October 3rd, 1979 - Marvel UK, 40 years ago this week.

We're just a week away from one of the most important events in the history of Marvel UK. Nay, one of the most important events in the entire history of humanity.

What can it be?

And is it dangerous?

All I can say is I'll leave it as a cliffhanger and leave you to tune in at the same time next week.

In the meantime, what was happening in the seven days preceding that epic event?

That pilot definitely needs some aiming practise. I mean, Luke Skywalker can hit womp rats while he's flying his plane, and they're not much bigger than something or other.

Elsewhere, thanks to the pencil of Genial Gene Colan, Star-Lord finds himself in some kind of ark in space.

In the Guardians of the Galaxy, Nikki and Vance both find their spirits ascending at the same time. Surely it can only be a matter of moments before they collide and a nightmarish bout of space nookie breaks out.

Meanwhile, on the back cover, the Green Cross Code Man's telling us to always look before rushing out into the road to retrieve our footballs.

It's wise advice indeed - and advice I still adhere to, to this very day because the Green Cross Code Man won't be there when I cross the road.

Why not?

He was there for all those other kids.

Hooray! We get the origin of Captain Britain, retold.

And it all happens because I demanded it!

Admittedly, I don't recall demanding it but Dez insists I did, so I must have.

Elsewhere, Ant-Man teams up with Spider-Man to fight some evil or other.

The Eternals finally abandon their totally pointless Uni-Mind.

Nick Fury's up against the Hate-Monger. I don't know if it's the one in which the Nazi ne'er-do-well accidentally steps out of an airlock. I sincerely hope it is.

And, of course, the Hulk's still out to polish off the Corporation.

Spider-Man tangles with Electro in a tale drawn by the unusual combo of Jim Starlin and Bob McLeod.

The rest of this issue's contents are a mystery.

To be honest, even that Spidey story's a mystery. I have no recollection of ever having read it, even though I'm sure I must have done.

You can't help feeling the Grim Reaper should try getting a hobby. Has there ever been a more monomaniacal villain than him?

Even though I know for sure I read this issue, I can't recall either the X-Men or the Ms. Marvel tale.

In fact, I don't remember Ms. Marvel ever even having been in the comic.

I may have thought the combination of Jim Starlin and Bob McLeod was unusual but, in this mag, we get the even more unusual combination of Carmine Infantino and Alfredo Alcala, as Conan finds himself trapped in the lair of the Ice Worm.

From what little I've seen of that artwork, Alfredo manages to make Carmine's work look exactly like Alfredo. You do wonder why Marvel used to bother with a penciller and didn't just let Alcala do it all on his own.

For a moment, I thought that blurb said, "Red Sonja vs the Death Dalek." Red Sonja vs a dalek, who wouldn't pay to watch a scrap like that?

Then again, who wouldn't pay to watch Solomon Kane take on Dracula?

I would. And that's what he does.

The Hulk story's a total blank to me.

The X-Men story isn't, as the Sentinels make their awesome return and abduct Wolverine, Banshee and Jean Grey. I think this is the story in which we first learn that Wolvie's claws are a part of him.

I've no idea what the Doctor Strange story's about.

It's hard to believe but there was a time when Alien was a brand new movie.

And that time is now, as the nation's Number One sci-fi mag looks at the arrival of that film.

Not only that but we get a look at the people behind the awesome special effects of Doctor Who!

Anyone who ever saw their depiction of the Loch Ness Monster running rampant through the streets of London knows that nothing was beyond their ability to pull-off convincingly.

Fifty years ago this month - October 1969.

If you're a dead parrot, you might want to sit up and take notice of this because, in this month of 1969, Monty Python's Flying Circus first aired on BBC One and the life of deceased avians would never be the same again.

Something else which occurred that month and would ensure nothing would be the same again, was the first message being sent over ARPANET which, the internet informs me, was the forerunner of the internet.

And there was another taste of the future, for the people of Britain, with the launch of the brand new 50 pence coin. Brought in as a replacement for the 10-shilling note, it suffered a mixed reception from the public, many of whom found it too easily mistaken for the 10 pence coin.

That is genuinely baffling. The 50 pence piece was bigger than the 10 pence piece, was thicker, heavier, had smoother edges; and was heptagonal, whereas a 10 pence piece was round. They're probably the least easy coins to get mixed up, ever.

I suspect people also complained it was, "Like Mickey Mouse money, Monopoly money and that funny money they have abroad," as I can't remember any new coin ever not being greeted with that response.

Hooray! The Growing Man makes his senses-shattering return.

And that can only mean Kang the Conqueror isn't far behind.

Needless to say, despite knowing their foe grows bigger and more powerful every time you hit him, the Avengers still keep on hitting him.

All fully trained-up by Cap, the Falcon helps our hero take on the Outcasts or the Rejects or whatever it is they're called.

I do believe this is the issue in which the Red Skull, disguised as Captain America, tells Rick Jones to clear off and Rick vows to give up the sidekicking forever.

This, of course, leads to him becoming sidekick to Captain Marvel, barely hours later.

Ironically, it's the Red Skull's possession of the Cosmic Cube which causes all this and, thanks to Thanos, the Cosmic Cube will go on to become Captain Marvel's biggest headache.

Death's Head meets his doom but is revealed to be Karen Page's father.

It would appear Daredevil's also revealed to be Matt Murdock.

So desperate for evil things to do are the Skrulls that they take to stealing plots from whichever Star Trek episodes Jack Kirby happens to be watching at the time, as they capture the Thing and take him to their world of 1930s gangsterness, to take part in their gladiatorial games.

Maximus tries to team up with the Hulk, to take on the US army but, inevitably, that alliance doesn't last and the evil Inhumans are soon having to flee both the Hulk and Uncle Sam.

I would assume the figure inside the new Iron Man suit is the LMD who's taken Tony Stark's place, and that the figure inside the old Iron Man suit is the real Tony Stark, trying to reclaim his rightful place in society.

The Avengers certainly look shocked by it all.

Spidey has to save the Lizard from the Human Torch but can he get the hotheaded hero to listen?

Thor learns yet more of Galactus' origin.

It's one that I've read but I recall little of. I think that, at the climax, Sauron chooses to die, rather than drain the life force of his beloved, which is nice.

Iron Fist #3 - The City's Not For Burning!

You are Steve Does Comics. You are reviewing a tale of graphic narrative. It is Iron Fist; product of a mysterious land in the Far East, from which no man may return with his soul unchanged. But first, before you can do this, you must endure the test  of...

Oh I give up. Writing a review in the style of an Iron Fist comic is a pain in the backside. It's even worse than if you tried to do it in the style of a Shang-Chi adventure.

Anyway, Iron Fist, I have spoken before of my inherent frustration with him, that, like Popeye, he had a means to defeat any foe but, like Popeye, never bothered to use it until he'd been knocked from pillar to post, making you wonder why he didn't just use it at the start of the fight and save himself the trouble.

I did, however, generally draw pleasure from his tales, mostly because they were nicely drawn and who doesn't like to see a good dose of martial arts mayhem?

I did, therefore, in my younger days, own a couple of issues of his book. One of which was issue #3, in which all kinds of chaos broke out.

So, around forty years since I first read it, what do I make of it now?

Our hero and Misty Knight are flying into the world famous London Airport to look for their friend Colleen but don't even manage to land before their plane's blown up by an armoured villain calling himself the Ravager.

The inevitable fight breaks out between protagonist and antagonist but the villain escapes the scene, leaving Iron Fist to visit the now hospitalised Misty before having an argument with her about priorities, and then setting off in search of the villain.

By following the Ravager's radioactive footprints, Fisty tracks him down to a lab in that well-known scientific research facility the General Post Office Tower, whereupon another fight breaks out.

Finally grasping that it might be a good idea to break out the spinach, Iron Fist revs up his knuckles and delivers the coup de grâce - but that only succeeds in wrecking the armour of his foe who now reveals himself to be Radion and promptly blows up the tower, with himself and Iron Fist still in it. Radion may be named after a brand of washing powder but that doesn't stop him trying to make a mess of London.

It's certainly a tale that isn't afraid of flinging you right into the action, with carnage breaking out from almost the moment we get past the opening splash page.

But, exploding planes aside, the thing that really smashed me in the face, reading it, is it's strongly reminiscent of that early Captain Britain adventure in which the similarly armoured Hurricane smashes up a London airport. As both tales were written by Chris Claremont, it's hard to believe the boy Chris wasn't knowingly drawing on that tale when he conceived this one.

It also struck me that, as drawn by John Byrne, our hero Danny Rand looks remarkably like Captain Britain's alter-ego Brian Braddock.

Also, like Brian Braddock, he's not that interesting a person. The real star of the issue, character-wise, is Misty Knight who probably deserves her own comic more than he does.

Admittedly, she does act like a total jerk at the hospital, berating Danny because he wants to save the whole of London from destruction, rather than concentrate on finding Colleen. To be honest, wanting to save an entire city from annihilation doesn't seem an unreasonable goal for a super-hero. I can only put Misty's weird attitude down to Chris Claremont wanting to ramp up the drama levels the after-effects of her anaesthetic.

More importantly, this issue, we find out she's bionic. I mean, come on, how can they not give Genocide-Ignoring Bionic Misty Knight her own book after that revelation?

Aside from the somewhat manufactured conflict between Misty and Danny, my big reservation with the comic is there's too much human suffering in it. Not only does Misty get impaled on a big lump of metal, have to be rushed to the hospital and spend the rest of the yarn with an arm missing but half the people on the plane die, including a child who seems to be in the story just to be half set on fire and then killed. Call me a sissy but I like super-hero comics where no one actually gets hurt.

It's also quite annoying that Danny and Misty keep talking about Colleen but, as far as I could see, nowhere in the story do they tell you who Colleen is or what's supposed to have happened to her. A quick bit of back story might have been nice for newcomers.

Anyway, it's a competent story with plenty of incident and a solid but not, by his own standards, exceptional art job by Byrne but the overly melodramatic nature of Claremont's writing and the human suffering quotient are somewhat off-putting for me.

It is good, though, to see Radion show up. He was, for me, always one of Marvel's better 1970s villains and a noticeable cut above most of its wrongdoers of that era.

September 26th, 1979 - Marvel UK, 40 years ago this week.

Am I the only one who can't hear Blue Oyster Cult's Don't Fear the Reaper without automatically singing the Police's Message in a Bottle over the top of it?

I must have been doing that quite a lot, this week in 1979, because that was when the latter record claimed the Number One spot on the British singles chart. I must confess I was never a huge fan of the Police but it was a bearable track which caused me no actual mental or physical harm.

Rather more excitingly for me, the top slot on the album chart that week was taken by the musical titans that were Boney M, thanks to their LP Oceans of Fantasy.

In fairness, the singles from it were not amongst their finest but that clearly didn't do the album's sales any harm.

I am intrigued, however, to discover it contained a cover of the Beatles' Two of Us. This I have to take a listen to on YouTube, especially bearing in mind there were four of them.

While the nation was grooving to all that Teutonic dance goodness, BBC Two, in this night of that week, was giving us far more sedate fare, as it broadcast the 71st Waterloo Crown Green Bowling Handicap, apparently, the most prestigious competition in the game.

Despite its name, the contest took place in Blackpool, not in London's Waterloo Station which was, famously, the site of Napoleon's ultimate defeat. Perhaps the most noticeable thing about the contest is it was introduced by future Oscar winner Colin Welland.

If crown green bowls wasn't enough excitement for us, over on BBC One, slightly earlier, we were treated to the Star Trek episode in which William Shatner's charged with causing the death of a missing officer, through cowardice.

But who needed TV? If we lived in the south, we were probably all too busy consumerising, thanks to the opening of the Central Milton Keynes Shopping Centre, then the largest indoor shopping complex in Britain. Milton Keynes was, notoriously, where they later filmed Superman IV because of its incredible resemblance to New York.

At the time, Milton Keynes had a rule that said nothing could be built that was taller than the town's tallest tree.

Are they sure it bore an incredible resemblance to New York?

I don't have a clue what's occurring in this week's Star Wars tale but I do know this is the first time I've ever seen Outer Space be described as, "Savage." It's definitely put me off going there.

Elsewhere in that savage wilderness, I've no doubt the Guardians of the Galaxy are still on the planet whose religious leaders want to sacrifice Nikki.

I have a vague memory this leads to her canoodling with Vance Astro. To which, all I can say is, "Urgh."

Of Star-Lord and the Watcher's whereabouts, I know not.

The Hulk and Cap are still bringing justice to the Corporation.

The Eternals send Olympia's forgotten hero to thwart the Deviant missile attack on the Celestials' mother ship.

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

Ant-Man and the Wasp are busy sorting out the Porcupine - but not before the prickly villain tries to drown our hero in a bathtub!

Nick Fury's probably up to something or other.

I do believe this is the one in which Spidey's officially cleared of the various crimes he's long been suspected of but the Chameleon tries to mess everything up for him again, until Flash Thompson proves to be the voice of reason.

The rest of this comic's contents are a mystery to me.

I am intrigued, though, as to why Spider-Man has to stop a charging rhino, in order to clear his name. Just what kind of criminal justice system do they have in America?

2000 AD - August 1981.

As anyone knows, this site is second to none in its appreciation of the works of Shakin' Stevens. Has there been a greater contributor to western musical culture since Beethoven?

No there hasn't.

And that's good news because August of 1981 began with Shaky's monster hit Green Door at Number One on the UK singles chart, having earlier kicked the Specials' Ghost Town off the top slot.

However, even Shaky has his limits and it wasn't long before he himself was dethroned by the majestic genius that was Aneka's Japanese Boy. Despite her best efforts, Aneka held on to that top spot for just one week before being KO'd by Soft Cell and their debut hit Tainted Love which rose to the pinnacle in the very last week of the month.

Over on the album chart, Cliff Richard began the month in pole position with Love Songs before being cruelly overthrown by the Official BBC Album of the Royal Wedding. Seriously, leaving politics aside, who wants to listen to a wedding?

Happily, for people who are not insane, that recording was quickly booted off the top by ELO's LP Time which is, in the opinion of this writer, an underrated gem.

Meanwhile, all those artists and more had reason to be of good cheer because August 1981 was when MTV was launched, giving our recording stars a potential new means to reach fresh listeners and venture into markets once beyond them. Famously, it kicked off by playing Video Killed the Radio Star, a full two years after the song had hit the British charts.

Granted, I suspect that neither Shakin' Stevens nor Aneka ever got played on MTV, even once, but there was at least hope that they might.

In the real world, inflation in Britain plummeted to just 10.9%, its lowest level in literally years and Moira Stuart became the BBC's first black newsreader.

In the cinemas, An American Werewolf in London escaped to cause terror and consternation wherever it rampaged.

"But what of 2000 AD?" I hear you ask. "What was that up to at the time?"

Well, with total inevitability, we were still getting our weekly dose of Strontium Dog, Judge Dredd, Nemesis, The Mean Arena, Tharg's Future Shocks and Meltdown Man.

But the big news was, of course, the return, in Prog 224, of Judge Death, this time joined by his friends, Judges Fire, Mortis and Fear.

Judge Death seems to have been trapped in the corpse of Judge Anderson, up until this point. I have no idea how that turn of events came about.

September 19th, 1979 - Marvel UK, 40 years ago this week.

Do you like synthesizers?

Do you like motor vehicles?

Do you like the charts?

If so, you were in luck on all three fronts, in this week of 1979 because it was slap-bang when the top spot on the UK singles chart was claimed by Gary Numan's Cars. It did so by dethroning Cliff Richard's We Don't Talk Anymore.

Cliff Richard's real name is Harry Webb. Gary Numan's real name is Gary Webb. From this, we could only conclude that the following week's singles chart was to be topped by a man called Barry Webb.

But it wasn't and, to this day, Barry Webb has still never had a British Number One.

To the astonishment of all, I know nothing of what unfolds in the main Star Wars tale.

I do know the Guardians of the Galaxy adventure is the one in which some weird religious cult wants to set fire to Nikki, or disintegrate her, or something.

The Star-Lord tale is a Gene Colan drawn story called World in a Bottle which features the first ever appearance of Aletha.

I don't have a clue who Aletha is.

But I do have a clue how the issue ends.

And that's with a Tale of the Watcher in which a man who collects butterflies travels into space - only to find himself trapped on a planet where butterflies collect men!

The Hulk and Captain America are still making a meal of dealing with the Corporation and their huge-headed hench-cave-person Animus.

The Deviants have decided to launch a manned missile at the Celestials' starship. I'm not totally sure why it has to be manned.

For the eighty seven millionth issue running, Merlin's still trying to bring Captain Britain back from the dead.

For the eighty seven millionth issue running, I've no idea what Nick Fury's up to.

But none of that matters because what really matters is Ant-Man's up against his deadliest foe yet - the Porcupine who decides to rob a bank that's declared itself to be robbery proof. As he wisely reasons, no one could stop a man who's dressed up as a porcupine.

Hooray! Peter Parker finally graduates from ESU!

I say hooray but it was at the moment he graduated that I lost all interest in the strip.

As well has having to contend with my apathy, Spidey has to deal with the menace of the White Dragon and his flaming vat of death.

The rest of this issue's contents are the usual mystery to me.

Werewolf by Night #20. Eye of the Wolf.

A recurring theme on this blog, over the years, has been me posting the covers of Werewolf by Night and declaring I can recall nothing of the contents, leading me to conclude it has to have been the most forgettable comic of my youth.

And yet, it has to have been, along with The Eternals, the US Marvel comic I had the most number of issues of. This tells me it must have been one of my favourite comics.

But now, at last, I can partially cure my amnesia because I have, in my hands, a copy of Werewolf by Night #20. How well I remember this from my childhood, with its cover image of an irate werewolf tearing the bars from its prison cell, as bystanders look on in horror.

Of course, when I say, "remember," what I mean is remember the cover, because the contents themselves are as mysterious as ever.

I do recall, however, that I did read it quite a few times in my younger days. Therefore, I, clearly, derived some pleasure from it.

And now I'm about to discover just why it caused that pleasure.

It's night time and Jack Russell's having a walk in the dark, pondering his problems, including the kidnapping of his sister Lissa, by a man called Baron Thunder, a name only someone in a comic could ever have.

As Jack walks, he's approached by his neighbour Raymond Coker and they have a chat about them both being werewolves.

But, unknown to the pair, they're being watched by another werewolf who's actually a cop called Lt. Hackett. Thanks to a magic ring, Hackett can transmogrify at will and still retain his normal personality, which is a shame, as his normal personality seems to be quite abysmal.

Later, for reasons I'm not totally clear about, Jack's given an identical ring and the address where Baron Thunder lives. Thus informed, he sets off to rescue Lissa.

Needless to say, it doesn't go well and he's about as much use with his normal personality as he always is without it but, thanks to dumb luck, the Baron's house burns down and Jack and Lissa escape, although Jack loses the ring as he leaps out of a window to flee the flames.

It's a terrible admission to make but, given Werewolf by Night's less than stellar reputation, I actually enjoyed this.

Although there's nothing sensational about the plot, I like the fact that every single thing that happens in it relates to a whole group of ongoing storylines. Whether it be the kidnapping of Lissa, Raymond Coker's problems or Lt. Hackett giving Jack a hard time, we're given a set of characters who seem to have a life beyond the confines of the comic.

Of course, there's nothing unique about that. It was the standard way of handling most 1970s created Marvel titles but it works especially well here, probably because the werewolf's adventures in themselves are never going to be that interesting and that extra dimension is, therefore, seriously needed.

The chief disappointments are that, yet again, the werewolf fails to win a fight (was there ever a Marvel protagonist who was more useless in a punch-up than their werewolf was?) and that Jack loses the ring as he escapes the fire. A few more issues of the werewolf having normal intelligence would have been appreciated.

The artwork by Don Perlin and Vince Colletta is simple and does its job with minimum fuss. It's not the sort of art that wins awards, gets people talking or rushing out to buy the next issue but I do have a soft spot for artists like Perlin, Sal Buscema and Bob Brown who just concentrate on telling a story. As long as they have the right inker, they can be effective.

Doug Moench's script, meanwhile, could hardly be described as gleaming but also it does its job.

The one thing that does baffle me, though, is Gil Kane's rather magnificent cover. It relates in no way, shape or form to the comic's contents, creating the impression that it was drawn for a totally different story which never saw light of day.