DAN DARE

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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

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The Mekon

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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

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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

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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

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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

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After a crash landing Dare and Digby find out that there is life on Venus

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After they are captured by the locals they are taken to their base

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who we learn are slaves taken from Earth 15,000 years ago and are ruled over by a race called the Treen

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They are then taken to Mekonta the capital city of the Treen

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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

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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

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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

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The Silica mass gets closer and closer

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but they manage to escape just in time

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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

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which leads to some beautiful artwork of the underground river and the creatures that live in it

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Back in Mekon the prisoners are interrogated and we get to see more of the wonderfull looking city

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We are then given the first appearance of The Mekon and it sets up the characters ruthlessness and cold detachment perfectly

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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

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After the introductin we get told the history of conflict between the Treens, Therons and the contact they both had with Earth

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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

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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

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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

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The weather anomalies caused by the Red moon and the devestation it causes look great too

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The opening image of Marooned on Mercury is bright alien and gets your attention right away

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Operation Saturn has some lush alien landscapes and buildings too

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The last image was one made as a mural for the science museum in London in 1977

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