The Marvel Lucky Bag - January 1970.

A wise man once asked, "War! What is it good for?"

He then claimed it was good for absolutely nothing.

He was, of course, wrong because it's useful for giving people things to write songs about.

And proof of that was handed out in January 1970 when Two Little Boys by Rolf Harris reigned supreme atop the UK singles chart for the first half of that month. However, it then had to make way for Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes) by Edison Lighthouse, for the second half of the month, meaning it was a spell in which love and war held equal sway over the singles chart.

But neither love nor war could compete with the power of the Beatles when it came to the British LP chart, and the Fab Four spent the whole of January at Number One with their last recorded album Abbey Road.

So, that was the fate of the popular.

But what of things that were not so popular? What of Marvel's less successful titles which bore that month's cover date?

Well, clearly, some of them were less successful than might be thought because, suddenly, both Captain Marvel and Nick Fury had lost their books. Would they ever recover from this ignominy?

Yes they would but not for a while.

Not content with thrilling us with the adventures of Kid Colt and the Two-Gun Kid, Marvel now treats us to the escapades of the Ringo Kid, a character I know nothing about.

In fact, so ignorant am I that, up until now, I think I'd always assumed he was an actual real historical figure and not a Marvel comics character.

Happily, I am fully aware that Kid Colt and the Two-Gun Kid were not real.

I do suspect that's a Joe Maneely cover, leading me to deduct that this is a reprint mag.

The Surfer takes on the Abomination in the streets of London, thanks to a bunch of occultists.

But, of course, the scaly fiend proves no match for the pewter powerhouse.

Now unable to breathe underwater, the Sub-Mariner's trapped on land and hounded from pillar to post, causing Dorma to threaten war if he's not handed over to the Atlanteans immediately.

With total predictability, things get out of hand very quickly and, the next thing you know, New York's being attacked by giant sea creatures, with the Atlanteans and humans all battling to stop them.

It's the launch of one of my favourite Marvel monster comics of the 1970s, as Where Monsters Dwell gives us three tales of terror.

First, we get a young couple who revive a Cyclops and then have to figure out what to do with it.

Next, an explorer revives an alien called Gorgolla who shows his gratitude by proceeding to summon his people to invade Earth...

...only to discover they've all turned into pacifists while he's been away!

Finally, we get Gor-Kill, a gaseous alien who's using a new home in a dam to harass the locals.

Needless to say, a good dose of dynamite soon stymies his plans.

Fifty years ago this month - January 1970.

Time may be a relative but I'll be a monkey's uncle if I understand a word of what I'm about to say in this paragraph. That's because I'm about to say that, in January 1970, the Unix time epoch was reached at 00:00:00 UTC.

I'm sure that's a pivotal moment in human history but I don't have a clue why.

But I do, at least, understand one thing that was pivotal - and that's that, in the UK, that month, the half crown coin ceased to be legal tender.

Admittedly, I lack all understanding of what a half crown was actually worth. Knowing the old Imperial monetary system, it was probably worth fifteen eighths of a quarter of five half-sovereign pieces or something that was equally nice and easy to calculate when trying to pay for something in a shop.

In a rather more user-friendly vein, were the Jackson 5 who, that January, scored their first ever Number One single on the Billboard Hot 100 with I Want You Back.

The cinemas, meanwhile, were seeing the release of two horror movies.

The first was Scream and Scream Again which I think is about rubber people committing murders while Amen Corner keep randomly appearing, to sing a song, for no noticeable reason.

The second was The Dunwich Horror. My horror senses tell me it was almost certainly an adaptation of the HP Lovecraft story of the same name. I think I've seen it but can't be certain.

Slightly less horrifically, the month also saw the release of the movie MASH.

But, Reader, can you guess in advance what the link is between MASH and one of the comics I'm about to look at below?

This is that very link because this issue appears in a 1974 episode of the MASH TV show where it's seen in the hand of a sleeping Radar O'Reilly. The Grand Comics Database really is the fount of unlikely knowledge.

Is this the first appearance of Zodiac? I'm fairly certain it's not the first appearance of Scorpio.

I could regale you with details of this tale but I must confess that, even though I've read it on more than one occasion, I don't remember anything about it.

I know Rick Jones is in it and the cover tells me Captain Marvel is too.

I think the story might begin with Rick creeping around on the roof of the Avengers Mansion, in a furtive manner.

There you go. It would appear Rick Jones is the most memorable element in this tale. It must be a classic.

If I remember right, some petty thug's given super-strength, by a mad scientist, so he can beat-up Captain America but, with the sort of luck only Stan Lee can bestow upon a man, the place where they're fighting just happens to be randomly blessed with the presence of that thug's son.

Needless to say, this revelation makes the bruiser lose all interest in the scrap, and Cap lives to fight another day.

Daredevil takes on Crime-Wave in a tale I'm struggling to recall anything of.

In fact, I'm struggling to even recall Crime-Wave. I get the feeling he was probably stuck behind the Masked Marauder in the queue to gain entry to the Super-Villain Hall of Fame.

Hooray! Agatha Harkness makes her sorcerous debut, as the Frightful Four decide to launch their latest attack and she makes sure they live to regret it.

It's another belter, as the Leader steals the government's Murder Module and attacks the Hulk with it.

Attacking the Hulk with a notoriously unstable mode of transport may not be the best idea any human being ever had.

I do always wonder, though, why the Leader steals the Murder Module. Can he really not build one of his own?

This is, of course, part of the brief run of stories in which the Hulk retains Bruce Banner's intelligence, except at times of high agitation.

Tony Stark decides to give the job of Iron Man to boxer Eddie March, not realising Eddie's been told that another blow to the head could kill him.

It's the tale where Spidey effectively announces to the world that he's Peter Parker, by telling everyone that he recognised the Chameleon in a crowd because he was disguised as Peter Parker, and Peter Parker's the one person Spidey knows he couldn't possibly be.

Strangely enough, no one draws the obvious conclusion from this statement, even though there's only one conclusion that could be drawn from it.

My memories of this are fuzzy. Does a dying billionaire kidnap Thor so he can have his mind transferred into the thunder god's body, and it turns out his device doesn't work on gods?

I've never read this tale, and Sunfire's in it, so I'm not likely to.

I gather, though, from the cover, that he's now causing maximum irritation in America?

January 2nd, 1980 - Marvel UK, 40 years ago this week.

Have you ever been stuck on a train with a mummified caveman who's been possessed by an alien, while a Rasputin lookalike blunders around being weird?

If so, this night in 1980 must have felt like they'd made a movie of your life because that was when BBC One had the good sense to broadcast the magnificent madness of Horror Express, surely the greatest faux Hammer film of them all.

That's right. That means it's even better than The Creeping Flesh and The Blood Beast Terror.

How we gasped as Christopher Lee played a good guy, Peter Cushing played someone else, and Telly Savalas played a Cossack captain determined to completely take over the movie, despite only showing up halfway through it.

But it's time now to climb into our own Horror Express and ride it into the Dark Tunnel of Nostalgia, to see what other triumphs were dwelling within that fateful week.

I've not the slightest idea what happens in this issue's Star Wars tale but I'm working on the assumption that Han and Chewie still have an unconscious Wookie in their cargo hold.

Why they have it, I cannot say.

How they dispose of it, I also cannot say.

Whisper it quietly but I think the Guardians of the Galaxy may have finally defeated the Reavers of Arcturus and are now getting a bit of rest and recuperation.

Deathlok, on the other hand, is in no such mood for relaxation. He's in a right old mood.

And that mood gets even worse when he stumbles across a copy of Frankenstein in an abandoned library and takes it personally.

Which tale the Watcher's telling us this week is unknown to me but I'm sure its moral will well serve all who read it.

The Hulk and Goldbug arrive in El Dorado, unsuspecting of the sinister scheme which has been hatching there.

Ant-Man finally manages to stop the Wasp being homicidal - but they're still stuck at insect size!

We're getting yet more backstory about Captain Britain and the Black Knight.

The female Defenders are still trying to tame the Red Rajah.

The Silver Surfer's in the realm of Mephisto and resisting all offers and temptations his diabolical host can throw at him.

Britain's leading sic-fi mag's taking what appears to be a major look at the new Star Trek film which is packing cinemas across the globe.

It looks like we'll also be getting some coverage of Dark Star, which is always a thing to appreciate. After seeing that film, beach balls were never the same again, for me.

I've no recollection of the Gamma Monster the Hulk has to face this month and I'm not sure what the connection is between it and a Frankenstein-themed cover.

I do, of course, recollect the X-Men tale, in which, having crashed a space shuttle, Jean Grey bursts out of the sea, as Phoenix, and the X-Men promptly go on holiday to Ireland, causing some serious leprechaun action of the inevitable kind.

I don't have a clue what Phaseworld is or why it dies or why Dr Strange is mixed up in it all.

Typhon decides to get revenge on Hercules by kidnapping the Beast in order to force Iron Man to fight Hercules.

Doesn't this just mean the villain's now going to have to contend with Hercules, Iron Man and the Beast? Doesn't this make him worse off than he was in the first place?

Speaking of being badly off, the X-Men are in a bind. They've been ordered to disband, by the FBI, but they have to undisband when an evil force starts summoning all mutants to converge in one place for unknown sinister purpose.

Dr Doom's making his millionth attempt to form an alliance with the Sub-Mariner and trying to impress the crown prince of Atlantis with his robots, not suspecting that those selfsame machines are on the brink of turning against him.

We also get an interview in which Jarvis reveals what its like working for the Avengers.

Hooray! There's a Dalek on the front cover!

Granted, it's on fire but I'm sure that'll prove to be a mere minor setback to it in its plans to rule the universe.

Inside, the Doctor's still having trouble with the City of the Damned.

Now that the War of the Worlds adaptation's over, we get the start of an Invisible man adaptation. How big a part did the Invisible Man play in the defeat of the Martians?

Who can know?

Well, HG Wells can but he's not saying.

We also get a picture story about K-9's finest hour.

Presumably, that was on one of the few occasions when he wasn't left behind inside the TARDIS because no one could work out how to get him to work outdoors.

There's yet more sword and sorcery shenanigans from Britain's Number One receptacle of that genre.

We also get an interview with Boris Vallejo which I suspect would have been my highlight of the issue, if I'd had it.

It's an ever-loving calamity, as Spider-Man has to face the burglar who killed Uncle Ben - without the use of his powers.

Despite the claim on the cover, I'd have thought that, if Spider-Man was ever going to lose his powers before a fight, the best possible time would be for a scrap with the man who killed his Uncle Ben, as he's basically just some bloke.

Anyway, there's an obvious point here. And that's that Peter Parker could simply call the police in and leave it to them, what with the criminal being just some bloke.

2001 #7. The New Seed.

We all remember 2001: A Space Odyssey. It's the film which totally failed to predict the moon blasting out of Earth's orbit in 1999 and, thus, made a laughing stock of itself.

After a blunder like that, you'd have thought no one would want to create a sequel to it.

But you'd be wrong because someone did make a sequel to it. It was called 2010. Clearly, the intervening nine years hadn't been deemed worthy of cinematic immortality and didn't get movies named after them.

But that wasn't the only follow-up to the film because Marvel Comics produced ten sequels to it, in the form of a series written and drawn by Jack Kirby.

In some ways, Jack was the ideal man to helm a 2001 comic because the movie'd been filled with technology, Outer Space and Cosmic happenings.

It was also a movie which didn't rely on naturalistic dialogue, rational plotting or recognisable human behaviour. This also made it a good fit for Jack's writing style.

On the other hand, it could be argued Kirby was the worst man to do it because the film wasn't famous for its punch-ups, and he was.

So, how did the master of action acquit himself when it came to handling the more cerebral pretentiousness of a film you can usually only find meaning in while stoned?

I only had one chance to find out when I was a youth because I only ever came across one issue of the book, and that issue was #7 in which we get to meet the Space Seed.

Astronaut Gordon Pruett's stumbling around in his space suit when he decides to have a lie down and grow so old that he turns into a flying space baby.

In this guise, he floats around the universe, seeing wonders beyond measure before he descends upon a world whose populace have all but destroyed themselves in a global war.

Fortunately, they're not people to learn from their mistakes and, so, within minutes of the flying baby turning up, the last few survivors have pointlessly wiped each other out.

Not deterred by such silliness, the baby takes the remaining essence from the conflict's final two victims, flies off to an uninhabited world and drops it into the sea, in order to seed that planet with life. He then floats off into space, ready to do whatever it is he's planning to do next.

I have to hand it to Jack. He may have often seemed to be an improvisational writer but, here, he deftly balances his conflicting urges to be meaningful and to show people being blown up by hand grenades, by coming up with a tale which allows one of those elements to feed into the other. I'm not sure what it'd feel like to read ten issues of a book written like this but it works in isolation.

Having said that, It's hardly a mystery why the comic didn't last for more than ten issues. It really is difficult to not see the original movie as a creative dead end, in that it's a struggle to see where you could go with the story beyond what was in the film.

You can't further explore the nature or behaviour of the monolith without robbing it of its enigma - and its enigma is all it really has going for it.

Also, it can hardly be claimed there are any compelling human elements to the movie that would hold your interest. Not unless you've always considered Rising Damp to be a stealth sequel to the film, which explores what happened to Leonard Rossiter's character after he quit the space agency and decided to become a landlord.

Also, I'd struggle to claim it has themes which need further exploration because, beyond aliens interfering in human evolution, I don't have a clue what its themes actually are.

So, I think we have to view 2001 as another of those odd little books Marvel churned out in the 1970s, which were interesting experiments but were never going to actually go anywhere.

But I don't care. I'm personally glad it existed, because the world would be a poorer place in the absence of such idiosyncrasy.

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

This week in 1979 was a week-and-a-half for British lovers of Americans in spandex because not only did we get to lay hands on all those lovely Marvel UK annuals of which I spoke in my last post but we also received a full complement of Marvel UK's regular weekly mags as well. Would life ever be this good again?

Yes it would - exactly a year later.

But, right now, it wasn't a year later.

It was right now.

And that's when I'm going to be taking a look at all those weekly books.

Right now.

Han and Chewie are trying to escape from a planet while concealing an unconscious Wookie in their cargo hold.

Well, they may be trying to escape from somewhere but Deathlok's doing the opposite. He's trying to get into somewhere, in his attempts kill Major Ryker.

The Guardians of the Galaxy are still battling the Reavers of Arcturus. This is all turning into an epic to rival the Kree/Skrull War itself.

Meanwhile, the Watcher's sharing with us the tale of how mankind discovers it can only flourish upon Earth and that it can like it or lump it.

Granted, the Watcher may not have used the phrase, "Like it or lump it."

The Hulk's hanging around on Mount Rushmore and threatening to bump off the military, when the Goldbug shows up and offers him the treacherous hand of friendship.

We're still finding out why Captain Britain lost his memory.

Ant-Man's still fighting the Wasp who's now half-woman, half-insect and all angry.

The Surfer and Mephisto get properly acquainted.

And the female Defenders have their first clash with the Red Rajah.

Hooray! The Silurians make the cover of our favourite Time Lord related comic!

I do think the Silurian design's one of the greatest in the show's history and it's a shame it wasn't revived in the modern era.

Granted, they don't look anything like the reptiles they're supposed to be but who cares about that? You wouldn't want to bump into one in your living room and that's the acid test of a good monster.

Inside the comic, the Doctor's still having trouble with the City of the Damned.

Whether it's anywhere near the Village of the Damned is anyone's guess.

Marvel's adaptation of War of the Worlds reaches its finale. I predict the Martians will all die of a common cold.

There's also  a text retelling of the ancient William Hartnell story Planet of Giants and more of the tale of The Stolen TARDIS.

Mysterio's trying to drown Spider-Man in his nursing home's swimming pool.

That's quite a fancy nursing home, if it has a swimming pool.

I quite fancy living there myself.

Admittedly, I'd have to put up with Mysterio trying to kill me to get his hands on my life savings but, hey-ho, there's a downside to everything.

Anyway, it all turns out the water's not real. It's all an illusion and Mysty's up to his usual tricks of trying to confound and confuse our hero.

Christmas Day, 1979 - Marvel UK, 40 years ago this week.

Hang onto your reindeers, Yule lovers, because it's Christmas!

Or it will be tomorrow!

And that gives me a perfect excuse to look at what our favourite comics company was serving up on Christmas Day 1979.

But, first, what else were we doing on that day?

BBC One, that morning, was giving us The Spinners at Christmas. This was, of course, not the American band of that name but the British one, famous for singing folk songs about Liverpool and doing blood donation adverts with jokes about skin colour you'd struggle to get away with these days.

We also got the Black Beauty movie, a documentary about Olympic ice skater John Curry, and the inevitable Christmas Day Top of the Pops, featuring Blondie, Boney M, Dr Hook, Lena Martell, Gary Numan, the Police, Cliff Richard, BA Robertson and Roxy Music, presented by Kid Jensen and Peter Powell.

That evening, the channel gave us The Mike Yarwood Christmas Show, To the Manor Born, The Sting and Parkinson at Christmas.

BBC Two, that afternoon, was giving us A Hard Day's Night, while, that evening, it unveiled A Christmas Carol and Baboushka.

The latter of those had nothing to do with the Kate Bush song of the same name but was a musical which presented the legend of a woman who gives hospitality to the Three Kings as they pass through on the way to Bethlehem. Too busy to join them, she says she'll follow on later but, when she finally gets there, it's too late and she's missed all the fun. The legend says she's still searching.

Personally, I'd give up if I were her. I think I'd conclude that, after two thousand years and Christ's crucifixion, the boat's well and truly sailed on that one.

To close off the evening, the channel gave us the film Cabaret.

Over on ITV, that morning, we received Lassie: The New Beginning and then, that afternoon, Christmas Oh Boy! with Joe Brown and the Bruvvers, Billy Hartman, Freddie "Fingers" Lee, Alvin Stardust, Shakin' Stevens, Rachel Sweet, Tim Witnall, Fumble, the Oh Boy! Cats and Kittens and the Oh Boy! Boogie Band. I would love to claim I know who Fumble were but I don't have a Scooby.

Also, that afternoon, the channel broadcast Goldfinger before taking us into the evening with the 3-2-1 Dickensian Xmas Show with Ted Rogers, Terry Scott, Bill Maynard and Wilfrid Brambell.

The evening saw George and Mildred, The Three Musketeers, Christmas with Eric and Ernie and Cleo Lane's Christmas. Not one person will be surprised to learn the big guest on the latter show was John Dankworth.

And the channel finished off the night by showing Death at Love House, a movie I cannot claim to have ever heard of.

But, of course, the big thing that everyone wanted to know was, what was the Christmas Number One?

Well, as I write these deathless words, in 2019, a song about sausage rolls is currently the UK's Christmas Number One but what of exactly 40 years ago? Could the 1970s possibly hope to match the cultural and societal impact of a song about sausage rolls?

No, they couldn't. We had to make do with Pink Floyd's Another Brick in the Wall Part 2 at Number One. It achieved this by gamely holding off ABBA's I Have a Dream. This meant that both the Christmas Number One and Number Two featured children singing on them. This is not a totally unknown phenomenon at Christmas.

The only actual Christmas songs on the chart that week were Paul McCartney's Wonderful Christmastime at 7, It Won't Seem Like Christmas by Elvis Presley at 25, Christmas Rappin' by Curtis Blow at 36 and A Merry Jingle by the Greedies at 47. Were the Greedies an unlikely team-up of Thin Lizzy and the Sex Pistols or am I just going mad?

So, those were the records we may have been unwrapping on that epic day but you know what else we all love to unwrap on Christmas Day?

Annuals!

And these were the ones Marvel UK had forced Santa to deliver to us.

This is a strange one, we get the whole of the Spidey vs Stegron vs Lizard story that, I think, involves the liberation of dinosaur skeletons in New York.

But that's not the strange thing. What is strange is that not all the annual's in full colour. Some pages are in a quaint combination of black, white and pink, creating a feel reminiscent of the days of the old Fleetway produced Marvel annuals of the very early 1970s.

On top of those reptilian antics, we get a text piece telling us all about Stan Lee's supreme and unique importance to the triumph of Marvel Comics and we also get a Spidey text story called Fun-House of Fear.

And the partial pinkness continues, as Marvel dishes out a reprint of the FF's first encounter with Salem's Seven.

There's also a cut-out Thing mask and a text story about our heroes fighting alien duplicates of themselves. I don't think the aliens are Skrulls but I cannot say that with certainty.

I do have to say that cover's almost identical to the one for last year's Fantastic Four annual.

And we get even more partially pink goodness.

We also get Thor going to Hel to confront Hela about something or other.

We get the Silver Surfer vs the Abomination, which, as I've remarked on more than one occasion, may well have been the very first Marvel story I ever read, back in the ancient TV21 comic that predated even Mighty World of Marvel.

And we're also served up Sub-Mariner vs Tiger-Shark in a Marie Severin drawn tale.

But now here's where we get the real odd one out, as the only hint that this is an official Marvel publication is a copyright statement at the beginning of it.

Otherwise, it's definitely aimed at fans of the TV programme, rather than those of the comic, with heavy use of informational text and photo features about the show.

The picture strips that are included are clearly UK originated material and not all of them seem to be about the Hulk.

Mostly the book's in black and white, with occasional outbreaks of colour, giving it a very very British feel.

2000 AD - November 1981.

Hark! What's that sound at the door?

It's the knock of the television license detector van man - and he wants a word with you.

He doesn't really because, as we all now know, TV license detector vans never existed - what with them being a scientific impossibility.

However, you may not have known that, way back in November 1981 and, if you didn't, you may have been living in fear because that was the month in which the colour TV license increased from £34 to £46. Meanwhile, the license for a black and white set rose from a walloping great £12 to a walloping greater £15.

With those sorts of prices, there was only one thing for it. We were all going to have to seek refuge in the cinemas which saw the release of two movies of a very different hue; Time Bandits and Porky's.

Being part of the intellectual elite, I do, of course, prefer Time Bandits. Admittedly, I've never actually seen Porky's and suspect I've spent most of my life getting it mixed up with Animal House.

Thinking about it, I don't think I've seen Animal House either.

I, therefore, have no valid opinion about either movie.

What I definitely did see in that month was the UK singles chart.

And what a volatile thing it was proving to be. November kicked off with the top spot in the hands of Dave Stewart and Barbara Gaskin's It's My Party before that was quickly slain by the Police's Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic. However, that record's reign was also brief, as it was quickly deposed by Queen and David Bowie's Under Pressure, a track which, in retrospect, began the early 1980s trend for established artists teaming up in order to sell more records than they could on their own.

But that tactic was only a temporary triumph for Queen and Bowie because, almost as soon as it topped the chart, the track was dethroned by Julio Iglesias' Begin the Beguine which found itself gripping the Number One slot in the final week of that month.

Things were far less lively on the album chart because November began with the top spot in the hands of Shakin' Stevens' Shaky which was then dislodged for the rest of the month by Queen's Greatest Hits.

Clearly, there was no shortage of activity in the worlds of TV, cinema and music but what of the realm of picture strips in that year's penultimate month? Just what doings were afoot in the galaxy's greatest comic?

We were still getting a diet of Ace Trucking Co, Mean Arena, Tharg's Future Shocks, Judge Dredd, Nemesis the Warlock and Rogue Trooper. Dredd was still in the throes of Block Mania, although Max Normal appeared not to be.

But perhaps the most intriguing development was in Progs 237 and 238 which featured a strip about someone called Abelard Snazz from the trusty typewriter of Alan Moore. I must confess I've no recollection of this strip at all but have no doubt it was a thing of wonder to behold.

Still, surely the most exciting news came with Prog 239 which gave us all a chance to wear a Cosmic Wars watch.

If only I knew what Cosmic Wars was.