A Short Interlude

The ongoing Dan Dare by Frank Hampson posts will now suffer a short interlude due to the early arrival of my second child on 21st April. I was hoping to get all of them posted before his arrival, but it was not to be. All's well with everyone involved, but, as I'm sure you can imagine, I have considerably less time to blog at the moment.

I'll be back to Dan Dare in a couple of weeks. How will you all cope without me?

Also, you may find it amusing to know that I've just eaten a pitta that I hadn't noticed was moldy.
Now my mouth burns.

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.

Dan Dare by Frank Hampson (Introduction)

Over the past few weeks I have spent my time reading Dan Dare reprints. Over the next few weeks my posts will be in regard to the twelve volumes of Dan Dare published by Titan, that had Frank Hampson’s involvement. Each of the posts will include more than one volume, so expect around four posts covering the whole run not including this one.

This post is really just a short discussion concerning why I hold the strip in such high regard and the qualities of the strip in general. More detail specific to each story arc will be included in later posts.

My final point before we move on to the main body of the post is an apology of sorts to Frank Bellamy. Bellamy was the chap that Dan Dare was handed to after Hampson left. Bellamy was a  truly gifted artist, whose work on Swift I intend to mention in later, unrelated posts. When Dan Dare was given to Bellamy, the publisher insisted that he update the look and feel of the strip. Bellamy did so, the result was a beautifully rendered science fiction strip that, because of the publisher rather than Bellamy, was entirely void of all the charm that had been present for the prior decade.

When people talk about the Golden Age of British comics, or for that matter, British comics in general, there is one strip in particular that it’s impossible to ignore. It’s influence is awesome, it’s quality is exceptional and it’s star is legendary. Dan Dare. He’s so memorable he even gets his own sentence.

I’ve read a lot of comics. Really, a lot. A great many of them are enjoyable, some are memorable, one or two are truly groundbreaking, but only one can be the greatest. Dan Dare by Frank Hampson is the greatest comic strip that I’ve ever read.

I know that that is an absurd statement, Hampson was writer and artist (along with his changing staff) of Dan Dare for a ten year period starting in 1950, ten years worth of comic strips can’t all be the greatest. No, of course not, obviously they had their high and low points, but all things considered, the quality and consistency of the Hampson studio output for a decade is unsurpassed by any other comic I’ve seen.

The images included in this post are all from the very early 50’s. Have you ever seen this much detail in a strip from this period? For a medium that was entirely disposable to create artwork of this caliber was unprecedented in 1950. It hadn’t been done before and has rarely been done since.

In comparison to the American strips of the period the major difference in terms of narrative is the length of the strips. There are two points to this.

Firstly, the length of the stories. In American strips of the 50’s, an entire story was commonly told in about eight pages, whereas the first Dan Dare epic ran for around one hundred and fifty pages over eighteen months. This allowed a depth of narrative and character development unseen in the medium prior to this.

Secondly, when referring to the length of the strip it could also be used to describe the length of the individual instalments. Each episode was published at a rate of two pages a week. On the surface, two pages a week does equate to eight pages a month as produced in the American anthologies, but it doesn’t quite hold up in comparison. Pick up any American horror anthology book from the time and you’ll notice that several strips in the same book were often produced by the same creative team. In some cases, such as the fabulous EC books, one creative team would have several strips published over several books. So clearly the level of output was expected to be considerably greater for the American market. Jack Kirby, for example, was able to produce six pages a day, Frank Hampson was expected to produce two pages a week.

So, one of the reasons for the high standard of the Dan Dare strip was the amount of time allowed for Hampson and his staff to produce the art. However, Hampson was incredibly critical of the work produced and has stated in numerous interviews that the deadlines were difficult to meet because of these high expectations.

Great art in itself does not a great strip make. Whilst it is true that Dan Dare was chock full of action and adventure, with strong and idiosyncratic characters that interacted in a believable world, the real draw of the writing was one, simple, concept: Not to patronise the readership. The stories were written with children in mind, no doubt, but they were written, as all good children’s literature is, with a clear and concise use of language and most importantly, it assumed that kids had a pretty good grasp of how the real world works. It accepted the element of war and the horror’s that it entails without embracing it. Dan was not a casual destroyer, but the strip did show that he was, on occasion, forced to deadly violence. It is possible that to today’s reader, Dan might seem a little too wholesome for an action hero, but when compared to the modern Batman (who will never kill) or Punisher (who kills freely) Dan Dare occupies a much more honest middle ground for a professional military man. For readers of the 50’s, when WWII was still so fresh in their minds, Dan embodied the level headed and clean thinking attitude that had helped their fathers to eventually triumph over Nazism, but he also showed them the bright and exciting future that was on the verge of bursting through the left overs of WWII (rationing was still in force and the economy was still paying for the war debts.)

So, is Dan Dare really the greatest comic strip ever?

Well, here are my points.

1. Incredibly clear and dynamically rendered art, including a strange mix of caricature, reminiscent of C.C. Beck, and portrait painting depending on which character we’re talking about. Exceptional design elements for all of the hardware, with real world functionality always considered and real world science included as much as possible.
2. Intelligent writing with exciting storylines appropriate for all ages. A cast of characters with individual voices, which includes a strong, smart young woman, and an honest approach to the protagonists reaction to and use of violence.
3. Consistency. Whilst some of the story arcs are superior to others, all of the strips that have Frank Hampson’s involvement are above and beyond what is the accepted standard of a comic. Ten years worth of stories from the creative minds of a small stable of talent.

Of the three points mentioned above, I believe that it is the consistent high quality of the strip over a decade that truly sets it apart from from it’s peers. It’s not difficult to cherry-pick highlights from any ongoing comic, they have all had great creative teams at some point. But to maintain a flash of excellence for a few months is altogether different from creating a world from scratch and populating it with myriad characters and races, then writing and illustrating their adventures whilst maintaining a fresh and exciting approach to doing so, not for a matter of months, but for a decade. That is greatness. And whilst he certainly didn’t accomplish this alone, the vision for that decade was that of Frank Hampson.