Another Valiant Annual? Yes, another Valiant Annual, but this rather late entry features a couple of characters we haven’t dealt with yet. But I’ve got to confess that I was sold on this one as soon as I saw the cover; I literally thought, “Oh, cool, a robot!”

First up, The Prisoner of Zenga, a British robot strip with a twist. Its basic horror movie stuff; criminal Max Zerga gets his intelligence transferred into a clunky industrial looking robot (which bares a striking resemblance to Scooby Doo’s Charlie the Funland robot with a drabber color scheme) and becomes “a merciless metal monster that thrived on crime”.

Along for the ride is lab assistant Julian Caine who becomes Zerga’s “slave”, though hopefully not in the bedroom. Unfortunately Zenga never crossed paths with Robot Archie, but wouldn’t it have been cool if he had?

And because I really can’t help myself, here’s another helping of Billy Bunter, The Heaveweight Chump of Greyfriars. As stupid and single minded as Bunter could be, it’s hard to imagine him kicking “Old Qulechy” that way without expecting some kind of repercussions. Perhaps this is a sign of his psychotic break we all saw coming.

And finally here’s Sergeant Strong, another one of those British quasi-superheroes who fought evil, but did it (a) because it was their job and (b) while wearing grown-up men’s clothes. Strong was the victim of one of those scientific accidents that our early comic book astronauts were constantly having. What made Strong unique was along with being as strong as ten men he was just that heavy, which often made day to day life fairly difficult.