Dan Dare by Frank Hampson (Part One)

Classic Dan Dare (Titan Reprints, Hardback)

Vol 1. Voyage to Venus Pt. 1 -ISBN 1840236442

Vol 2. Voyage to Venus Pt. 2 -ISBN 1840238410

Vol 3. The Red Moon Mystery -ISBN 1840236663

In this post I’ll be discussing the first two Dan Dare story lines, Voyage to Venus (sometimes referred to as Pilot of the Future) and Red Moon Mystery. In the Titan reprints the first story is split in to two volumes, so there are three volumes in total.

Voyage to Venus is the opening story of the Dan Dare epic. The first issue of Eagle, with the first appearance of Dan Dare, was released on 14th April 1950, and despite it’s high price, sold nearly a million copies.

Even to a modern reader, the quality of both writing and art is immediately obvious. I can’t imagine how impressive it would have been to a ten year old lad in 1950, who’s previous exposure to comics would have been limited to comparatively poorly reproduced strips from both UK and US publishers.

Voyage to Venus makes a concerted effort to establish the Dan Dare universe as quickly and concisely as possible, with only two pages of story a week, it was necessary to hook the reader with equal measures of exposition and action in as short a panel count as could be achieved. The genius of the Dan Dare team was that they were able to do so without sacrificing the continuity of the strip.

In the opening chapters the reader learns that by the in story date of the 1990’s a combination of over farming and over population of Earth has led to massive food shortages, with most people forced to survive on a diet of pricey, artificially produced, vitamin substitutes. Earth currently has a single ruling government, with a exploratory Interplanet Space Fleet, for whom Colonel Dan Dare is the chief pilot. Earth’s nearest neighbour, Mars has been partly colonised, but it’s lack of arable land means that it cannot be farmed to provide food for Earth. Space Fleet is charged with the task of exploring Venus in the hope that it could either be farmed, or to contact any intelligent life already there in order to establish trade. Space Fleet is desperate to discover as much about Venus as possible in order to satiate the need for real food, but there is one major setback, all previous missions to Venus have ended in inexplicable disaster whilst approaching the final stage of entry into the Venusian atmosphere. Don’t worry though, Colonel Dare has a plan, and he’s going to pilot the next mission himself so that no more of his men are lost to an unknown fate.

So from very early on in the strips history the reader is exposed to both a rip-roaring adventure and the moral ethics of it’s chief protagonist, which is exactly what Frank Hampson and Marcus Morris had hoped to achieve.

Later in the story, we are introduced to the various races of Venus, including an explanation of it’s long standing connection to Earth and Venus’ own geo-political situation. This is just one of the elements that is incredibly well thought out, with believable repercussions, especially when considering that the strip is aimed at pre-pubescent boys.



The first Dan Dare (faded in comparison to Titan reprint quality)



Dan, of course makes fast friends and deadly enemies, not necessarily in that order. He sees good men willingly sacrifice themselves for the greater good and convinces heads of state to take responsibility for the well being of all sentient life, rather than focus on their own people.

When all is said and done, the first Dan Dare epic is one of the strongest in the stable. In fact, if you were looking to dive in to Dan Dare with no previous knowledge, the two volume Voyage to Venus would be my recommendation as both an introduction to the Dan Dare universe and as possibly the most enjoyable story of the series. Indeed, this was my first exposure to Dare, I loaned the first volume from the library, and two days later, I was back there, hoping desperately that they had the next volume on the shelves so I could find out how it all worked out.

There are a few little subtleties along the way, which whilst adding little to the overall story in general, I felt were satisfying additions to the Dan Dare universe. One example being the fake newspaper articles included in the narrative, which hint at the corruption and price fixing of the conglomerate that provides the vitamin blocks to the populace. Also there are many small references to the economic and political situations in regard to various areas of Earth, which again imply a great depth of planning by the creators, perhaps used to whet the appetite of the reader in regard to the history of future Earth.

Voyage to Venus is highly recommended to anyone that has an interest in comics, and occupies a strange place somewhere between the Golden Age and Silver Age style of comic books.

In the second Dan Dare story there is a definite change of pace and style. Voyage to Venus offers a more traditional adventure, with lantern jawed heroes and dastardly villains. In The Red Moon Mystery the emphasise changes, there is in fact, no real villain to speak of and the style changes to more of a rescue mission by way of a mystery to be solved.

The essence of the story is the uncovering of an aeons old Martian historical document which refers to the destruction of the life bearing qualities of Mars, being utterly annihilated by the mysterious Red Moon. When the Red Moon reappears. Dan is involved in the evacuation of Mars, and later the investigation of both the origin and surface of the mysterious Moon.

Whilst lesser creators may have produced a less engaging narrative for a story with no antagonist, Hampson & co. create a genuine atmosphere of dread and mystery surrounding the Moon. The story in general seems very much ahead of it’s time, particularly for me as a modern reader, as it had the feel of some of the better disaster movies of the 1970’s. So in this regard, being able to compare this story to films made two decades later for an adult audience is certainly a compliment. Again, Prof. Peabody is portrayed as graceful, intelligent and resourceful. Which is a not often seen set of qualities in women characters appearing in boys comics in the 50’s. This is purely conjecture on my part, but the Hampson studio consisted of several women, who were part of a team producing the best selling British comic of the era. They were working in the top tier of an industry that had, and still has, a disproportionally low number of women involved in it, particularly from a creative perspective. I wonder how much of Peabody’s personality was influenced by the females on Hampson’s staff.

Without giving too much away, by the end of the Red Moon Mystery, the Red Moon itself still remains, at least partially, a mystery. Hampson made the bold choice of not making Dare’s mission a complete success, with many questions in regard to the Moon being left unanswered, and even most of the “answers” actually being informed supposition. But, most crucially of all, at the close of the Red Moon Mystery, it all goes terribly wrong for Dan and his crew, and through a series of disastrous events, Dan, Dig, Peabody, Sondar and Urb end up hopelessly Marooned on Mercury…..but that’s another adventure, another volume and another post.