Dan Dare

In the mid sixties, when I was a young lad of some eight summers, I was struck down with Rheumatic Fever, a disease that attacks the heart valves, and was carted off to the children’s ward of St Albans hospital for 3 months. During my stay, my mother was obliged to traipse across town nearly every afternoon to see me. Of course, I was always glad to see her but it was her Thursday visit that I really looked forward to as it was on Thursday that she arrived brandishing my weekly comic, ‘The Eagle’.

And ‘The Eagle’ meant only one thing: Dan Dare. There are two abiding memories of those hospital days; Dan Dare and the ominous rattle of the blood-testing trolley. But blood aside, I’d been introduced to the delights of Frank Hampson’s iconic pilot by a school friend who had been following his adventures for some years and I’d badgered my parents to buy me ‘The Eagle’ on regular order – my first comic. Unfortunately I entered the fray too late to witness Hampson’s own celebrated artwork as he had left the strip in 1960 having completed a 10 year run on the characters he had created in 1950 but with artists Frank Bellamy and then Keith Watson doing a sterling job recreating the futuristic world of Dare and Digby, I was hooked.

In retrospect, the original Dan Dare stories come across now as a sort of WWII RAF squadron in space complete with pipe and banter, but they are still hugely imaginative and combine story telling with eye-boggling artwork in a way only comics can manage. It is why I still enjoy comics to this day, although in the face of the virtual demise of the British comic industry, I have now shifted my allegiance to the American comic-book.

But going back to Dan, I remember a story called ‘The Mushroom’ in which the green dome-headed Mekon attempts to invade earth via a mushroom structure built on the earth’s surface. It is the story that I read and re-read during those long hours in hospital and as the memory fades, I would love to see it again in print.

Luckily, Titan Books are reprinting the collected Dan Dare stories in hardback at the rate of about 40 weeks worth of comics per issue and two hardback releases a year. So far they have published 10 volumes with a further two promised for 2010 which takes Dan up to about the end of 1959. I have calculated that it will take them about another three to four years before ‘The Mushroom’ appears, assuming Titan have not stopped publishing. I can wait. After 45 years, a few more won’t make much difference.

But if they could see their way clear to speeding up the process, I wouldn’t object.

The Hand of Dooom!

I'm back! Happy new year to everyone.


To look at me, you wouldn’t think that I possessed the Hand of Doom, would you? I’m an ordinary bloke, I don’t have any nasty vices – well, not many – yet everything I start to enjoy seems to turn to dust the minute I discover it.

Long time readers may remember a post I did some time back about DC Comics. I had been a lapsed reader of comics for over 35 years but have been tempted back to the fold by the fact that Jim Shooter, the guy who wrote my favourite title in the late 1960s when I (and probably he) was a nipper, was back in harness to write some brand new stories for that self-same title (The Legion of Superheroes, since you ask). So there I was, happily enjoying each issue immensely when, guess what? Yes it’s been cancelled. Axed. Why? No idea. It has a monthly circulation of about 25,000 copies which is not stellar but is double the figure for several other DC titles and are they being axed? No. They have also cancelled Shooter’s run 4 issues short of the agreed term so that the plot arc has to be foreshortened and everything rushed to a conclusion. Great!

This also happened to a TV programme I liked called ‘Tru Calling’ which starred Eliza Dushku (‘Faith’ from Buffy, for those who know) as Tru Davies, a morgue assistant who relived days on the request of dead people in order that she save them from their fate. Sounds weird, I know, and is probably why it got the chop, but I liked it and so did many others judging by the comments on Amazon. This series ran for 20 episodes in its first season and was then 6 episodes in to its second, just as it was getting into its stride, when it was removed from the schedules leaving most of that season’s plotlines hanging. Thanks Fox! Couldn’t they just let the series run for a bit to tie up all the loose ends?

There are more instances but I won’t bore you with them. Actually, it is amazing how some things we take for granted struggled initially. Star Trek only managed three seasons and then only because of concerted fan demand that a third season be made. Yet today we are overrun with the Trek franchise and can’t seem to escape the damn thing.

The burning question is, where will the Hand of Doom strike next? I daren’t interest myself in anything these days in case it gets the old heave-ho. On the other hand, if you wish anything removed from the schedules, let me know and I’ll see what I can do...

Jim Shoots Again

In the early 1960s I was a passably normal sort of a child and read ‘The Eagle’ every week to see how Dan Dare was getting along like many other young boys (and girls for all I know). I loved British comics and would read as many as I could from ‘Beano’ to ‘TV Comic’ and beyond – usually at the barbers whilst waiting for a haircut in the days before appointments. Note - Why don’t barbers supply comics to read any more?

By the late 1960s I chanced to meet the elder brother of a school friend and he introduced me to American comic books, as they like to be known. He was a fan of the DC stable of acts (Superman, Batman etc) and I became addicted to them as well as they seemed terribly grown up compared to the Beano. My particular favourite was a team of teenage heroes known as the Legion of Superheroes whose escapades were printed under the banner of ‘Adventure’ comics between 1958 and 1969.

At about the time I started reading The Legion, the brilliant stories were being written by a precocious upstart, Jim Shooter who unbeknownst to DC was only 14 at the time he was sending in his scripts from home. Predictably, he rose rapidly through comicdom and eventually went on to be President of Marvel Comics. In 1969 the Legion lost their slot in ‘Adventure’ to Supergirl and languished as a back-up feature in ‘Action’ comics for about a year before they were cancelled. I gave up reading American comics at around that time.

However, a few years back, I noticed that all those comics I bought and subsequently trashed in the 1960s have been reprinted in hardback form by DC Archives and that has got me interested in buying comics again. And boy, have times changed. In fact it is a whole new world. For starters, they cost £2.25 per copy instead of 2 shillings and you can’t buy them in newsagents from those circular wire framed racks, you have to go to specialist comic shops which make you feel like even more of a nerd than you would’ve done anyway.

Also, the quality of the pages has changed out of all recognition. Today’s comics have an almost photo-like quality of block colouring on glossy paper rather than the dot matrix style colour on cheap paper of the 1960s. This makes the pages somehow darker and drabber and I’m not sure I really like it that much. I think I prefer the lighter texture of the old colour system that gives a brighter page. However the stories are quite good and I still love the comic format. Interestingly, most of my favourites titles are still going forty years later – Superman, Supergirl, Flash, Green Lantern, even the Legion has been re-booted (meaning all past continuity swept away and the story ‘re-imagined’).

Unlike the British comic industry, which with the exception of the Beano, seems to have died a death, the American comic book lives on, albeit as a specialist commodity. But what has really got me excited is that from the December 2007 issue, the Legion of Superheroes comic book is to be written again by none other than… Jim Shooter. This can’t be coincidence and sadly, I can’t wait!