Merry Christmas from... 1970

This time out we have a festive cover, though being Thunder, its a factual piece and therefore, to an 8 year-old, boring.
Inside we're still at the point where no-one belives Wilson about the Black Max and here we have him running from a court-martial, only to run into - literally - Max in the woods he's hiding out in. He's saved by some Tommies inadvertantly letting Max's bat out of his plane and we get, yet again, "the incredible Tardis plane or the ever growing Bat" as the creature goes from being small enough to fit in the tiny cargo box to being bigger than the plane itself in the space of just one panel:

"Adam Eterno" is set in WW1, which you'd think would be a the setting for some really dark, gritty art. Not so with this artist alas. Its all very light and forgettable, but the story itself is of note as it strays from the usual formula. Instead of the usual plot device of plonking Adam down in a time period just moments before it all hits the fan - something Slaine would do again and again decades later - here we have the start of a tale, with Adam being introduced as a stretcher-bearer, although he's not named and, if you're not a fan already, you wouldn't have a clue he was the hero of the tale. Its not until he's survived a bomb blast and the onlookers identify him as "Private Eterno", that we're tipped off to what's going on.

Seems he's been fighting for a coupla weeks and that fact that he never sleeps and has survived countless bullet hits is making him a bit of a pariah. That looks like its all at an end though with the arrival of "General Von Gruber" who also can shrug off bullet hits. And is armed (what are the chances eh?) with a solid gold sabre.
Much moodier art is on "Fury's Family", a strip i didn't care for, but there's no denying the effectivness of the art:

There's a few strips that mention Christmas in a panel or two, but "Phil The Fluter" has the only proper Christmas tale, although the moral of it is a tad dodgy, given the time of year. Its Christmas Day, Phil's parents haven't got round to getting a tree, so off he goes to the local woods to dig one up. When the owner of the woods tries, quite rightly, to stop him stealing one, the flute's used to dunk him in the river. So the guy in the right gets a dunking, but the tea leaf gets his tree using unfair means.
Hmmmmm...

"AIEEEE" WATCH:
Not an utterance nor a variance