We are about discussion,of comic books from 1934 until 1952. Not just superhero, but all types
DAN DARE
Two years from the cutoff and hailing from the UK its Dan Dare "Pilot of The Future" the tilte character of this great series which is unlike anything else from this era in terms of the longterm storytelling and brilliant watercolour art of beautifull alien worlds with tons of detail going into every bit of machinery going into every vehicle, spaceship buildings and weapons all based off of scale models and clothing they had built. The series definitly still holds up today
Anyone know of this character and want to discuss it and if you dont know of this strip and are interested in the summary I will give below please comment and ill go into even more detail and answere any queries you might have
Created by Frank Hampson Dan Dare is the tilte character of this space adventure epic as one part of a comic strip Eagle on April 14 1950. The series is set in 1995 where after various wars there is now world peace no diseases or poverty and a one government world with a space fleet.
Dan Dare
A Space Pilot Class whose intellignet strong willed compasionate in that he always give his enemies a second chance which usually leads to them tricking him and escaping. He always keeps his word and never lies. Strong chin and has his signature lightning scar "satanic" eyebrows". He is a explorer as well as an adventurer and is keen on finding new life and new worlds.
Digby
Dare's best friend and fellow space pilot he tends to be dragged into situations and can be a bit dour but once he is worked up enough there is tons of enthusiam as well as being up for a fight but he is also a relaxed family man when he's with his wife and four kids dong jigsaws.
Sir Hubert
The oldest and most decorated spaceman being one of the first crew to land on the Moon and Mars. He is the controller of spacefleet and is a strict man who is very stiff upper lipped and sticks to the rules quite closely as well ashaving very dated ideas as he is the only one of the crew to not want ms Peabody on the Vensu expedition on account of her being a woman. He helps out quite a lot and has his opinoin relax over time in regards to gender and alien species.
Prof Peabody
Professor of Plant Biochemistry majoring in geology, nutrition , agriculture and botany which in a world with a huge food crisis make her one of the most important people on the planet she is strong willed, kind, funny and more than willing to stant up to anyone telling what she cant do or to stand aside by Huber and thankfully she is never made to be a love interest of any of the male leads
Sondar
A member of the Treen species of Vensus who is deemed defective for having free will he is originally an adversary but defects and helps Dan Dare to overthrow the dictatorship on his planet and help his people he has little emotion but is very curios about other life and their cultures and helps Dare often
Hank
A pilot and friend of Dare he is always cheerfull and optimistic and a bit of a rebel when it come to the rules which he will break often if it is for the good of the mission of to help out Dare
Pierre
Quet and methodical he always has a plan and is often teamed up with Hank as their dual natures go together perfectly
The Mekon
The Mekon of Mekonta is ruler of the Treens and titles himself Supreme Scientist, Lord of the Treens, Illustrious First One of Venus. The Mekon is emotionless and sees all life as things to be ruled or experimented with as Treen society is ruled by science and logic doing away with emotions and free will. The Mekon is the name given to the specially bred strain created in a lab taht live for 300 years and are given a course of injectons and special treatment to develop the abrnoemal brain of a Mekon. The Mekon is Dare greatest and most persisten enemy who always has a plant ot takover life in the solar system . The Mekon is known for its giant sized head and small frail body that is on top of his flying chair which is controlled telepathically as are most treen devices. He would always be presumed destroyed after some explosion only to turn up in the next stroy having escaped the blast at the last second
The characters ships and weapons were first made with models or drawn from some of the artists or their friends dressed up in costume for Frank Hampson to sketch
The Titan book collection which I got the pictures from are good reprints of the stories with background material including a long interview across differerent books with Frank Hampson going into his work with Eagle his writing and drawing process along with being ousted once new management took over with The Phantom Fleet ,Safari in Space and Terra Nova being the last Dan Dare story he worked on.
He goes into the difficulty and strain leading to his suicide attempt and his other work afterwards with the Jesus story called The Road to Courage with Hampson saying that "I worked harder on it than anythingive ever done" doing tons of planning and even trevelling to Palestine for research. Its a great interview and really goes in depth on the creative process of the strip.
I will give a brief summary of the first Dan Dare story which is actually quite long and give lots of detail of the world and characters in it and is a great introduction to them
The first story arc Voyage to Venus there is a food shortage due to overpopulation which the new synthetic food called vitamin blocks cant handle everyone and so plans are for ships to be sent to Venus where they believe has a atmosphere that could support life and they hope to terraform it to grow crops there
Ships keep imploding when they get too close to Venus

Dare theorises that the impulse waves the ships use are being effected by some shield around Venus and so devises a plan to build on of the old types of ships that used rockets and off they go to Venus
After a crash landing Dare and Digby find out that there is life on Venus
After they are captured by the locals they are taken to their base
who we learn are slaves taken from Earth 15,000 years ago and are ruled over by a race called the Treen
They are then taken to Mekonta the capital city of the Treen
A beautiful drawn city with tons of detail and it is my favouirte image of this story. Also we see the differnt vehicles and transport systems of Mekonta
After a quick food bath to get them refreshed we cut back to Hubert and Peabody who have crash landed next to a glass mountain which turns out to be a silica being
The Treen leader decides that rather than watching them die and then disecting him and Digby he could use them to rescue Peabody and Hubert and then they would have more people to learn from We also get to see their transporter and old ships which is neat
The Silica mass gets closer and closer
but they manage to escape just in time
They overpower Sondar and pilot the craft, crashing it next to a waterfall which Dan falls off of after getting into a fight with Treen soldiers and Hubert accidentily shooting him with the paralyse gun
which leads to some beautiful artwork of the underground river and the creatures that live in it
Back in Mekon the prisoners are interrogated and we get to see more of the wonderfull looking city
We are then given the first appearance of The Mekon and it sets up the characters ruthlessness and cold detachment perfectly
Dare finds a automated farming city and hitches a ride meets another of the races on Venus called the Therons and meets up with Pierre and Hank. There isnt much dialogue her but the art is great so I will post them
After the introductin we get told the history of conflict between the Treens, Therons and the contact they both had with Earth
They decide to send in Dare undercover disguised as one of the blue skinned Atlantine and send him off in his little submarine which is were part one of this story ends
There is a lot more to go into in the second part so I will leave it out unless anyone wants me include it.
Here are some more of the beautiful vehicles and planets in this and from some of the other stories
This is the Red moon from the Red Moon Mystery and is one of the best stories and most alien landscape done in the strip
The weather anomalies caused by the Red moon and the devestation it causes look great too
The opening image of Marooned on Mercury is bright alien and gets your attention right away
Operation Saturn has some lush alien landscapes and buildings too
The last image was one made as a mural for the science museum in London in 1977























































On the 26th of February 1977 a new comic was launched called 2000AD which is now the greatest and longest comic in the UK and most widely known for Judge Dredd but in its first issue it had a new reimaging of Dan Dare who is older, more cynical and violent after being cryogenically frozen for 200 years after stopping the Mekon taking over a orbital power station which left him too damaged for doctors of the time to treat and they even mention his face needing surgery to account for the new look.
The new Dare is basically a different character with the same name and could have just been a long distant relation with the original Dare as an ancestor but is still a interesting character and the world they set up is great with the space fleet now corrupt who care nothing about the loss of Dares men after their ship goes down in the first issue which they blame him for and kick him out of space fleet
The stores are not as long or complex as the ones in the Eagle but they are a ton of fun with so much imagination being put into the planets, alien life forms, technology which really make it feel like a succesor to what Hampson was always trying to do to make his futuristic world feel realistic
The art done by Massimo Belardinalli is perfect for the aliens in the first year with the Biogs whose idea were based on microscopic life that the writers had seen in national geographic but in the story are giant greatures that move by sucking in air and blasting it
communicate through changing colour and transport being inside of themselves and whose world is alive with buildings, macines, vehicles and weapons being grown with living tissue and the people of the worlds they conquer used as live fuel
The story leaves Jupiter and heads out into a crazy space battle with the Biog ships spouting jets of acid and latching tentalces onto moons to throw at enemy ships
The stories after that have Dare team up with Rok a animal man and the two of them have space adventures and fight The Mekon
whose teamed up with the Two of Verath a being made up of surgically conjoined people
also a new alien species called the Skash which graft weapons into their own bodies who are my favourite design of this story and I wish we got to see more variations of their organic and machine hybrid bodies
The story is mostly action but its fun and moves quickly
also giant robot fights
energy hippie council leaders
and a starquake
Which is the end of the first year and after that a new artist comes on in Dave Gibbons who is great but is such a huge shift from the weird experimantal really strange alien look to something a bit more safe and I feel its a shame as whilst there is more story in the run and a nice shout out to Eagle with the shuttle crat being named Eagle and having the old comics logo on it.
I really wanted more of Belardineeli fever dream world and none of the great stories teased at the end are brought back like the ritual of initiation into Roks tribe
The stories after this are Dare and his band of outlaws travelling through a secton of space called the lost worlds which is like a bermuada triangle of space where each tale they go to a different planet and have adventures
The Bear is one outlaw who is a large Russian man who crushes people
and another is the hitman whose has a crack shot and whose gun is frozen to his hand
The stories are fun and short with
space locusts
living sand planet
Ancien Roman vampire love planet
Space pirates
Living jungle planet
And then a large story of Dan and his men against the Star Slayer empire which is quite good
and has him uniting different planets enslaved by the Star Slayers and rebelling against them with the minians
insectoids
Grawls
Its a big space action story and a great way to end the main story in the hardback collection which includes some other one off stories that dont relate to this as well as the story of how Dare got injured and frozen which are good too.
I would say if you are a fan of 2000AD you would enjoy it greatly and if not and just a fan of Dan Dare id say check it out as a interesting take on the character
The second hardback finishes off the remaining 2000AD stories
and its got a great mix of space horror
wonder
and action with the Mutiny story being the best one where Dare and a few of his men have to fight off a crew mutiny during a meteor storm bombarding the ship
and wrap up that writers run with The Doomsday Machine which is brilliant and starts off with this
The stories after that by a different writer are not very good and although they bring back The Mekon and Sondar it is a weak story and ends on a cliffhanger that will never be resolved
The few one off stories collected are pretty good and one of them brings back Rok which is great
In 1990 Grant Morrison did a story called The Controversial Memoirs of Dan Dare
The story all takes place on Earth in a bleak dystopian future with a older Dan Dare living in the countryside
who comes out of retirement after Peabody has died and has a reunion with Digby who has had a falling out with Dare some time in the past.
Also at the funeral is Peterson who introduces Dare to Gloria Monday who is the Prime Minister who needs Dare to gain favour in the next election by using him in their ad campaign
The crumbling Space Fleet building with the aged Dare doing a photo shoot are sad and effective
We learn how bad things went since Dan Dares missions and the exploitation of the Treens for their resources and labour
Which leads Dare to the north of England whose economy and standard of life is not as good and he meets back up with Digby who feels there is a conspiracy going on and the story goes from there
The story is good and it has a nice epilogue to Hampson which is touching
The story is good, short and bleak with more of a political edge than most Dare stories and I would say its worth checking out either in the trades or the Tomorrow stories collection which has a great adaption of a Raymond Chandler story called Goldfish as well as some decent sci fi stories