge from the elements and snuggle up with a warm set of comics.

And what warmer set of comics could we find than the ones that were in the process of being removed from the newsagents' shelves exactly forty years ago, when every winter brought us twenty feet of snow that lasted from December through to April?

At least, that's how I remember the winters of the 1970s and, as we all know, my memories of the 1970s are infallible.

From that cover, I'm assuming that this is the issue that introduces us to Henry Peter Gyrich and his malevolent machinations.

The internet tells me that this issue also features Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson. In what capacity they appear, I do not know.

I have literally run out of things to say about Conan. I suppose that at least this issue's menace is a type of creature I can't recall ever having seen him face before.

"At last! The secret of Cap's origin revealed!" I'm pretty sure I mentioned this a few weeks ago but did this book ever manage to go for more than three consecutive issues without retelling Captain America's origin? It has to be the most ridiculously over-revisited origin ever.

For whatever reason, the Fantastic Four have quit.

I do believe this leads to the Plunderer launching a raid on their abandoned headquarters, in order to steal Reed Richards' inventions.

I don't like to teach my granny how to suck eggs but you would've thought it would have occurred to Reed to dismantle his unbelievably dangerous devices, instead of just leaving them lying around where any super-villain can get at them. Let's face it, if even the Plunderer can break in, security can't be that tight.

For that matter, why does only the Plunderer think to do this? Why aren't all the super-villains trying to get into the building? From what I can recall, the Mad Thinker was always trying to come up with ways to get his hands on them. Now that he finally has a chance to do it, he's beaten to the punch by Ka-Zar's loser brother.

Sometimes, super-villains can be perverse creatures.

Speaking of perverse, Captain Barracuda is turning salty seamen into ape men. I can see no reason at all why a submarine commander would want to do this.

I think this tale was the only time I ever encountered Captain Barracuda. Given his ocean-dwelling nature, I assume he had a few run-ins with the Sub-Mariner in his time?

As with all Iron Man stories, I have no idea what happens in this tale but, doing this feature over the years has led to me being surprised by how many times Midas has turned up. I'd always assumed he was one of those villains who appeared once and was never seen again. In reality, it turns out he was a serious contender for the honour of being Iron Man's main arch-enemy.

Barton Hamilton's fake Green Goblin is still causing trouble and, by trying to gain control of New York's mobs, is acting like the original Steve Ditko vision of the character, rather than the John Romita take on him, which is interesting.

It's a curious cover, in which the mobsters are basically cast as the protagonists, with the Goblin and Spider-Man being the joint menaces they must overcome.

A cover that seems to be a less-watery homage to that of Amazing Spider-Man #33. I believe this is the issue in which Spidey and Razorback finally reveal to the world the Man-Beast's evil plans.

John Byrne may have taken over the art reins in the previous issue but, for me, this is where his run really starts, with the launch of a whole new era for the team, Wolverine starting to take centre stage and the introduction of a brand new Canadian super-doer.

I have a copy of this somewhere near here. If I recall correctly, Damocles is committing various crimes around the city, using his big sci-fi cannon, unaware that it's leaking deadly radiation all over the place. Now, Thor and Damocles' brother have to stop him, in another of those tales brought to us by a combination of Walt Simonson and Tony DeZuniga.

Apparently, the Stilt-Man is in this issue, in his Wilbur Day identity but I have no recollection of that appearance at all. I shall have to dig the comic out and take a look at it.