Does anybody have anything to say about British space opera hero DAN DARE ?
I just scanned the Wikipedia article about him ~ He sure has been revived a lot , for an " archetypally (Sp??)post-WWII period " hero !!!!!!!!!!!
I bought a couple of the 80/90s American editions of later-years DD.........
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I've read a bit of the original feature, and seen a little of later versions. It originally appeared in a weekly comic called Eagle and in the 50s it had beautiful painted art by Frank Hampson and the artists from his studio.
It was a front cover feature - the instalments were two pages long, and the first one appeared on the front cover, so all one has to do to see a few pages, albeit at a reduced size, is call up the comic at the GCD. The upper left panel was the comic's title-logo. The original publisher was Hulton Press, Longacre Press took over at the turn of 1959. In 1969 it was absorbed into IPC's Lion.
The strip was very much a mid-century British one. Dan was an idealised RAF pilot, brave, resourceful and cheerful. The chief supporting character was his faithful batman Digby, who was the comic relief. Among the other significant characters were Sir Hubert Guest, the head of Space Fleet, cadet Flamer Spry, Commander Lex O'Malley of the Royal Navy, and a young woman scientist called Professor Peabody, They were equally stock figures - Flamer was game, O'Malley a hearty sailor - but well-handled ones. The characters spoke jauntily in British colloquialisms ("Here we are - all set for a jungle jaunt!") Scientists were always "boffins".
I believe some characters are inherently interesting (Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes), and others have their stature from their adventures having been done so well (Ellery Queen, Flash Gordon). I'd place Dan Dare firmly in the latter camp. The character who transcends the strip was a recurring villain, the Mekon. When first introduced he was the ruler of Venus. He had green skin, a huge head, a spindly body, and floated around on a kind of saucer.
There's much more information here. The B&W stories at the site from late in the original run (presumably not in the public domain, but the site has had them up for at least a decade) are duller than the strip was in its heyday, partly due to less liveliness in the handling of the characters and their much shorter storylines.
A magazine called Spaceship Away publishes continuations of Dan's adventures in the original style.
...2000 AD was originally planned to feature a 70s-ised Dan Dare as the star character and did so in the first ish , a certain Judge-mental dude was only introduced in Prog 2 !!!!!!!!!!!
It's strange to realise how few years the character had been gone when 2000 AD started in. There are a few images of pages from the strip's heyday here, including the full page picture of Mekonta from the original storyline. (Adult content elsewhere at site.)
...I have a weird story regarding 2AD's launch that I haven't time to type now , Luke...as you're non-American you may find it especially of interest/oddball !!!!!!!!!
The 2000 AD version was initially drawn by Massimo Belardinelli and later by Dave Gibbons. As a kid I read one instalment of the Belardinelli version, in which Dan was part of a fleet fighting a space war with the living spaceships of the Biogs over Jupiter's red spot. The Biog ships had tentacles they used to grasp our side's ships. There's a description of this version of the strip here. It's probably fair but it did have some good SF elements - those living spaceships, and the situation on the cover of 2000 AD #4 (which I saw as a kid).
I read a handful of the Dave Gibbons instalments. (I should note for clarity that neither Belardinelli or Gibbons wrote.) Dan wore a fur-lined jacket and was the captain of a spaceship exploring unknown worlds. It was like a blue-collar Star Trek. There's a double-page spread from one of Gibbons's instalments here that was coloured in the comic.
...I guess Digby was " the British pop culture standard of the working-class assistant who has a good relationship with the " - Um , I guess higher-class level , anyway - hero ?
On a B&W episode of the Roger Miller Saint series I remember wondering if Simon's cheerfully rough-edged buddy was supposed to be an " op Norf " British pop-cult commonplace or the American equivalent " lovable Brooklynite " (Bahstonian or Phillyite , if they were being particularly daring .) stock character !
Yup. Digby was from Wigan.