Growing up Christmas wasn’t Christmas without a comics hardcover Annual to read. Earlier in the year I picked up a run of Valiant Annuals from the mid to late sixties and thought it would be fun to revisit them around the holidays. Valiant was a boys adventure comic mixing historical, military, and sports stories with the occasional educational article, and as expected this Annual reflects the same content. While some of the jingoistic undertones are a little uncomfortable from today’s perspective, the few strips that also have female characters are surprisingly progressive with them having equal agency with the lead males, although it’s the men who get their name in the strip title. Highlights for me were a fascinating article about a Nuclear powered US Army camp situated under the Greenland icecap (it apparently was shut down in 1967), and a fun pulp style space adventure which included the line “You cant expect a chimp to do much in the way of running a spaceship!” - There are no credits for any of the writers or artists but the cover looks to be by the excellent Ron Emberton who also contributed a couple of painted strips inside. Overall a real nostalgia trip and a fun read. ( )