Frank Hampson and Dan Dare.

A dissertation for the M.A. course in Science Fiction at Reading University

by C. N. Hill M.A.

Introduction.

The ethos of Eagle and of Dan Dare.

Frank Hampson: the parabola of success.

Hampson's vision of the future.

The characters in the strip.

Journey into Space - the radio serial.

The Venus Story.

Subsequent stories.

The studio and assistant artists.

Conclusion.

Sources.

Appendix and artwork.

Introduction.

This dissertation has really two subjects: the 1950s/60s comic strip Dan Dare, and its creator, Frank Hampson. This dissertation will examine Hampson's work, and Dan Dare both as a character and as a strip, particularly in the context of the 1950s, and will look further at the story lines as science fiction.

Dan Dare was the lead strip in a boys' comic or magazine called Eagle, and was its most popular item. Eagle had a circulation of close to a million initially, which settled down to around 750,000 for several years. It was aimed at an age range of around 10 to 15, but this was at a time when the teenager didn't exist as the concept that it does today, when the school leaving age was 15, and when the percentage staying on after this time was tiny. The fraction of the relevant age range at University was around 4%.The child moved rapidly to the adult world of work.

Eagle and Dan Dare had a relatively short life, already over its apogee by 1959, and Eagle itself disappeared in 1969, circulation down to around 25,000 by the end. The majority of the original Dan Dare stories, as well as others, have been republished by Hawk Books. There is a society, Eagle Society, which publishes a quarterly magazine, and runs annual events where former Eagle artists or writers are invited as guests.

As mentioned, the strip had a relatively short life in the hands of its creator. Frank Hampson may have created the strip in 1950, but he resigned from it in 1959. The strip was then taken over by other artists, but, with the exception of Frank Bellamy, artists that had worked with Hampson. After the sorcerer, the apprentices. But their stories were not insignificant, and so I will devote some time to these as well. Various incarnations of Dan Dare occurred in other publications after the original Eagle folded, but I have not included those as part of this dissertation. Every echo is feebler than the original.

Although the first nine years of the strip are credited to Hampson, there are periods when he was not in full control, such as a period of 6 months in 1953 when Hampson was ill; a period in 1954 when a freelance artist, Desmond Walduck, was drawing from the studio visuals. Visuals were roughs - although highly detailed roughs - which were made of a page before it was finally drawn. Opinions have been expressed that Hampson's visuals were often better than the finished work of some of the artists employed.

The final point to be borne in mind is that no artist could draw two full pages of colour artwork in the space of a week - it was too much to do. This means that often Hampson might do one page, another artist the other page. The disparity in style was lessened by the pages being back to back, so direct comparison was difficult; by the studio artists doing their best to emulate Hampson; by the use of the previously drawn visual as a guide; and by the use of filing cabinets of " style sheets" , drawn by Hampson to provide visual references. In addition, different artists might work on different frames within the same page, or even within a single frame one artist might draw the background whilst another drew the figures.

Dan Dare was science fiction in that it was set in the future, and used spaceships and other futuristic gadgetry. It comes close to what has been called " space opera" . It is not so much interested in science as the characters and their motivations, to an extent that was unique in a comic strip. Although the strip starts in 1996 and moves on, the social attitudes are those of Britain of the 1950s, which sits slightly uneasily with the futuristic setting. But one of its greatest strengths lay in its blend of storyline and beautifully drawn artwork, often of great complexity and imagination.

I can appreciate that the attitudes and values that are bound up with the strip are not to everyone's taste, but to me they still carry a message that is worth considering. And if you prefer, forget the message, just enjoy the medium of the artwork.

Note: Various artists are discussed in this dissertation. Frank Hampson was the creator and main artist. Don Harley was a major collaborator who also drew many stories subsequently. Desmond Walduck was a freelance artist who worked on the strip from time to time. Frank Bellamy was an Eagle artist with a very distinctive style who worked on the strip immediately after Hampson's resignation.

Samples of artwork can be seen in the appendix at the end of this dissertation.

The ethos of Eagle and Dan Dare.

Dan Dare, in the original conception, was inextricably linked with Eagle, and they shared very much a set of values common to the period. But what were those values? In many ways, they were the values of the 1950s writ large. In many respects, the 50s were an unusual time. Britain was just recovering, not only from the war, but from the period after the war, which lasted as long as the war itself, where the privations created by switching all economic output to the war effort had led to rationing and shortages on a previously unknown scale. The effect this had on British psychology has not yet, I feel, been fully evaluated. It was a time when the supplier was king, when the consumer took what was on offer simply for lack of an alternative. Eagle was part of the 50s renaissance, when at last life was returning to some form of normality. In an odd sort of way, despite the Cold War that was to dominate international affairs, it was also an optimistic decade. Some of this optimism was naive: nuclear power producing electricity " too cheap to meter" , but there was a feeling that a lot of problems could be solved by technology. This may have been a wartime hangover, where scientific and operation research played such an important part. But Dan Dare also reflects this optimism in its attitudes and stories.

The magazines and boys' comics of the day were uninspiring efforts. The indigenous ones lacked excitement, and one of the campaigns of Eagle's founder and first editor, Marcus Morris, was against the American horror comics coming into the UK, which to some extent filled the gap. Morris wanted to produce a comic or magazine -and the result was much nearer a magazine than most of the publications that are called comics - that would be more wholesome yet at the same time more interesting and even edifying. That was quite a challenge.

So Eagle broke several existing conventions. First of all, in the realistic, almost cinematic, manner it presented its strips. Secondly, in the nature of the stories in those strips, which would be adventurous, but not sadistic, not supernatural, not ghoulish. Many of the story lines could be related to quite directly by its readership - e.g., PC49, which was set in contemporary London, and not in London of the West End but a London of canals and roadside transport cafes. There were subsequent stories along these lines, such as Knights of the Road, as well as the more exotic Western or Foreign Legion setting.

Eagle capitalised on something else: the emergence of a more literate and better educated youth as a consequence of the 1944 Butler Education Act. The post war grammar schools were getting into their stride, and producing children who were interested in matters technical, in how things worked. There was always a strong element of education in Eagle, be it in cutaways, articles or quizzes, one that took for granted that the readership would take the information as being of interest in itself. It spoke to a mentality that was also a product of the 50s: it is a mentality that tends to be scorned today with the words " nerd" or " anorak" . Eagle did have a section that ran for a few years called " Spotters' Corner" : such an appellation would be an insult today. The centre page cutaway drawings were not only works of art in themselves, they were also highly instructive. In March 1998 I had an email from Canada - could I track downa centre page cutaway of the Avro Arrow? The person making the enquiry rememberedit from his youth, and his son needed it for a University project. The subsequent scan emailed to Canada was gratefully received.

The lead strip was not, at first, going to be science fiction. Various ideas were played around with. An East End chaplain? A Parachute Regiment padre? At least one fully worked artboard is extant of " Chaplain Dan Dare of the Inter-Planet Patrol ..." . The danger with all of this is to make the moralising too obvious, which to its prospective audience would have been the greatest turn off of all. So the strip had to have action, adventure, scope for the artist ... and a strong central character who the readership could identify with and whose motives were to be for the best. So what contemporary models where there to base the hero on?

Let us take two very successful films of the mid 50s - The Dam Busters and Reach for the Sky. They both had their origins in books by Paul Brickhill. Reach for the Sky was the biography of Douglas Bader, who, despite having lost two legs in an air crash, went on to fly in the War, was shot down, captured, and made himself beastly to the Hun. In the film he was played by Kenneth More, a 50s matinee idol. The Dam Busters was the story of 617 Squadron and their raid on the Ruhr dams. Richard Todd, a more reticent hero than More, played Guy Gibson, the leader of the raid. The Dam Busters was not quite such a chauvinist film as might be imagined: the film script was by R.C. Sherriff, author of Journey's End, one of the longer surviving of the First War plays set in the trenches, and not a triumphalist play either; quite the contrary. Gibson was later lost on another mission over Germany.

Here indeed were role models for Dan Dare. In such films and stories the atmosphere is almost entirely masculine: there is a love interest in Reach for the Sky but almost none in The Dam Busters. This again reflects the attitudes of the times and war time realities. Operational flying and all active service units were masculine: although women were involved in war work, it was always very much in rear echelon work.

One way in which the ethos could be summed up was to say: you did your best, you gave things your all. In a sense, this reflects a thousand and one dreadful speeches given by prep school and public school headmasters at Speech Days. But unlike those Speech Days, it was an ethos that didn't need spelling out: if you had to you were losing it. And so many a cynical schoolboy sat through the speeches, which in post-War Britain had little obvious relevance, producing the backlash that we see in the revue Beyond the Fringe or the film If, which just misses greatness by the lapses into uneasy surrealism. Dan Dare then gets tainted by the brush of " Head Prefect" , and is perceived as being too good to be true. And it would be difficult to take the attitudes of the strip seriously in May 1968, with the soixante-huitards revolting in Paris, and the Oz Schoolkids' Edition with all it did for Rupert Bear. Those who believe the character can be resurrected as it then was should think again.

There should be one final point made about Dan Dare - he was not in the super hero mould. Neither Flash Gordon nor Superman can be seen as antecedents. Indeed, he was very deliberately not a superhero, but was intended to be ... well, perhaps not an ordinary, but certainly not exceptional Englishman of his time. A skilled pilot, competent, brave; yes, all those things, but still as human as the rest of us. Earlier, I was discussing how characters of the 40s and 50s might be seen as prototypes, but in literary terms he could be seen as a final extension of Rider Haggard's Alan Quartermain, or, more plausibly, P.C. Wren's Beau Geste.

But what of the rest of Eagle, apart from Dan Dare? A typical Marcus Morris gesture was to institute an award he called the " Mug of the Month" . This was someone who did something that he need not have done, in another hackneyed phrase, " above and beyond the call of duty" . This made him a " mug" to the cynics, to the spivs (another 40s and 50s untranslatable concept), but to Marcus Morris it raised him above the common herd. Hence the award. Because of misunderstandings as to the name, however, the award was renamed " Silver Eagler" - much too bland and dull.

The stories inside reflected this ethos too. There was PC49, initially drawn by Strom Gould, and then taken over by John Worsley. This had the Boys' Club, run by PC49, who were, of course, always tangling with villains. This strip is worth investigating in itself, for the light it casts on social conditions and values at the time, since it is set in what is essentially working class London. A strip which reflects the end of the 50s and the start of the 60s almost as well was Knights of the Road, about a long distance lorry driver. Riders of the Range was a Western with script by Charles Chilton, artist Jack Daniels then Frank Humphris, who worked for Eagle for years. Jeff Arnold was a Texas Ranger, filling the Dan Dare role. Then Luck of the Legion, written by Geoffrey Bond and drawn by Martin Aitchison, with Luck as the hero. Storm Nelson, written by Guy Morgan and usually illustrated by Richard Jennings, put the same scenario in a nautical setting. The idea behind all these stories is the gang, led by Dan Dare/PC49/Jeff Arnold/Luck/Storm Nelson all go out, vanquish villains, have adventures, and always triumph. There were no moral ambiguities in any of these stories.

There were one or two strips which didn't fall into this pattern: Jack O'Lantern was the classic lone boy against the world, a format which must have been in every boys' comic ever. The strip was written by George Beardmore and drawn by Robert Ayton. Then the back page would be the life of some famous person, from St Paul to Winston Churchill. One of the most remembered features was the centre page cut away, drawn by a variety of artists, but, most usually, Leslie Ashwell Wood. This has retained its popularity: at an auction in Gloucester in March 1998, the Frank Hampson artwork fetched sums around 300 per board; the Ashwell Wood boards equalled or beat this. They have the advantage they date in a different kind of way.

In addition, there would be a lot of text. Looking at the 1950s Eagle comics one is struck by how dense the text is: not a square inch is wasted. And it is not set out in a way that is deliberately easy on the eye: it has to be read through, piece by piece. There was always a text serial too, in various forms, as well as competitions, letters and the like. For four and a half old pennies (less than two pence decimal), there was good value.

Eagle didn't settle down to this format until about 1954, and then it kept to it for the next five years. The new publishers who bought out Hulton's Press then started making economies, and both the quality and the circulation suffered. In 1961, there was a deliberate and conscious revamp, and of all the strips in the 50s Eagle only Dan Dare survived. By 1969 circulation was down to the tens of thousands where once it had been in the hundreds of thousands.

The Eagle of the late 60s was a sorry travesty of the original, and would have hurt Morris and Hampson considerably, if they had been sentimental men. The ethos that Morris started with of no violence, no supernatural stories, no horror stories, had been entirely reversed in the search for readers. Reprints from the 50s and from other sources abounded in the search for economies. The few original strips still extant went for the cheapest of thrills, most often involving the supernatural. Whether Eagle could have evolved through the 60s with Marcus Morris and his band of enthusiasts is, as I have already said, another question, but it is a pity he never got the chance to try and adapt to the different circumstances.

It is interesting that the artists and writers who did work on the comic in the 50s do remember their time with affection. Eagle Society interviews artists from time to time, and invites them to an annual dinner, where they will talk to members about their times working for the comic. One point that comes through quite clearly is that they enjoyed working on Eagle since they were well paid and treated well. People that are happy in their work usually produce better work. They were also given quite a degree of artistic freedom within Eagle's overall ethos, and were free to suggest new stories and new ideas.

Hampson's time drawing and writing Dan Dare ran from 1950 to 1959; from the rationing of the post-war Labour Government to the (misquoted) " You've never had it so good" slogan of Harold Macmillan in the 1959 General Election. It was the start of consumer capitalism in the UK, a time when prosperity at last began to appear in Britain after the privations of the War and its aftermath. It was also the period of the Cold War and of the decline of Britain as a major power. To what extent was this mirrored in the strip?

The strip has been criticised (Science Fiction in the Twentieth Century, E. James, Oxford) as basing Spacefleet entirely in Britain. To have based it entirely in the UK was, no doubt, going too far, but in 1950 the British Empire was still intact, with the exception of India, and it was not anticipated that the African colonies, for example, would be self governing within the foreseeable future, let alone in the next ten to fifteen years. But this was probably done as a consequence of Hampson's lack of knowledge of the US and the world outside, and also his insularity, and of his readership's insularity. It is odd that a country that however briefly held sway over the largest Empire yet seen should be regarded as insular, but this is part of the syndrome whereby the Englishman abroad immediately tries to replicate Home wherever he finds himself. The English have also been very good at not learning other people's languages, but have instead persuaded the world to speak English (although the cultural effect of the United States and Hollywood might have had some input to this!).

Thus although Dan Dare the character would be outraged if accused of being arrogant, he tackles situations very much in the style of the District Commissioner in a remote part of some African colony. The question as to whether this behaviour should be praised or condemned, and regarded as arrogant, depends on your point of view. Even the way he is dressed, in a lightly disguised British Army Service Dress uniform, re-inforces this impression. In mitigation, the Space Fleet uniforms were Hampson's own wartime uniforms adapted for the purpose. But it is curious that he did not try to invent a costume that might have been worn fifty years into the future.

So in many ways Dan Dare did fit the imperialist stereotype. The character portrayed can then be thought of as arrogant or paternalist, and from that viewpoint the accusation could be justified. But the counter to this was that Dan represented the incorruptible, the impartial, the seeker for justice. And this is how he is portrayed - and also as Dare the warrior. Thus the peaceful Crypts have to come to Earth - or to imperialist Britain - to ask for Dare, the warrior, to fight for them. And this is the period when, in Britain, the War story is at the peak of its appeal.

But Macmillan's Britain of 1959 was less interested in the exploits of the past. It was now post Suez, and conceivably, post Imperial. African colonies are now becoming independent - Uhuru was on the horizon. There was no future in being District Commissioner any more. In this context, it is interesting that the story of 1958, Phantom Fleet, was a rather routine story of Dan Dare sorting out aliens, and the story line seems tired. Certainly, it was not popular with the readership, and the story was cut short. But the story which enthuses Hampson once more, and starts 1959, is a much more reflective story, with a more introverted Dare, setting out in search of his father who had disappeared thirty years earlier. This story never gets carried through to its intended conclusion as a consequence of Hampson's resignation, but it would be interesting to have seen its final resolution.

In the 60s, the war stories inevitably lost their appeal, But they kept going in a different light. Whereas in the 50s, there had been plenty of real life stories to relate; by the end of the decade, most stories worth telling had been told. Instead, the sort of war stories that appeared in comics were those of the triumphant Englishman defying the dastardly Nazis or Nips: stories which were neither edifying nor interesting. Now Dan Dare was beginning to suffer the same syndrome, with its story lines lacking subtlety. The hitherto faithful readers began to abandon the strip, and fewer new ones were coming in their place. Now not even Dan Dare could save Eagle. The 50s success story was not to make it through the 60s.

Frank Hampson - the parabola of success.

One of the greatest problems in discussing Dan Dare artwork is that it has almost certainly been worked upon by more than one hand. Signatures are no guarantee. Some periods are without doubt. Walduck, for example, was a freelance artist and if a particular week contained his artwork, then it would be almost entirely his (I think from internal evidence that sometimes the studio or Hampson might have drawn the top right hand frame). But even he was working entirely from visuals supplied by the studio. Sometimes the likeness of the visuals and final artwork was so close that it was difficult to see why Walduck was used. Hampson or Harley's visuals could be as good as some of Walduck's final artwork. It is difficult to suppress the opinion that although Hampson and Harley were close collaborators, Hampson never quite trusted Harley with the strip to himself. Hence the use of Walduck; the promotion of Bellamy over Harley's head.

In the early days of the strip the artwork was relatively crude. To some extent, this could be explained by pressure of work in getting the show on the road, when Eagle was first launched. But soon Hampson had a studio full of artists to relieve the pressure. A further explanation is that often he was too ambitious and, paradoxically, too painstaking. Ideas were sketched out, the team posed for the appropriate photographs, the boards were pencilled in, inked, coloured, and then re inked. And this with two colour boards of artwork a week - working to Fleet Street deadlines, and ignoring other commitments such as the stories for the Annuals. Bruce Cornwell, one of the studio artists, comments in a letter to Eagle Times that Hampson's organisation of time was poor. If the studio relieved him of some of the current artwork so that he could concentrate on work intended for future issues, then rather than press on with the story, Hampson would take greater and greater pains with the work in hand.

But a more puzzling aspect is that mixed among routine frames, there are the occasional gems, where the composition and execution are far above their surroundings. Thus even in Eagle Number 2, the frame in the observatory has a composition which beats anything else on the page (see also the artwork in the appendix). Such frames stand out from their surroundings in almost an embarrassing manner. Throughout Hampson's nine years on the strip, this disparity would be true time and again.

Hampson's ability to draw the large dramatic frame is obvious as early as Eagle Number 4, where there is the frame of the exploded spaceship Kingfisher. The scientist within me objects to elements of the picture, but it is undeniably effective. But no one could have been expecting what would appear on Eagle Number 15.

The entire front page was be dominated by one scene: a view of the capitol city of the Treens, Mekonta, a hugely imaginative creation (see appendix). It is full of detail in every corner, and it was this aspect of the strip that made it appeal so much to so many schoolboys. It also shows what can be done by artwork that cannot be done in film or text. If there are certain select pieces of artwork that define the Hampson oeuvre, then this is one.

As the Venus story goes along, the artwork gets more confident. Nine months into the strip, gems of artwork are beginning to appear in the master frame on the top right. The colours become lighter and brighter, rather than the somewhat muddy appearance at the start.

The further puzzling aspect about Hampson artwork is that from time to time there is a quantum jump in the quality. This lasts for a few weeks, then fades, and it may be a year or so before the next jump. I am thinking of a section in the Red Moon Mystery, partway through, where the artwork brightens and livens briefly, and for a few issues it is Hampson at his very best. Similarly, the start of Operation Saturn again has some of the best of his artwork. But these bursts of inspiration give the impression of being sadly short lived.

Then for more than a year, Hampson's artwork is not to be seen. He was still directing the strip, in terms of producing the visuals and so on, and he was also moving the studio to the final address where the remainder of the strip would be produced. But, apart from the very occasional frame that looks very much his style, it is all Walduck and the studio team - although all under Hampson's overall direction.

But when he does make a re appearance, it is with a bang. The Venus Embassy Ball picture (see appendix) must rate with the Mekonta frame, taking up the whole of the front page as it does. Oddly enough, for a boy's comic, there is no action at all. People are simply standing round talking. And oddly to the adult perspective, no one is smoking or drinking. (Hampson himself smoked a pipe very heavily, although he didn't drink much; Marcus Morris, editor of Eagle, and propagator of its high moral tone, was not one to deny himself the pleasures of alcohol and nicotine.) But to those who are inclined to go and look at the detail, then everything is there: all the characters and creations of the previous five years. And again, the composition is superb.

From now on, the strip is very much a Hampson and Harley collaboration, and Frank's style is noticeably lighter. I have always had my reservations about Harley: from now on the strip is slicker, the overall standard much higher, but for me it loses a slight touch of individuality. Perhaps part of this is Hampson developing a style that is more commercial, but it is difficult to untangle the various threads.

Interviews with Harley have never been especially fruitful: he seems to have had no great enthusiasm for the strip, but instead rather regarded it as a simple job of work. Perhaps it was for this reason as much as any other that Hampson never gave Harley the responsibility he could have done.

For the next four years, the style was not to change greatly, although as well becoming more accomplished, it would also become richer in colour and texture. The four linked stories starting with The Man From Nowhere and running for the next two and half years can be seen as perhaps the apogee of Dan Dare and of Hampson's career.

For whatever reason, the follow on story, The Phantom Fleet, was not a success. This was not the fault of the artwork, which was as good as ever, but as would be proved much later, no amount of artwork can make up for a poor story line.

The sequence that was to follow next revitalised the strip. Hampson had a clear idea now for a new story line, one that might take literally years to unfold: Dan seeking his father amongst the stars. The illustrations at the start of Safari in Space are the finest yet. But external matters were now to intrude.

Artists - that is, graphic and commercial artists - often have problems with copyright that writers and composers do not. Artists produce a piece of artwork on a board, something which is solid and tangible. A writer may produce a book, a film script; a composer a song or a symphony. But it is accepted that the words and the music remain the copyright of the writer or composer, and that they are entitled to royalties for subsequent re-issues. Not so with artists. The editor bought the artboard and it is then his. He can use it, re-use it, hack it about, or even give it away, entirely as he wishes, all of which happened to Hampson's artwork. Fortunately, the law has changed since his day.

For not only was the artwork his, so was the original conception. To claim Dan Dare as exclusively Hampson's would be disingenuous: Marcus Morris must have had a considerable input at the outset. But once the basic scenario was there, Hampson devised the characters, the scenes, the situations. He wrote many of the stories. Hulton's, the publishers who took on Eagle, made very considerable sums of money from related merchandising. This took two major forms: one was licensing the characters and the names, so that you could buy Dan Dare toothpaste or Riders of the Range braces. The other was in spin off books : The Eagle Book of .... Balsa Wood Models; Spacecraft; Trains; Police Forces. The range was incredible.

And Hulton's owned all the copyright. Their justification was that they took the commercial risk of publishing, and they could not afford to have one of the chief characters walk away from Eagle if the artist so chose. To which a reply might be that that is what happens in the book world: if a best selling novelist wants to go to another publishing firm, he is quite free to do so.

In the early days of the strip this issue of copyright was no great problem, apart from the merchandising, where Hampson felt that the quality of a lot of the material produced by toy manufacturers was very dubious, and where also he felt that he was not receiving any of associated benefits and profits. But the problem came a head when Hulton's were swallowed up by another publisher: one who would look less favourably on Hampson's method of working, which was elaborate and expensive. Hulton's were not familiar with juvenile publications when they took Eagle on, and gave it a budget well in excess of that which a more experienced publisher might have done. But it turned out to be very profitable for them.

The justification of Hampson's studio method was that it produced a high class product that sold the comic. Other publishers saw it as an unnecessary expense. They didn't see any moral virtue in a comic as Marcus Morris had in Eagle; to them, it was another commodity. If it sold, well and good. If it didn't, well, it could always be closed down and another one launched, aiming at a new market.

There are various conspiracy theories that the rival publishers wanted to dent Eagle's circulation, so as to give some of their home grown products a better chance, and got their chance when Hulton's was bought out. There is the theory that Fleet Street saw Eagle as being run by a group of amateurs and that the professionals should go in and sort things out. Whatever the truth of the matter, Eagle was to suffer, Dan Dare was to suffer, and Frank Hampson was to suffer.

It would be fair to say that Hampson was a man who did not get on with others that easily, who had perhaps an awkward manner, and was certainly way out of his depth when it came to office politics. He was also a man who wanted his own way and knew how he wanted things done. The inevitable clash occurred. By now he was deeply unpopular with parts of the editorial office, and with the take over, Marcus Morris had moved on. There was no one left to defend him.

It might be difficult to pinpoint any one issue, but copyright, merchandising, and the threat to his studio brought things to a head. He asked to be relieved from Dan Dare.

There were some immediate questions: was this resignation permanent? Who would take over from him? As the first, perhaps we will never know. One of the problems with threatening resignation is that you may well be taken seriously. Another is that once out, it is very difficult to get back in. Who would take over? Harley in many ways was the obvious choice. But the Eagle's other great artist was Frank Bellamy.

Bellamy had built up his reputation on the back page of Eagle, working on the lives of Great Men: Churchill, King David, Marco Polo. He was highly gifted and very distinctive in style. He was persuaded to take over the strip for a year, working with Harley and Watson. He was not keen on the idea but agreed to take on the strip.

Bellamy was not a team worker. Harley and Watson moved out of Hampson's Epsom studio and up to an office in London. There they would see Bellamy for a few hours a week, presumably to discuss how the script was to be allocated. Bellamy would draw one page, Harley and Watson the other.

Then after the story Trip to Trouble was finished, prematurely rounding off Dan's quest, Bellamy was given the job of updating the strip. He obliged, and a lot of the work he did on the next story, Project Nimbus, is extremely impressive. But a lot of the readership were alienated by the new look, and it still remains extremely controversial even today for some of the die hard Hampson fans. Hampson himself talks of the strip falling into " clumsy alien hands" and it must have been this that he was referring to.

After a break from Dan Dare, Hampson, together with Joan Porter, who had been with him since the Southport bakery days when Eagle was first started up, set about his last major project: The Road of Courage. This was the life of Jesus. Technically, in many ways it was his best ever work. Whether this was because it was only one page instead of two, or because it is Hampson only, and no studio, is difficult to tell. Artistically, it is rather more equivocal. Some of the scenes and the compositions are excellent - the Palm Sunday arrival in Jerusalem being one example. His representation of Jesus is rather Sunday School like, however, and in such scenes as the Last Supper he is up against formidable competition! The strip is best in the action scenes where, for example, the Jews are revolting against the rule of Rome. But good as it may be, it doesn't grip as his Dan Dare at its best did.

After this, Hampson did little work. He had a nervous breakdown and came close to suicide. His artistic skills never left him, but his creative drive had. He tried his hand at various strips over the next few years: he would get a few pages into the story - sometimes just a few frames in - and dry up. He survived on various commissions as a freelance, and like many ex-Eagle artists, worked for Ladybird books.

The saddest of all is to see his last published Eagle artwork (apart from the reprints). It is an advertising feature, " The Adventures of the Bovril Brigade" , black and white linework beautifully executed. But how the mighty had fallen.

When Eagle finally closed, it had been reprinting earlier Dan Dare stories for some years. The very last issue of all had Hampson artwork - cut around where necessary to fit, and, worst of all, with signatures removed - on the front page. But there were no reprint rights for the artist.

Hampson's vision of the future.

Any science fiction strip stands or falls by the artist's vision of the future. If he is to have spaceships and other technological wizardry, then it not only has to be visually exciting, but look as if it might work as well. Hampson's drawing often succeeded in the first, but was on shakier ground as far as the second was concerned.

First, we have to go back the artist's own time. Hampson started Dan Dare in 1950, when the idea of spaceflight was very much in the realms of fantasy, and where the nearest thing to a spaceship had been the V2. Von Braun has a lot to answer for, since a generation of artists took the V2 as symbolic of the future. It wasn't. Hampson himself, in the introduction to the 1953 Space Annual, comments:

" But it all began, really, in Belgium in 1944. I can remember the clop and creak of horse lorries ....

" ... Vapour trails again, dainty and clean but different. Straight, until the shifting windcurrents twisted them, and coming from the ground. Upwards from the horizon across the bleak flat lands of the Schelde Estuary where the Germans still fought for the port approaches. Moments later the rumbling crash and spout of dirty rolling smoke as the 'Rocketbombs' pounded the city that was pumping the lifeblood of supplies into the arteries of the Western Allied Armies.

" On the quays of Antwerp you could watch the birth of space travel. You could see a rocket being fired, wait as it soared invisibly up, tilted, and came hurtling down. And then see the dusty flying wreckage of its murderous end.

" Spacetravel was born in those neat cotton wool lines reaching up into the clear blue winter sky."

But if spaceships didn't exist in the 1940s, then artists were free to invent them. Hampson's first ideas were a mixture of cigar tube and American bomber - he acknowledged that the glass noses that he gave spaceships in the early days of the strip had been based on the Superfortress aircraft.

But again, in the early days, he has to invent not only Earth designed spaceships, but ones from Venus, too. His Theron designs were competent, but his Treen designs show Hampson at his best and at his worst. The Treen fighter ships are simple but neat and effective. One of the inventions he was most proud of, though, the Telezero ship, is bizarre in many ways. The idea that you use a spaceship to reflect a deadly ray is one thing, but to have three ... and he uses a front page to draw an equally bizarre arrangement for switching the floor through ninety degrees as the ship goes through the transition from ground to space. Hampson should have paid an engineering consultant to peer over his shoulder from time to time. To be fair, however, he must have consulted the odd scientist from time to time, for the idea of monatomic hydrogen as a rocket fuel was a strikingly original idea for 1953. And the obvious question is posed: how do you keep it stable? And an answer is contrived that superficially sounds good - Blasco's " lockwaves" .

Another striking difference between 1953 and the present is that in the original strip, the balance of the " lockwaves" had to be adjusted by hand - the pilot sat there and watched the dials, and moved the control to adjust the waves accordingly. That is something that would now be entirely automated, with some form of microprocessor control. But digital electronics then were in their very infancy: a computer then meant an analogue computer. And this throws up the other big difference between Hampson's imaginary 1996 and the real one: the lack in the strip of any form of computing device. Hampson was just that one generation too far back to be thinking in those terms.

Similarly, we have Anastasia, Dan's personal spacecraft. that runs through the saga. It is an arresting design, and very distinct, but full of contradictions. It doesn't need separate retro rockets: one set will do for acceleration and deceleration. You just point it in the opposite direction. But Hampson would have his spacecraft maneuvering like aircraft. And there is the heat problem on re entry - although again, to be fair to Hampson, that was quite an academic point in 1950. The Royal Aircraft Establishment weren't to do calculations on re entry vehicles until about 1955.

The spaceship that does make its mark on the strip in a big way was the Crypt ship, from Man fromNowhere. This sleek sweptback craft was striking for its time. The rest of the hardware in that story and Rogue Planet are less inspired. In Reign of the Robots Hampson has to invent some designs for robots, and his first, the elektrobot, is quite striking, if a little baroque. The subsequent design, the selektrobot, is perhaps more functional but visually less interesting.

Hampson had two stories left to illustrate after this. The Phantom Fleet was not among the more successful stories but had a reasonably imaginative Clustaship, in which lived a race of small waterliving creatures, the Cosmobes. But the series of stories designed to be Dan's search for his father on the planet Terra Nova brings in a new, interstellar spaceship, the Galactic Galleon. This does look extremely odd! Indeed, one of the Spacefleet characters in the strip refers to it as " Brighton Pier on wings" ! Despite spending all its time in vacuum, it again is streamlined. Again, visually interesting, but from an engineering point of view, it doesn't look quite right.

Subsequent artists were to use a mixture of their own designs and Hampson's. Bellamy had been given the brief to modernise the strip, and this he did, with new and equally imaginative designs. But Bellamy's designs appeared to be those of a later generation, despite the small age difference between the two artists. Indeed, there is one of Bellamy's front pages that would not seem out of place if it were published in the 1990s (see appendix).

But Bellamy soon gave way to the Harley/Cornwell duo. Cornwell was the man for the technical designs, and they are mixed. Some are interesting, some are dreadful. They introduce a new personal spacecraft for Dan, called the Zylbat, which is reasonable enough, but not a design to capture the imagination.

Finally, Keith Watson takes over. At the end of the Hampson era, Watson was an assistant artist on the strip, still very young, and some of the later Spacefleet designs from that period are really his creation. He draws a convincing enough updated Hampson type spaceship. Later, he designs a craft for a series of stories which is named the Tempus Frangit (literally " Time breaks" , although I think that what the script writer really meant was Time Breaker). This again never quite convinces as a design. Later, he is given the brief to " go back to the old days" , and as a long time Hampson fan, he finds no problem with that. Thus Anastasia and the rest reappear.

Then after Watson we get reprints, and finally the demise of Eagle.

The various attempts by different artists to portray spaceships and other technological wizardry is always a difficult area. Artists are not scientists and engineers, as I have said, and that comes through in quite a few of the designs. But we also suffer the problem that we are viewing them in retrospect, with the advances of the past 50 years altering our perspective. What might have seemed fresh and original in 1950 may not seem so as we approach 2000. Hampson's greatest successes were not with his hardware but with its setting. But of all the various designs, I will go back to Bellamy's page in Project Nimbus as the freshest yet most timeless.

However, there is more to portraying the future than spaceships. The attendant civilisations have to be created too, and here Hampson excelled over all his competitors. I have already mentioned the Mekonta page, and not only did Hampson create the city, but the buildings, the rooms, the inhabitants. Venus, with the Mekon, the Treens, the Therons was to be the most enduring of these creations and the setting to which so many of the stories returned. But there were other inventions too: the beanpole figures of Mercury, the empire set on the moons of Saturn, the Crypt/Phant conflict, the Cosmobes.

The odd feature is that although Venus and its attendant creations was to be returned to time and again, the other civilisations were never again referred to. The only exception to this came in the stories in the Annuals, where these other creations would make a guest appearance. The stories in the annuals were mixed in quality: although Hampson is credited with the very first, I find it hard to believe the final artwork was his. Then Harold Johns and Greta Tomlinson took them on (producing my favourite, Operation Triceratops, which gives the Isle of Wight an interplanetary zoo!), followed by Harley, then Walduck. There was only one mature Hampson contribution, which was Operation Moss. In later years, Harley churned out stories for the Annuals that were to become increasingly perfunctory. Hampson at his best could create civilisations that were not only exciting but felt real, and that latter quality, so difficult to achieve, was one of the major factors that contributed to the success of the strip as a whole.

The characters in the strip.

(i) The gang.

This might seem a slightly odd heading, but Dan Dare's appeal was to the world of boys where girls had not yet begun to impinge. This was part of the social climate of the day, when adolescence began later and the world of work began earlier. Up to the age of 15 or so boys tended not to mix with girls as they do now; there was a greater perceived difference in girls' interests and boys' interests, and more often than not schools were segregated. Until the late 60s the school leaving age was 15, with relatively few staying on into the sixth form, and fewer still going to University. School leaving meant getting a job, easy enough in the high employment days of the 50s, and a few years after that, marriage, a house, a family.

The boys' gang was a feature of life as a consequence (and has evolved in a rather more murderous way in the USA). Richmal Crompton's creation William may not have been entirely typical, but note that William regarded girls as creatures beyond his fathoming. The great boys' author of the time, W.E. Johns, wrote the Biggles books where again Biggles and the rest of the gang - Algie, Ginger et al - go off and have adventures. These were also times when foreign travel was very much rarer, except as part of a Service or Colonial posting, and a cash limit of 50 imposed on travellers abroad.

Many of the other strips in Eagle followed this same pattern. Storm Nelson featured the eponymous hero on his yacht - which was nearer a large schooner. And it held an awful lot of kit, including a helicopter and submarine! There were various crew members to participate in these adventures - presumably paid by Nelson, who must have been an extremely rich man. Luck of the Legion features three legionnaires. PC 49 in his second incarnation with the comic (drawn by John Worsley) actually had a boys' club, who regularly tangled with villains in one way or another. Jack o'Lantern featured a youngster thrown into an orphanage by his wicked Uncle Humphrey, and whose father was actually still alive but reviled as a traitor - a good psychological basis for a boy's story. These had no female input at all into the story lines.

And every hero had his sidekick. Jeff Arnold had Luke, Sergeant Luck was backed up by Trenet and so on. Batman has Robin. Sherlock Holmes has Dr Watson as colleague, Hornblower always has Bush as his second in command. And to go back further and into a different culture, Don Quixote has his Sancho. These are in no sense homosexual relationships; they are completely asexual. Indeed, all such stories are asexual, and have to be: women and their relationships with men break up any such gang very quickly. No longer is it " all for one and one for all" , to give a quote from another " gang" ; sexual relationships are in a sense exclusive of others, and much more powerful.

And this same sex duo is not confined just to the childhood gang: the television programme The Likely Lads fits the same pattern. Young men of that time and class often went on the chase for girls in pairs, hence the immortal line " I don't fancy yours."

Dan Dare as a strip has this psychological pattern writ large. Thus the sidekick role is filled by Digby, who acts as comic relief for most of the strip as well. Some of Hampson's humour was undoubtedly heavy handed; parts of it are derived from service slang or situations which are now completely foreign. " The past is another country - they do things differently there." L.P. Hartley was meaning this in a slightly different context, but it is still apposite: they did do things differently in the 50s, and so some of the jokes and situations have not worn well.

Digby was also there as a contrast to Dan in other ways - the " other ranker" , the squaddie versus the officer class; working class versus middle class; uneducated versus educated. These are differences in society that have shrunk very much in the last half century. But Dig is given other virtues - those of good Northern common sense. So when he is forced by the Treens to send a reassuring message back to Earth, he sends it in such a way that it alerts his Aunt Anastasia to his real situation. Digby also represents the other ranker who doesn't want to be promoted: promotion means responsibility. and he is quite happy as things are, thank you.

So Digby appears in every single story. Although, early on in the saga, he is given a wife and family, these rapidly fade into the background and are soon never mentioned. He is also Dan's batman, whose job it was to clean and prepare his kit and uniform, and do other odd jobs. This is a another concept of military life that has died out. For other ranks to act as personal servants certainly would not fit the current spirit of the times: one can imagine what an contemporary investigative " fly on the wall" television programme would make of such a situation!

And that itself is interesting. For although Dan Dare is set half a century in the future, the social ambience is entirely wartime or 50s. In a sense. that may have been one of its strengths, as it reflected contemporary life so well, and thus gave it familiarity to its readers, but it is odd that there was no attempt to update the social scene. The political scene was updated, in as much as it was sketched in, but that belongs in a different context. Spacefleet 1996 is the British army circa 1945 in very many of its social attitudes, and Hampson had served in the War, being commissioned near the end of it. He comments that Digby was to some extent based on a batman who served Hampson himself.

Some time ago, I headed this section " the gang" , and apart from Digby, have talked about none of them. This is because I have been trying to set the idea of the gang in a wider context. So, who do we have?

Apart from Dan and Digby, the next most important figure is Sir Hubert Guest. He is Controller of Space Fleet, and Dan, as Chief Pilot, then works very closely with him. If there is a father/son relationship here it is not entirely surprising; the physical, if not indeed the psychological, model for the character was Frank's father Robert. Robert Hampson modelled extensively for the strip, and the character of Sir Hubert is drawn as an exact likeness. Sir Hubert is the man with the responsibilities, who has to take the difficult positions. Often the story line has Dan persuading him that Dan ought to take some hazardous course of action out of duty or necessity, and Sir Hubert, reluctantly, has to agree.

One of the less successful ploys to bring in some dramatic tension is to portray Sir Hubert as a rather humourless misogynist in relation to Professor Peabody, who is young, pretty, intelligent and female. There is always the underlying sense too that the Professor is sufficiently competent to win grudging approval from Sir Hubert. But although one can see why the idea was introduced, regrettably it does not work well.

Hampson sets up his major characters as those who will pilot the first small rocket ships to Venus. He takes the chance to pay homage to the UN and the international nature of SF(Spacefleet) by adding as the second crew an American and a Frenchman - Hank Hogan and Pierre Lafayette. They also help to give some local colour. The third ship is crewed by Sir Hubert and Professor Peabody. Peabody is allocated to the expedition as she is an expert nutritionist, and in the story one of the rationales for reaching Venus is to provide food for a starving Earth.

It seems paradoxical in view of what I have been saying above to have a young, glamorous women as part of the gang. There is no problem with this providing, as mentioned, she does not form relationships with any one of the others and so exclude the rest. Hence glamorous she may be, but not seductive. Peabody is thus condemned to be as celibate as all the others in the story.

A further point was to make the characters as physically different as possible, so that they would be recognisable at a glance in the strip. It also provides for more interplay between characters if they are not all peas from the same pod. And Hampson was determined to make them as realistic as possible, even if Hank and Pierre did rather become caricatures of their respective nationalities.

These then are the basic six characters that the early stories revolve around. And that in itself was odd enough: what other strip would bother to have six protagonists? As the saga progressed, more characters were added to the gang. It wasn't essential for a gang member to appear in every story, but enough for the readership to know that they were still there in the background. Later in the first story Sondar, the only " good" Treen, joins the gang. So in the fifth story, Prisoners of Space, Flamer Spry appears. In the sixth, Man from Nowhere, Commander Lex O'Malley R.N.. Spry is a young cadet from Astral College, a Spacefleet analogue of Dartmouth or Cranwell, although starting even younger. He doesn't seem to age from story to story, however! O'Malley is a blackbearded Irishman, who commands a submersible vessel, the Poseidon. Again, the backgrounds of these characters are carefully drawn in. And so, rather surprisingly, the start of The Man from Nowhere has a long underwater sequence, which is, of course, where O'Malley and his ship get their chance to shine. But in keeping with the spirit of the saga, later on in The Phantom Fleet, the Poseidon again is brought into the story.

The gang faded with the departure of Hampson; later script writers would bring them back as a nod to the past. In Watson's time there was an attempt to bring in some new characters, but these were never very convincing.

There were also a string of minor characters, all sharply drawn, literally and from a character viewpoint. There is O'Reilly, Sir Hubert's deputy; Digby's formidable Aunt Anastasia; Dan's eccentric Uncle Ivor, who is an archaeologist; Groupie, a rather less successful character; and others. Various friendly aliens hover on the fringe. although they tend to be abandoned after each story. Oddly, as mentioned, the stories in the annuals were much better at linking pieces of the saga together. Hampson always wanted to fill frames with detail, as well, and so glimpses of characters would be seen from time to time. But the best place to view everyone is the Venus Embassy Ball scene at the start of Man from Nowhere. Virtually every character is to be found somewhere there (see appendix).

When Hampson left the strip, and other scriptwriters took over, then characters from the past would be dragged out not so much for what they had to offer to the story, but more as an attempt to show that the strip hadn't really lost its roots. When Hampson had gone, then his gift for extended narrative flow went with him, and no subsequent scriptwriter ever managed that in the same way. A year was a typical length for a Dan Dare story under Hampson!

(ii) The villains.

Certainly in the Hampson days, there was only one human villain - Count Blasco in Operation Saturn. With a name like that he is not quite British, yet is given foppish aristocratic manners coupled with fascist sentiments - and a very high I.Q.! It is Blasco who makes contact with Saturn, but see this as an opportunity to ally himself with the ruling aristocracy of Saturn, and uses this to try to make himself ruler of Earth. He is given the usual fascist sentiments and is, of course, quite ruthless. But he perishes near the end of the story, with his spacesuit helmet adrift as the ship he is in is decompressed. As a character he is developed well initially, but later in the story he falls into some rather routine cliched attitudes.

But the character who would be remembered the most was the Mekon. The Mekon. In a sense, came to be as important a figure as Dan, and villains are much easier to write about - and draw! - than heroes. He was a splendid creation. Emotionless, capable of any villainy, Chief Scientist of Mekonta. And therein lies a paradox.

Science fiction is still to some extent about science, despite Aldiss' views. Fantasy deals with changes that could not in practice ever occur, as in Aldiss' own fiction, such as The Saliva Tree. If we are to postulate a world in which it is possible to travel to Venus, then we are going have to accept a lot of scientific research will need to be done before that happens, but we are also saying that such travel is in the reach of current technology or a reasonable extension thereof. Thus, in Hampson's future world, science has made an enormous contribution. Yet we have the greatest villain of them all, from whom nothing should surprise us, labelled the Chief Scientist. There is a dichotomy here. On the one hand science is progress, on the other scientists are amoral, not concerned in the slightest with the moral implications of their work. Such a point is made very explicit in the television programme Max Headroom, where the young computer nerd, Bryce, faced with one of the consequences of his blipverts, shrugs his shoulders and says, " That's your problem, I don't drop the Bomb, I only make it" ; a clear reference to J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project.

And Dan reinforces this point a little later. When discussing how Earth can successfully invade Venus, when all mechanical devices are immobilised, he makes the point that humans do illogical things - they sail yachts when perfectly good engines are available, they fly gliders, they ride horses when there are cars. And this can be seen as one of the divisions between the artist and the scientist. Hampson was always much more of an artist than a scientist.

In later days, the Mekon would be wheeled out for almost any story, to prop up a tired or unlikely storyline. In the Hampson days, roughly every other story was a Mekon story. But there was a sense of evolution - following the original Venus story we have his escape to Mercury, then his hijacking of a space station. Then whilst Dan is away for ten years on Cryptos, he seizes his chance and enslaves the Earth. Hence we then have the follow on of the Liberation. And at the end of this story, the Mekon appears to do away with himself ... but leaves himself - or the scriptwriters - a loophole that is to be exploited later.

Why was the Mekon such a success? No one before or since has invented a character quite like him. Physically, he is extraordinary, with the huge head on the etiolated or atrophied body. Then there is the flying chair, which was another master stroke. If you are a science fiction writer trying to produce an effective villain, then the creature has to feel right. The Mekon gives that feeling: he is convincing not only in appearance but in character.

Darth Vader in Star Wars always reminds me of the evil figures in The Lord of the Rings, and in that text there are figures to rival the Mekon. Tolkein inspired a whole sub genre of fantasy, but it is noticeable that while such imitations take on board the more cuddly aspects, as the Hobbits and Gandalf, they do not get to grips with the true grimness of the story of good versus evil, presented in quite stark terms. By and large, Tolkein does not overweigh his story with a political or theological message: it is instead rather the simplest choice with which an individual can be faced: do you fight evil or not? And that message in less stark terms permeates Hampson's Venus story, and all the Mekon based stories.

Vora, from Operation Saturn, was Hampson's other major alien villain, and from his comments in the Alan Vince interview, was one of his favourites. But he is not that convincing a villain nor that interesting an alien, particularly as he had to spend all his time in his special suit. His utterances tend to be on the predictable side.

Much later on, Watson's script writer Motton introduced a new alien villain named Xel, much along the lines of Vora. This was quite a successful character, although the rambling nature of Motton's scripts meant that none of the stories really stood out. But the problem with a character such as Xel was that by drawing him in such black and white - but mainly black! - terms was that there was no room for character development. Even Vora thought in terms of power and how it can be used most effectively, rather than acting through blind malice. The same with the Mekon: at the start of Reign of the Robots he offers Dan a pact. The Mekon is aware of his own limitations, and knows that with Dan and the Earth on his side, that he could indeed rule the Solar System. He offers Dan the freedom for himself and all his friends; the alternative being the slave camp. This Faustian pact has to be rejected by Dan.

This then is why the Mekon stories are the most interesting: they involve the Mekon being outwitted - not just tricked or trapped or whatever. And this is what the best of Hampson's stories did.

(iii) Aliens.

Another of the tests of a science fiction writer is to produce convincing aliens, and here again Hampson succeeded.

The Treens are the race with which the strip is most involved, and, curiously, Hampson portrays them as savage and barbaric as well as technologically advanced. Here there are echoes of World War 2 ideology. Both the Nazis and the Japanese were perceived by the British in very similar ways - scientifically sophisticated yet also actively without morality as we understand it. The case was strengthened when it came to the post war discovery of the camps - the concentration camps of the Nazis and the prisoner of war camps of the Japanese - the latter being an issue which has not yet entirely disappeared. Indeed, the way Spacefleet is held in captivity at the Aden camp in Reign of the Robots is strikingly similar to the scenes in the camp in the film The Bridge over the River Kwai, almost exactly contemporary in timing.

The only " good" Treen, Sondar, is shown the error of his ways after a fight with Dan. He wonders why he is not to be killed, and Dan tells him that Earth people don't do things that way. He is rescued by Dan from the attack of an indigenous beast while trekking through the Venusian jungle, and later he sees the Earth people laughing and joking. Perhaps emotions are not such a bad thing after all - so he comes round to the Earth way of thinking. But to many Treens, and to the Mekon, he would merely be defective - the emotions have not yet been bred out of him.

The Therons, in the southern half of Venus, are initially portrayed as interested only in their own affairs, until roused and shamed by Dan. They are insular, and content to co-exist with the Treens in separate hemispheres. Thereafter, they are on the side on the angels, or, at least, of Earth, and come to its aid as they themselves are threatened by the Mekon. It may be stretching the analogy, but in their isolation on another continent they can be seen as equivalent to the Americans in 1940. Like the Americans, they too have formidable logistic resources once aroused.

The Atlantines, the third race on Venus, at not really aliens anyway, as they are abducted Earth people, but they play quite an important role in the Venus story. After that, they are reduced in importance to passing references only.

Hampson also conceives a variety of other alien races for the Solar System. There are the tall thin Mercurians, with their sung language; the Martians, wiped out by the Red Moon, whose remains are being excavated by Uncle Ivor; and the inhabitants of the moons of Saturn, the kingdom of Numidol. Most of these are convincingly enough drawn, although the Thorks from the moons of Saturn do have a disconcertingly human physique. Apart from stories in the Annuals, however, successive stories make little reference to these inhabitants.

But then the Solar System starts to run out of planets - Hampson has to go Outsystem to Cryptos and Phantos. These two races are again portrayed convincingly enough. But to me there is one big snag to Hampson's aliens - no matter how bizarre they look or behave, again their physique remains determinedly human. One reason for this was the studio technique, with models posing for photographs that would later be the basis for the drawn frame. The water dwelling creatures in The Phantom Fleet escaped this syndrome to some extent, since small plastic model heads were used for models, but unfortunately this particular story is one of Hampson's weakest.

Usually, however, each race was given very characteristic facial features, and this fits in with Hampson's idea that within the strip, characters had to be recognisable at a glance. But it is a pity that he was not a little more imaginative anatomically. Even the etiolated Mercurians have a basic human frame. The most convincing " bug eyed monsters" were drawn by Bellamy in Project Nimbus. Harley, his co-artist, makes them seem comparatively prosaic. It is a very great pity that Bellamy did not illustrate a complete story entirely by himself. He had flair and imagination that at times were outstanding.

When Harley and Cornwell take over, their aliens are completely human (Mission of the Earthmen) or with added blue or purple skins (Platinum Planet). Watson tries to be a little more imaginative, and invents a new alien villain, Xel, and has a stab at various alien races in Wandering World or The MoonSleepers. But none of these stand up to the Treens.

The other important point about Hampson's alien worlds is that they are created whole - not just funny shaped or coloured people but a whole new alien civilisation in considerable detail. Thus not just the Mekon and Treens, but the whole city of Mekonta, the spacecraft, the technology, the alien psychology, and the topography of Venus - e.g., the Flame Belt - are all put together and built upon in later stories. Venus and the Mekon was a subject that the strip came back to time and again, sometimes to build upon the concept, but at other times and in other hands, the props were useful merely to bolster the story line.

In a sense Hampson was too prodigal, and certainly didn't follow Wells' dictum of one idea, one story. Thus we have the entire Cryptos and Phantos worlds and civilisations worked out in great detail for Man from Nowhere and Rogue Planet, but never used again or referred to again in the strip. As a consequence, the saga has been a gold mine for fans who enjoy piecing together all the various story lines. Unfortunately, there are just too many inconsistencies, but for some, circumventing these is part of the pleasure.

The other change in the treatment of aliens was a gradual one, and was related to how they were dealt with in the story line. In the Venus story the Treens and the Therons could be talked to, argued with, and one of the points of the strip was to demonstrate how Dan would convince the opposition that they were misguided, and not to try to solve problems by the application of brute force. In the Mercury story, the Mercurians had to be persuaded to join against the Mekon. In the Saturn story, a decadent ruling class had to be overthrown. In Rogue Planet, the Phants had to be cured of the warlike ways by changes to their diet.

Later scriptwriters would treat aliens as just that: alien, to be feared and wiped out. Thus, in Project Nimbus, there is no attempt to make contact or open a dialogue with the aliens; their ship is to be simply blasted away. Eric Eden wrote the scripts for the two or so years that Harley and Cornwell were drawing the strip, and as former Hampson studio members they tried to keep to the original spirit. But the new editorial policy was for short sharp stories - which in this context meant no more than 25 or so episodes. And although they had worked for years with Hampson, they lacked his inspiration. After Eden came Motton and Watson, and Motton made little or no attempt to develop any kind of intelligent contact with aliens.

This treatment of alien civilisations was one of the stronger points of the strip in its early days, and one that died with demands from later editors for " snappier" stories. But the professionals of Fleet Street failed to notice what the amateurs had picked up: subtlety can often be a better selling point than action.

Journey into Space.

Earlier, the British films of the 50s were discussed to illustrate the cultural ambience of which Dan Dare was part. To continue the theme of non literary science fiction of the 50s, Journey into Space was a BBC radio programme written and produced by Charles Chilton, who also wrote the script for the Eagle strip Riders of the Range. Chilton was a BBC script writer, and Riders of the Range had migrated to Eagle from the radio. It was first broadcast on 21 September 1953, and is available on audio cassette. Although it wasn't taken too seriously to begin with by the BBC, its popularity produced 2 sequels, The Red Planet, and The World in Peril. Like Dan Dare, it is also another good example of a non literary 50s British science fiction story. It is difficult to know whether Chilton was influenced by Hampson or Dan Dare, although it is unlikely, but there are some remarkable and interesting parallels.

In each case, the heroes are very British [Jet Morgan is given a Scots background at one point, but sounds very English] and very stiff upper lipped. Dare has the virtue of a sense of humour, but no such accusation could be levelled at Jet Morgan. He alternates between giving firm orders and uttering " Good Heavens" in a hushed tone, as another aspect of the plot is revealed to him.

Hampson bases his SpaceFleet firmly in the UK, although with an international dimension. Chilton bases his team entirely within the British Commonwealth, which is an interesting idea in the 50s. Thus Doc Matthews, the apparently oldest and wisest member of the crew of 4 is Canadian, Mitch, the engineer and designer, is Australian, and Lemmy Barnett, radio operator, is East End Jewish. In addition, the rocket, the Discovery, is launched from Wongawolla in Australia. Woomera, as a test site for missiles, was up and running by this time, but not with the large projects that were to come its way in the late 50s and 60s.

The idea of Commonwealth co operation in these areas was a popular one in the 50s, with, for example, the UK basing many of its atomic weapons tests in or near Australia and with the use of Woomera as a launching site. There was, for example, a Commonwealth Conference on Communications Satellites in 1962, although this was probably represented the dying embers of the co-operation between Britain and its former colonies and dominions. But as a result of this setting, the cast could be given a variety of contrasting accents, which was also very useful in the radio context. This was somewhat overdone at the start of the Red Planet, where it seemed that every regional accent in the UK and abroad had been represented amongst the crewmen of the various ships.

Like Dan Dare, Journey into Space sheds interesting light into British social attitudes of the time. Listening today, the portrayal of Lemmy Barnett seems to be a caricature, a send up. Although expert enough in his own field, he appears ignorant of everything else - and extremely ill prepared for the journey! He is subservient to the point of deference to Jet, and yet exhibits a working class common sense and stubbornness. Lemmy is portrayed as being ignorant, and yet one knows that his instincts can be trusted. If Lemmy says darkly that he doesn't trust something, then as a listener you know he is probably going to be proved right.

Here is an analogy to Digby, albeit Jewish East End as opposed to Lancashire working class, but by comparison Digby is made to appear positively sophisticated. Yet both of them are given the role of triumphing not by virtue of training or education, but by instinctive knowledge of what is phony and what is not; an instinctive gut reaction. They act as a litmus paper test: not necessarily a rational or reasoned response, but all the same one to be trusted.

Like Dan Dare, Journey into Space is a realistic programme rather than a phantasy: Morgan and his crew are treated as the Wright brothers of spaceflight. In 1954 this is credible: this is the year when the Americans were pushing ahead with their Atlas programme, which would launch their first man into orbit in 1962. Their first manned flight was in 1961, with a rocket which was not much more than an improved V2. And in the USSR Korolev was designing the craft which would put Gagarin into orbit six years later; the UK was about to embark on the Blue Streak rocket which had similar potential. Indeed, one of the few people who felt that spaceflight was not possible was the British Astronomer Royal!

But the programme goes beyond the simple " first men into space" concept, although it does spend some time on the consequences of the forces at launch, and the effects of weightlessness. Chilton gets the feel of this better than Hampson does, who renders the interiors of his spacecraft a shirt sleeve environment by the use of " gravity locks" and the like - but then Hampson sets his saga thirty years later than Chilton's. Again, though, a lot of these effects are shown by using Lemmy as the guinea pig, using his ignorance to point up this effects - though it shows a singular lack of crew training.

Later in the story, however, Chilton broadens the plot out in the form of aliens who have the ability to travel through time, and inadvertently take Morgan and his crew back some thousands of years. Interestingly, within the context of such a story, Chilton introduces ecological themes, commenting on humanity and its evolution from primitive creatures who spend their time constantly fighting with each other, a theme not incompatible with post War Britain now in the grip of the Cold War; and he also introduces an ecological theme, the destruction of man's environment by man. Hampson has a much more idyllic or idealistic world, marred only by mankind's ability to feed itself. But Chilton never works through the paradoxes of time travel in anything other than a cursory manner.

The success of Journey into Space led to two sequels, The Red Planet, and World in Peril. The Red Planet was an interesting story of the first flight to Mars, which turns out to be inhabited by an ancient race, who are capable of controlling humans by a form of hypnosis. Again, as a story line, this teeters on the brink of plausibility, although the idea works within the story. The World in Peril is a follow on to The Red Planet, and is less effective.

As radio, the stories work extremely well. Chilton was an experienced radio producer, and knew how to contrast his characters. The plot is expounded well: although devices such as diaries are resorted to, the action is conveyed well by the characters and their dialogue. There are psychological similarities with Hampson's characters too, with Jet Morgan as the leader, the Dan Dare figure (but, as mentioned, without the sense of humour!). Lemmy is a direct analogy with Digby, and for the father figure of Sir Hubert we have the Canadian Doc Matthews, who stands back from the action and comments on it. The character for whom there is no Hampson equivalent is the Australian Mitch - Stephen Mitchell - the engineer and designer of the Discovery. He is made, in true engineer style, insensitive to the feelings of others, and the resultant tensions help provide some of the drama within the story. There are also no female characters whatsoever - although Lemmy's girlfriend Becky gets a mention, and his very Jewish momma features in one of the hypnosis episodes. Other than that, the setting is very monastic, in a way that reflects the attitudes of the 50s very clearly. Hampson at least introduced Professor Peabody; here, there was no female equivalent.

As science fiction in the " adventure" mode it works well; in its way it is effective as Dan Dare. Like Dan Dare, it is also very representative of Britain and of the 1950s.

The Venus Story - a commentary.

If there is any one Hampson story that should be looked at in detail, it should be the Venus story. It is actually untitled, and the block at the top of the strip says merely " Dan Dare Pilot of the Future" . Later, this would be supplemented by the name of the current story. The first three or so episodes were written and drawn before Eagle even had a publisher, and were part of the dummies that Morris took round publishers. When eventually Hulton's agreed to take on Eagle, the original publishing date had been set for 21st April, but this was moved forward a week as it was thought a rival comic might be about to hit the streets. This intensified the pressure on Hampson, as, at the start, he was responsible for several other of the strips as well.

Setting up the studio with other artists to work under his direction in a disused bakery in Southport had eased the pressure somewhat, although the other artists talk of the hours spent working well into the night. Hampson himself called 1950 the year when " ... dreams came true as mine did, that magic year ..." . And with the initial success of Eagle, selling as it was close on a million copies a week, it must certainly have felt like that. Now he had got the show on the road - but where was it going? He had no clear idea of the storyline beyond the arrival of Dan and party at Venus. There is a report that he sat down for a long talk with one of Eagle's scriptwriters (Guy Morgan) but got nowhere. In the end, he provided the storyline himself, as well as all the dialogue.

The Venus story is significant in any study of the Dan Dare strip since it contains ideas from which future scriptwriters would feed for the next fifteen years - or fifty, if you count all the later imitations. It does not show Hampson at his best artistically, but it develops a tremendous narrative flow as the story gets settled in - a narrative line that would extend over 77 weeks! This amounts to 154 colour pages of artwork. A proposal was made in the late 50s to film the story, the reports of which increased Hampson's discontent with his own legal position. A radio version has been broadcast by the BBC, and a television pilot was made of the story. The pilot has not been available publicly, but the author had a private viewing in Leeds in 1997. Regrettably, the production values of the television version didn't match Hampson's own, although it was interesting to hear Hampson's 1950 dialogue sound quite convincing on 1990s television. A " novelisation" of the book was also written in 1977.

To start off with the plot: the Earth's population cannot feed itself, and so expeditions are being mounted to Venus to see whether food can be grown there and shipped back - which is actually a fairly unlikely idea, given that it is the entire world that needs to be fed. But it is enough to hang the story on. However, attempts to get there have all failed, and the opening episode begins with the launch of yet another attempt by the Kingfisher. By episode three, it too has gone the way of the others. But Dan has an idea as to the nature of the problem - it lies somewhere in the impulse wave motors. " Impulse waves" are very convenient forms of energy which, unfortunately, have no existence in reality! An impulse, in Newtonian terms, is that which provides a change in momentum. Useful, but not enlightening.

Dan's idea is rather than use impulse wave powered craft instead to use old-fashioned rocket ships for the final approach. Sir Hubert Guest, Spacefleet Controller, pushes the idea forward. There will be three two man rocket ships in the expedition - and this is where the first six members of the gang come from: Dan and Digby; Hank and Pierre; Sir Hubert and Professor Peabody. A neat element of surprise comes when Professor Peabody turns out to be a highly competent and glamorous woman. A subplot is created whereby Sir Hubert cannot bring himself to trust anything done by a woman ... and then is promptly proved wrong. It is obviously planted for some extra dramatic tension, but it does not really ring true - it seems out of character. It might have been more effective to have Sir Hubert more simply being exaggeratedly careful where a woman is concerned, out of old fashioned concepts of gallantry.

Putting such a character as Peabody in would not have been predictable in a boys' action strip, but Hampson was an old-fashioned idealist and socialist who believed in equality, sexually and racially, and was a great supporter of the idea of the United Nations. One of his more striking covers is in the next story, The Red Moon Mystery, which shows a map of east Asia with characters staring up from different regions; in small print at the bottom there is a caption: " All boundaries printed on this map must now be considered to be obsolete. U.N. Racial law 267." In this context it is also interesting to see a board he drew for an early pilot, when Dan Dare was the Chaplain of an Interplanetary Space Fleet. He is summoned by Sir Hubert, and is introduced to " four chaps with a tough job" ! One is Chinese in appearance, one Indian, one very British with handlebar moustache, and the nationality of the fourth indeterminate. For 1949 this is radical stuff!

The inclusion of Hank and Pierre is again in Hampson's terms a move to show that the Spacefleet is truly international. Whether it could ever have been sited in Britain is yet another question, but in 1949/1950, when the strip was being conceived, the British Empire was still intact. The great post-war British decline had not yet become obvious except perhaps to economists. But leaving that aside, Hampson makes at least a gesture to internationalism. He was also a great supporter of the United Nations ideal, and for the idea of a World Government. But given the then Cold War situation, there was no chance of including a Russian in the strip, as he otherwise might have wished to. One of the more astonishing bits of casting, however, is an obviously Sandhurst trained General commanding the forces for the final Venus invasion - who is black. That would not particularly raise eyebrows today, but was certainly imaginative for 1950. There is probably one other time the strip makes a concession to the future in social rather than technological terms, which is in the big Venus Embassy scene that opens The Man From Nowhere, where amidst the humans are Arabs and Negroes as a part of the scene (see appendix).

So the three crews set off for Venus. Dan gets first crack at crossing the mysterious barrier around Venus. He almost succeeds apart from the radio, which too uses " impulse waves" and so blows up. This causes their craft to crash and them to bail out, rather than being able to pick a handy landing site. And Venus does turn out to be a planet full of life - a little too full at times. Dan and Digby gather themselves together to head off for the rendezvous (using a mysterious device called an " infra red compass" !). In their travels they meet and are captured by aliens resembling blue humans, whose only other external difference is a bump on the forehead (a later part of the plot hinges round this bump). They are taken off to meet their first Treen, the inhabitants of the Northern Hemisphere of Venus.

Rather less is made of this encounter than it might have been, tucked away on the inside page as it was, but it gives the Treen an opportunity to explain that the blue skinned people actually were from Earth originally, that the Treens had been studying Earth for a long time, and that the mysterious barrier was set up deliberately by the Treens. And by means of a viewer, they watch Hank and Pierre, apparently plunging down out of control to the surface of the planet,

But now Dan and Digby are to be taken off to the capitol of the Treens, Mekonta. And it is here, in Eagle Number 15, that we see what Hampson could do. The entire front page is devoted to a view of the city of Mekonta, complete with multi coloured lagoons. It has been said that some of the ideas - for example, the lagoons - came from some of the other studio artists, and there would be long discussions among them as to what might be appropriate. But the entire picture is a tour de force of Hampson's imagination (see appendix).

It also lives up to its science fiction status superbly, since it presents believable aliens in a believable city, the final touch being the floating chariots which the Treens use. Furthermore, it demonstrates the advantages of the artistic medium over any other. No film or television studio would ever have been able to manage anything on this scale. Words would have been inadequate. And there are very few words on the page. It doesn't need words. It is complete as it stands.

And so they are led to the Treen scientists. Dan tries to say that they are representatives of Earth Government, but his words are brushed aside. The experiments, with them as specimens, are about to begin. But then a diversion arises - the spaceship of Sir Hubert and Professor Peabody is seen crashing in the Flamebelt which circles Venus' equator. It is about to be consumed by a peculiar creature called the Silicon Monster. And Dan says, we must rescue them! Why bother? answer the Treens. But then the idea of having four specimens for experimentation appeals. Dan and Digby are dispatched in a helicopter piloted by a Treen called Sondar, with fluorine bombs to see off the monster (and the chemistry is correct!).

Sir Hubert and the Professor are rescued. But there is a snag - the monster seizes the ladder. Dan tells Sondar to go down, to give him some slack to throw off the ladder, but Sondar panics and climbs. Dan briskly knocks him out and rescues the situation. Then Sondar is defeated by Dan's judo skills, and rather than head back to Mekonta they decide to fly south. There then follows an interesting conversation with Sondar:

Sondar: " Yes - I display an emotion - fear - when the ship was in danger. That was unscientific. They [Treen scientists] will want to analyse me and trace the fault."

Dan : " So you're in the same boat as we are?"

Sir Hubert: " And what happens to us after these experiments?"

Sondar: " That does not matter. You should be proud to serve Treen research."

Here is the contrast that Hampson is trying to point up: the German Nazi scientists in concentration camps had been notorious for their experiments on people, and the Treens had a similar attitude: humans were useful as specimens, and so was Sondar himself, but there was no concept of morality in these experiments.

Their flight south has, of course, been observed in Mekonta. A tornado barrier is raised and the helicopter crashes. Then they have to march through the jungle. At one point Sondar is attacked by an ambitious snake, and is rescued by Dan. Then:

Sondar: " Why did you save me? Why did you not kill me in the plane? We do not understand unscientific actions."

Dan: " Though you may have forgotten it on Venus - there are other things in life besides applied science."

But the party is becoming tired as a result of their trek through the jungle. Dan thinks to himself: " The old boy's [Sir Hubert] looking his age. And Digby's no greyhound, either." These are not the words of the usual comic strip, where the text is restricted to POW! and ZAP! As Frank himself put it, he wanted to create real people with real problems. And no easy ways out. No " With one bound he was free!" . Instead they had to work at it. And it also shows a degree of introspection that is rare in a comic strip.

But while this is going on, the Treens are preparing to intercept them. There is a fight. Dan is accidentally paralysed by Sir Hubert (no zapping rayguns here, but paralysing pistols, whose effects will wear off in time), and he falls over a cliff. The rest are confined to rather nifty plastic bubbles to be taken back to Mekonta.

But Dan has fallen into a river, and while paralysed, is swept along through underground caverns. On reviving, he makes his way out, finds an unmanned harvesting machine, and gets taken to an unmanned city. There he is accosted by a solitary Theron child, who recognises him as an Earthman and takes him to meet Hank and Pierre, who have had the luck to crash in the southern hemisphere. Therons are the occupants of the Southern Hemisphere, leading a separate life from the Treens in an uneasy truce. The Therons explain that the Treens probably mean to invade the Earth. Dan has to shame them into action, and gives an impassioned speech:

" How can you be happy knowing that people are starving on the Earth and the evil the Treens are planning against them?" [Next frame] " Have you nothing more than pity for the earth's pain? A good man grieves, but he acts as well. The Treen's crimes are your crimes if you permit them." [Next frame] " Will you sit there reading poetry and smelling flowers while other children like him [pointing at Theron child] die of starvation on the Earth?" [Next frame] " Or are massacred in a hideous invasion? - Is this the civilisation your ancestors fought the Treens to save? A set of cultured ostriches?"

Again, this is not usual comic material! Although the speech may seem a little naive by present standards, it was directed at a juvenile audience ... although I suspect at times like this Hampson got carried away and wrote as much for himself as his readership!

In any event, the speech persuades President Kalon of the Therons to help Dan return to the Northern Hemisphere to rescue the others. They build him a miniature submarine - designed by computer! - and he returns to the north disguised as an Atlantine, the race they had first met on their arrival. His skin has been dyed blue, a wig with appropriate forehead bump fitted. Some of these gadgets do rather smack of wishful thinking - particularly as the wig doubles as an translator and interpreter from Atlantine to English!

So Dan ends up in an Atlantine village, but has broken local convention by the way he has entered. The Treens are about to take all the young men away to fight against the Therons, and the village is on the point of revolt. Dan is suspected as a spy, and as he is about to be lynched, his wig falls off. The villagers step back and release Dan, who can't understand the change in attitude. In private, the headman tells Dan of the Atlantine hero, Kargaz, who similarly had no bump, and who was the only Atlantine successfully to evade the Treens. Kargaz was sufficiently far back in time that the bump had not yet evolved. The way Hampson relates this episode reminds one very much of any village under enemy occupation - it could have been France in the Second World War: a powerless village thinking of revolt against alien masters but knowing it to be futile. Again, this would have been familiar enough to the readers of 1950.

Dan is swept up in the Atlantine conscription, but when he reaches Mekonta, he again gives himself away by being too familiar with buckles and straps for a village lad. This gives Hampson an opportunity to indulge in some services humour - the NCO who " tears off strips" - before Dan again passes himself off as Kargaz. But again, this portrayal of an NCO is now very dated indeed.

Then the Dapon - the Atlantine NCO - discovers that the Mekon, the ruler of the Treens, is about to send his Earth prisoners to the mines. In a brilliant sequence lasting a couple of months, Hampson draws the rescue by Dan of the others, and their escape with Sondar, whilst they have the Mekon held as hostage. Despite the Mekon getting free again, they hijack a telezero reflector ship and escape into space (the telezero is the Mekon's most potent weapon). Here, both the Treens and the Therons fight over the ship. There is a sequence that is sweepingly cinematic in its scope, where the Therons finally cross over to the ruined spaceship to rescue its crew. However, the same scenes show Hampson the non scientist: wisps of smoke drift out into the vacuum of space; spacecraft manouevre as if they were flying aerodynamically. But then, he was not the first to make that mistake, and he certainly will not be the last.

The telezero ship is abandoned, but just before they leave they realise they are missing the Dapon - who has made his way back to the deserted ship, and crashes it kamikaze fashion onto Mekonta. There is a short passage where Sondar expresses surprise at there still being such spirit left in the Atlantines, and Dan saluting him as a hero. As a sentiment, it no doubt went down well in the post war years, but is a little more difficult to take in the 90s.

Then it is decided that now the expedition is complete again, it is time to return to Earth to warn of the Mekon's plans. But the Treens have got there first.

While on Venus, the captured trio of Peabody, Guest and Digby have to record messages for their loved ones as part of a Mekon deception scheme. Part of Digby's goes .. " Remember Sunnymouth, Auntie? Well, it's just like Sunnymouth here." Aunt Anastasia puts on her hat and coat and takes off for Spacefleet HQ, forcing her way into Sir Hubert's deputy's office (I have the original artwork for this scene) and persuades him that they are being deceived by the Treens. Sunnymouth was a town that Digby had visited as a youngster, had been locked up in a case of mistaken identity, and had never been back to. So the conclusion is that Digby is imprisoned on Venus and that the message is a hidden warning. The Treen expedition is tackled straightaway.

When Dan and Co. arrive on Earth, there is a meeting of the Earth Government where Dan introduces Sondar and the Theron representative Volstar. He explains that there is a stalemate on Venus, that the Treens have a device that will prevent all explosions, stop all machines. But he reckons that this can be turned to Earth's advantage: men sail for pleasure when there are engines, ride horses when there are cars, and so on. Humans are less hidebound, more resourceful than Treens. Humans also have more initiative, whereas Treens need orders from on high. There are again resonances here with the British view of themselves and the British view of the Germans and Japanese in the War.

Hence all the horse drawn troops of Earth are assembled for a glider borne invasion of Venus. And of course it comes off. And rather than dictate terms to the Treens, Dan asks for co operation in order to get food convoys to Earth.

So what are we to make of the story? At the simplest, it is good versus evil, and of course good triumphs as it has right on its side. But let us think what virtues are embodied in Dan, Spacefleet and the Earth, as opposed to the Mekon, Treens and Venus.

Dan, of course, is presented as the paragon of all the virtues. He does not lie, he does not cheat. Some people are rather repelled by this " Head Prefect" approach, some prefer their heroes to have some redeeming flaws. Dan is given none.

This, again, is a very 1950s approach. There were enough problems in the world without having to load them onto your heroes as well. And there was also a deeper sense of moral certainty, reinforced by the war. No one who had seen newsreel of the German camps, or of the way prisoners of war were treated by the Japanese needed reminding that there was a dichotomy between right and wrong which took no explaining, but which was obvious and instinctive.

A lot of those people also forget, though, that it was the British who invented the " concentration camp" in the Boer War, in order to prevent the Boer kommandos receiving aid from outlying farmsteads. The intention might have been different, but in some ways the result was the same. Conditions in the camps were so poor that many Boer women and children - perhaps as many as 26,000 - died of disease, and the Boers never forgot it. That is why the Boers were so ready to declare South Africa a republic. The British Empire didn't have hands that were that clean, but it was still felt in 1950 that our hands were cleaner than most. Suez was to cloud that perception.

As a result of the Cold War, too, a lot of compromises were made. Thus, subtly, did the Western democracies come to seem no better than the forces they were opposing. A lot of dubious regimes were propped in on the grounds that " he might be a bastard, but he's our bastard." . Such moral doubts were beyond a boys' comic story however, and in 1950 and 1951 such doubts had not yet crept in.

So how does the Mekon fit into these ideologies? In a sense, he is Hitler and Stalin (still alive in 1950, although not such a figure of evil as he would be later seen to be) personified. What is more worrying, particularly to me, is that his title is Chief Scientist! Is this how scientists are meant to be - emotionless, calculating and amoral? And talking of moral values, scientists had been widely seen to have lost their moral innocence as a consequence of their work on the atomic bomb. And it was more than innocence they lost. They were shown as impotent as well. They made the bomb, but played absolutely no part in its subsequent use. There seemed something Pilate like to some in this; there is a degree of moral abnegation here.

And there is a polarity in the different societies. Earth is not directly shown as a democracy, but that is implicit. It has a World Government, and so no longer has much in the way of standing armies and the like. Disarmament is universal. The Treens are shown as insect like in social structure, and rather as in Nazi Germany, are perceived as lacking in initiative, needing orders and direction. That might have been true of the Nazi hierarchy but cannot have been true of the German armed services, else they would never have had the success they did.

The Therons are portrayed interestingly: they have mechanised the means of production so much that they now live as families in great floating homes in the sky, unconcerned with events outside. Dan has to shame them into action: he likens them to ostriches, their heads buried in the sand. President Kalon is obviously stung by this remark, since he makes subsequent references to it. Again, Earth needs to point out the moral duty. But again, you can point to Second War references - is this not the USA in 1940, watching evil spreading across Europe yet not wanting to become involved? The storyline has one other feature that had resonances in contemporary Britain: food shortages. Britain at the time was under rationing that was extremely severe. The ostensible reason for wanting to mount a Venus expedition was to obtain more food supplies.

As a strip, it was immensely popular at the time, and the artwork and production values were seen as superb - which tells us more about the times than it does about Dan Dare and the Eagle! The artwork was usually competent, but despite flashes of inspiration, it does not match up to Hampson's later work.

Dan Dare was to go on in many another story, and in many another guise, but none quite matched this first story for sheer invention and narrative scope. Indeed, I do not think the strip has been matched by any other in the quality of its production and the strength of its characters and storyline. This was Hampson's masterpiece.

Subsequent stories.

Below is a list of all the Dan Dare stories in the original Eagle with commentary:

Pilot of the Future (Venus story).

Artist Hampson and others, script Hampson. See above.

Red Moon Mystery.

Artist Hampson and Johns, then the studio team takes over. Story by Hampson from an idea by George Beardmore, an Eagle scriptwriter. A clever and effective storyline, and one which made a clever use of science. The creatures inhabiting the Red Moon are akin to space locusts: they feed off lush planets. They are able to detect them by the presence of chlorophyll in the spectrum of the light from the planet. Peabody has the idea of decoying the Red Moon away using a chlorophyll lamp; indeed, not even that, but a gigantic lamp fitted with appropriate filters.

The artwork was very varied: Hampson at his best contrasting with some very indifferent studio work.

Marooned on Mercury

Originally Hampson, but artwork taken over by Johns and Tomlinson, story by Chad Varah (founder of the Samaritans), when Hampson fell ill. A good, standard Mekon story. The consistency of artwork throughout (although the duo had their weaknesses) helped the story.

Operation Saturn.

Initially Hampson, then studio team, then Walduck (freelance). Story Hampson, although later on credits are given to Don Riley (pen name for Basil Dawson, a BBC actor who also wrote the novel Dan Dare on Mars and a Dr Who episode). A story which starts off with good Hampson artwork and a strong storyline. It becomes a little tired near the end.

Prisoners of Space.

Artwork was by Desmond Walduck, a freelance artist, based on visuals supplied by Hampson and the studio. Script by Alan Stranks. an Australian who also scripted PC49. The third Mekon story. The story line is often a little gung ho even by the standards of the 50s.

The Man from Nowhere

Rogue Planet.

These two linked stories begin Hampson's second period, where he is also working closely with Harley. Script by Stranks. The story opens with one of the classic Hampson pieces of artwork - the Venus Embassy ball - and builds up suspense by not revealing the face of the alien for three months!

The style of artwork is also different, being smoother, generally more accomplished, and lighter in style. However, it feels a little less original than Hampson's earlier style.

Reign of the Robots

The Ship That Lived.

This, together with the Venus story, must be the classic Mekon story. The artwork throughout is excellent and the storyline well worked out. The second story is in effect a coda to the first. It is interesting to see the Second War resonances in the story: Spacefleet in captivity could be likened to the Japanese prisoner of war camps, and the sequence where Anastasia returns to Venus is reminiscent of the return from some wartime bombing sortie.

The Phantom Fleet

A less than successful story. After the death of Stranks Eric Eden takes over some of the scriptwriting, and the quality of the scripts suffers. The story starts off in a fairly promising manner, but then rather loses its way. It was wrapped up rather hastily as it perceived as not going anywhere very fast. The freelance artist Walduck finished the story.

Safari in Space

Terra Nova

Trip to Trouble.

Initially Hampson. This story was supposed to introduce faster than light travel (not explicitly, but in effect) and send Dan off to various star systems in search of his father. Hampson seems to attack the new story line with enthusiasm, and produces some of his best ever artwork. Half way through Terra Nova, disillusioned in his relationship with the editorial staff, and with a takeover of Eagle's publishers in progress, Hampson resigned from Dan Dare (although not from Eagle). And after the sorcerer, came the apprentices. Frank Bellamy, Eagle's other outstanding artist, was brought in to work with Harley and Watson. It was an unhappy mix - Bellamy's first ever drawing of Dan was so unrecognisable that the editor asked Harley to draw another one, and paste it over Bellamy's. It was the sort of collage that would have been routine in the Hampson days, although I can only guess how Bellamy took it. The artwork also became very scrappy as a result of the various changes that were in hand. The styles of the different artists were too far apart, and there is no clear visual style. And stories were now to be limited to around 25 episodes at a time; the script was intended to develop more pace. As a consequence, the trilogy somewhat peters out at the end: Dan's father had been killed as a resistance fighter. So - search over.

Project Nimbus.

This story was to become controversial among the fans since Bellamy had been asked to do a revamp on the strip, with new costumes, spacesuits and so on. The Hampson studio had been cut out, and was to be no more. All its models, style sheets and the rest were never used again. Bellamy worked together with Harley, and the mismatch was very much apparent, particularly when both artists had work in the same edition of Eagle. The story was reasonable, although with a weak ending. Endings had always been a problem with Dan Dare stories, but this was more anticlimactic than usual. Bellamy was to leave Dan Dare at the end of this story, his agreed year up, to work on a strip that would be much more congenial to him, Fraser of Africa.

Mission of the Earthmen

Solid Space Mystery

Platinum Planet

The Earth Stealers

These four stories were drawn by Don Harley and Bruce Cornwell over the course of the next two years, and scripted by Eric Eden. Mission of the Earthmen begins with what is one of my least favourite front pages: an attempt to do a 'big scene' as Hampson would have done it, and that Bellamy had done. But this one does not work: it looks like something from a Hollywood Bmovie, with the aliens in vaguely medieval tunics (another cliche) emitting deathless dialogue such as: " The strangers approach fast!" There are 7 " !" marks on that page! The rest of the story is adequate, although no more.

Solid Space is an attempt at an old style Mekon story, and not bad for what it sets out to do.

Platinum Planet starts off well, but looks increasingly tired as it goes on. The Earth Stealers is even less inspirational, but now Dan Dare is sharing the front page with another feature. But after these stories Dan Dare was to be relegated to the inside pages.

Operation EarthSaver

Web of Fear

The Evil One

Operation Fireball

Dark Star

Now Keith Watson was to be the artist, and had to work singlehanded - but now the layout was two pages in black and white on the inside of the comic. Although it had only been less than three years since Keith had left Eagle, the new management had had no idea that he had worked previously for Eagle, on the Dan Dare strip, when he was offered the job. The stories were very short - between 9 and 14 episodes long. There was not room for much characterisation in stories of this length! The scriptwriter had changed - it was now David Motton, whose dialogue was extremely clumsy at times. All the familiar characters except Dan and Digby disappeared, although Watson smuggled in one or two likenesses from time to time. Now it was just Dan and Digby.

Operation TimeTrap

Wandering World

Big City Caper

Time Trap started in the same format as the others, but the latest (and to be final) editor of Eagle, David Bartholomew, decided to make Dan Dare the selling point of the comic once more. So the strip was promoted to the front page, in colour, and with a further one and a half pages of black and white inside. This was a curious format, and didn't always suit Keith's talents. Oddly. for an artist, he was colourblind, and the colouring was done elsewhere. Who did the early ones is uncertain, but Eric Eden did some of the later work. The stories were also longer now, but Motton was unable to provide a cohesive narrative, and so the stories appear to meander along.

All Treens Must Die

The Mushroom

The Moon Sleepers

Now two pages of colour, one at the front and one at the back. Despite its melodramatic title, All Treens Must Die had the potential to become a minor classic in the saga. There must have been a deliberate policy decision to go back to the " old days" , and Keith was using visual references dating back to the Venus story. The story line was strong and original - at least, at the outset -but it suddenly crumbled in a typically Motton weak ending. The remaining stories in this format were adequate.

The Singing Scourge

Give Me The Moon

Yet another format - now the double page centre spread. The Singing Scourge has a story line obscure even by Motton standards.

The Menace from Jupiter

Now the strip was down to one page only, and, oddly, Keith's style changes quite drastically. After an idea stolen from Wells' novel The War of the Worlds (the giants of Jupiter catch an Earth cold from Digby), the saga effectively winds up. As a very last page, Keith draws one of his favourite newsreel scenes where Dan is promoted to the position of Spacefleet Controller whilst the cast stand round making admiring comments. (The original idea for the press conference/news reel scenes comes in the Man from Nowhere. Keith redraws this scene several times - e.g. Big City Caper, here, and in his 1989 story).

But from now on, apart from a brief 4 episode oddity from Eric Kinkaid, it was to be reprints all the way, not only in Dan Dare, but Eagle generally. These were initially presented as Dan's " memoirs" . Later resurrected versions of Eagle were to have Dan Dare strips of many and varied nature; some, drawn by ex-fans, relatively true to the original. But without a storyline that carried conviction, these strips lacked the edge of the Hampson days. Frank Hampson lived and breathed the strip, and he was a man of imagination. That showed up in the strip. Imitations are never quite the same.

The studio and assistant artists.

At the very start of Eagle, in early 1950, Hampson had drawn a large part of the comic. As well as Dan Dare, he also had drawn The Great Adventurer, based on the life of St Paul; Tommy Walls, a full colour page of semi-advertising; and Rob Conway, a black and white adventure strip starring a young ATC cadet. He needed to reduce his workload, since it was his stated view that each artist should have to produce only one colour page per week. He rapidly drafted in several artists, and set up a studio, initially in Southport, moved down to Epsom, and then made a final move within Epsom.

The studio set up was very elaborate, with a darkroom and model making facilities. Hampson would sketch some ideas, then the team would pose for the particular frames, before the pictures were pencilled, inked, and coloured. Hampson' father was also very involved in the modelling, as well as Hampson himself, whilst later, professional models were used. There was also an elaborate system of style sheets, where all aspects of the strip, such as uniforms and the like were drawn, documented and filed.

For a boy's comic this attention to detail was unprecedented and also highly costly, one of the factors that was to be its downfall in later years. It was also. of course. one of the reasons for the strip's popularity. A readership knows instinctively whether a writer or artist believes in what he is doing and giving it his all.

Joan Porter was in charge of a lot of the studio administration, did a lot of the colouring, and was Frank's personal assistant, up to and including his last strip, The Road of Courage. She has not talked about her time on Eagle publicly, partly out of deference to Hampson and his family.

Harold Johns was slightly younger than Hampson, came from Southport too, and went to the same grammar school and art school as Hampson. He worked closely with Greta Tomlinson; so much so that on one of the studio reorganisations, they set up separately in a studio in Banstead. Initially, they took over the Rob Conway strip, but this story was soon to die a death in the Himalayas, one of Eagle's less lamented strips. Then he began working closely with Hampson on Dan Dare, and his style can be clearly seen at the end of the Venus story. At the start of the next story, The Red Moon Mystery, there appears a double signature of Frank Hampson and Harold Johns. The only other artist to be acknowledged in this sort of way was Don Harley during Man from Nowhere.

The Red Moon Mystery ends rather messily, artistically speaking, and it not always clear who the artist is. Hampson had started illustrating the following story, Marooned on Mercury, when he fell ill, and Harold, with Greta, took over. The story was scripted by Chad Varah, founder of the Samaritans, who was a clerical friend of Marcus Morris, and wrote a good deal for Eagle.

The start of Operation Saturn is Hampson at his best, but some way into the story, the studio team starts taking over, and Harold John's style can again be seen. Johns ended his time with Eagle drawing Tommy Walls, when he accepted some outside work. This led to his dismissal by Marcus Morris. What part Hampson played in this is uncertain. Harold Johns died in 1980.

Greta also left, married, and moved to the Middle East. She still draws and paints, and lives in Haslemere.

Eric Eden also was from Southport, and worked mainly on Dan Dare. Figure work was not his speciality; rather backgrounds and technical drawing. He also wrote scripts after the death of Alan Stranks, and provided the stories for Don Harley and Bruce Cornwell when they took over the strip.

Jocelyn Thomas worked on the back page story, The Great Adventurer, the story of St Paul, after Hampson's start. This was taken over a year later by Norman Williams, who specialised in the back page lives of heroes until his death. She left after a few years, also to be married.

Bruce Cornwell was Canadian, and somewhat older than the others. He, like Eric Eden, was not good at figure work, but instead drew technical scenes - often maritime in nature. His can be seen in Eagle No. 4, where Tommy Walls competes in a dinghy race. Hampson is obviously drawing the faces, Cornwell the sailing scenes. He worked on a variety of strips for Eagle, left, came back again, and finally fell out with Hampson. But in 1961, when Bellamy gave up Dan Dare, he and Don Harley took over the trip for the next two years. Bruce Cornwell also contributed to the 1953 and 1963 Dan Dare Space Annuals.

Don Harley joined the studio in 1952, almost straight from art school. In time he was to become Hampson's chief assistant, and then draw the strip himself, with Bruce Cornwell. He has also illustrated numerous annuals, and currently is illustrating The Phoenix Mission commissioned by various members of Eagle Society. His style is very proficient, but for me, too flat and bland -in a word, boring, although I must admit this is a personal point of view.

Keith Watson would be the last major artist to join the studio. He had no Art School training, but instead applied for the job by the rather novel expedient of drawing a full size mock front page, featuring all the characters commenting on how well Hampson drew them compared with the other artists, and that they weren't entirely sure about this fellow who was drawing them at the moment. It was witty and effective, and enough to get him the job. Soon after Hampson left, Keith followed, and drew Captain Condor for a year on the Lion. By this time Eagle had been comprehensively vandalised, and the then editor offered him Dan Dare without realising that he had already been involved for three years.

Now Dan Dare had been relegated to the inside in black and white. I happen to think Watson's best artwork was done during this period - maybe because he was colour blind (although Eric Eden was to colour his later work), and partly because he was fresh and less rushed. Later, various formats were used: a front colour page with one and a half pages of black and white inside; two pages of colour, front page and back page; then the centre spread in colour. His last story was one page of colour per week.

There is a story attached to Watson's first solo effort for Eagle. The story was called Operation Earthsaver, and his first version of the top half of the the first page was turned down, either by him or by Eagle. The perspective is unusual but interesting. I came across the original of the first version when buying some Hampson artwork. As a young boy, the owner had written to Keith care of Eagle, saying what a pleasure it was to see good Dan Dare artwork again. Keith wrote back, thanking him, and enclosed the original board as a gift. The generosity seems typical of the man.

One point that emerges very clearly from the reminiscences of former studio artists was that Hampson. was meticulous in detail, but not always well organised. As Bruce Cornwell says : " Time didn't mean much to Frank and to put it in a nutshell - his skill and vision was only equalled by his inability to organise and balance studio production." [Eagle Times, Summer 1993]. " ... my impression of Frank was of a highly skilled artist; dedicated, or should I say, obsessed, and working under a great strain." [Cornwell, Eagle Times, Summer 1998].

The hours of work, then and later, affected the others too. Greta once went to bed very late one Saturday night, awoke Sunday afternoon and walked down the corridor to the bathroom hallucinating pools of fire. Don Harley in Epsom, later : " ... I did so much work in the first few weeks that it had a very odd effect. Harold, Greta and Jocelyn held a party and after a few drinks I started to hallucinate Dan Dare. I can remember bright lights were flashing past my eyes and I kept seeing strip cartoons, frames and whole pages - it was amazing." . And : " ... I just kept seeing Dan Dare in strip frames. It was a good party though - one of the best parties I have been to!" [Eagle Times, Summer 1995].

Conclusion.

There was a lot of preparatory work for an issue of Dan Dare. Frank would have roughed out the frames from the story line, then photographic poses for the appropriate frame were made. This might include models that had been specially constructed, if spaceships or other hardware were involved. Then the visual was drawn, which was almost the real thing, but not quite. This was for Frank to look at and comment on, checking insignia and the like. Then the final artboard was drawn. The " Story So Far" , the " Dan Dare Pilot of the Future" , and the big red masthead top right would be added at the printers.

It is often very difficult to decide who drew what, even from frame to frame. There are some artists whose representation of a particular character gives them away immediately. Digby is a good litmus test: each artist had his own variation on what the character looks like. Some frames were literally collages: I have seen a frame from Man From Nowhere where a background has been painted, then the figures cut out from elsewhere and pasted over. A similar technique has been used on another Hampson artboard I own of the Phant Control Room from Rogue Planet.

This technique was also very much in use during the Harley/Cornwell years, except that in this case it looks as though the board was passed from one artist to the other. Cornwell would do all the backgrounds, the scenery, the spacecraft; Harley the faces and figure work.

But for the studio technique of Hampson to be viable, then a large circulation has to be guaranteed, In the mid 50s, without the competition of television, this was possible. And the situation became somewhat chicken and egg: without the circulation, the studio was not viable; without the studio, there would not be the same large circulation.

Put another way, a cut in quality is likely to lead to a cut in circulation; a cut in circulation means economies are necessary; economies mean a cut in quality. The situation in 1959 was not helped by Hampson's increasing isolation and alienation from the editorial offices in London. The final straw was that Hampson was not able to take his characters and studio to another publisher: whoever owned Eagle owned the copyright to Dan Dare. But Dan Dare without Hampson and his studio would be a shadow of his for