The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log

Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future. These words used to send thrills down the spines of a generation of post-war kids every week. Imagine, cold, grey, post-war Britain – still in the grip of the Austerity measures and with many cities still full of bombed-out sites from the devastation of World War Two. Then imagine in 1950 this new comic called the Eagle with its bright, glowing, colour leading story – Dan Dare. Gagarin’s epic spaceflight was still over a decade away, but kids in Britain could travel to Venus with Colonel Daniel McGregor Dare in beautifully-drawn spaceships ever week.

Dan was patterned very much on the Battle of Britain style of heroic RAF pilot, drawing upon the period when some confidently expected boffins to build rocket ships which former Spitfire aces would fly into space (presumably with an extra large helmet so there would be sufficient room for their pipes). Square of jaw and equally able to take on the bad guys with his fists or his spaceship, Dan recalls a simpler time, before heroes became complicated. While the Noir genre of the 40s and 50s had given us the anti-hero with selfish motivations and dark secrets and vices, Dan remained planted resolutely in the Britain of the 30s and 40s.

Half a century later and I think this is a part of Dan’s charm; he’s a real hero, the type you can look up to as kid, the type that won’t let you down and who will always do the right thing. Much as I love a lot of modern novels and comics where our heroes (super or otherwise) are made more human through their many failings and complicated emotions and needs, there is a lot to be said for an uncomplicated hero leading a straightforward adventure (and who doesn’t enjoy a fine adventure yarn, from Stevenson’s Treasure Island through to Indiana Jones?). The lack of swearing and sex also means that Dan remains an imaginative series which you can share with your children (get them into comics young, we say here!).

And what a series to get them into! Sure, in some ways they may seem unsophisticated to modern readers, but look at those ravishing visuals, feel your imagination soaring with those gleaming, gorgeous rockets. There’s so much optimism in those old stories, remarkably so perhaps, given the creators like Frank Hampson had just come through a world war. But here they are with Dan’s first adventure being to Venus, with Interplanet Space Fleet, not on a mission of conquest, but on a far nobler quest to find new space to grow crops to feed the teeming millions of people on Earth. When the ghastly Mekon tries to enslave the Earth of course Dan stand up to him and sorts him out (although he would always come back).

No hero is complete without his faithful friends of course and Dan is no exception. Always by his side was his northern batman, Digby – partly there for comic relief and to be the bumbling everyman, Dig was every bit as courageous as Dan, following him into all sorts of desperate situations to save the world – its hard not to see in him an echo of the millions of ordinary men who had formed the army which had battled the Nazis; ordinary folk doing extra-ordinary feats.

There is even a basic proto-feminism in the shape of Professor Jocelyn Bell, the gang’s boffin. Although our hero and his chums are taken aback to have a – gasp! – woman travelling to Venus with them, it is made quite clear from the beginning that Jocelyn is no shrinking violet. Clearly far smarter than the boys she is there to explain the science to them but, in a very unusual move for the times, she is prepared to grab a ray gun and fight where necessary, in one episode kicking a superior officer out of the flight seat to take command of a rocket during a dangerous mission because she knows her reflexes are better; beauty, brains and bravery. In a curious historical coincidence a real life British scientist called Jocelyn Bell picked up regular signals on an early radio telescope, discovering the first pulsar (although before they knew this there was speculation it was an alien signal).

But before Dan there was another square-jawed hero who flew in futuristic rocket ships and battled evil villains to save the world. Like Dan he was a multimedia star of his time – radio, books, movies and merchandise – and, like Dan, he has never really gone away, always there waiting for the next generation to discover him and his remarkable adventures once more. I am, of course, talking about the legendary Flash Gordon (no relation, so far as I know, alas).

In 1934 Alex Raymond, looking for a rival SF strip to the successful Buck Rogers, created Flash Gordon for King Features (ironic given that the great Larry Buster Crabbe would play both Buck and Flash in those delightful serials of the era, becoming as immortal as the characters themselves). Flash, a Yale graduate is aboard a plane hit by a meteorite as the Earth faces destruction from a rapidly approaching unknown world. Grabbing a parachute our hero bails out with female passenger Dale Arden in his arms. Landing by the home of the eccentric genius Doctor Hans Zarkov they are soon drawn (at gunpoint) into his desperate attempt to save the world by travelling in his rocket ship to this unknown planet.

Of course, the world is Mungo, ruled by one of the best evil villains of all time (a worthy challenger to Dan Dare’s nasty Mekon) – Ming the Merciless. As with the Dan Dare strips fifteen years later the reader is treated to lavish artwork of futuristic cities and astonishing technologies. And, just like Dan and heroes without number through the ages, Flash has to draw on his selfless devotion to doing the right thing, regardless of the risk to himself, aided and abetted always by his faithful friends (an unlikely group of friends forced into strange circumstance to save the world – still a popular theme as the Lord of the Rings movies proved).

Like Dan Flash too made the leap to radio – the broadcast medium of its day – and then Flash was on the silver screen, appearing in serials with a deliciously over-the-top cliff-hanger at the end of each week’s episode (something the original Doctor Who would do decades later). For many of you I suspect that, like me, repeats of these serials on television (usually during the school holidays) was your first taste of the world of Flash Gordon. Sure they were a little cheesy and obviously old-fashioned, but they had so much heart and charm I loved them.

Alongside those childhood repeats of Flash’s adventures the young me was reading a vibrant new British comic called 2000 AD (how futuristic that date sounded then, just as Dan’s birth date of 1967 must have seemed far off to Hampson when he coined it). In the early pages of what would become such a hugely influential comic (home to Alan Moore, John Wagner and Brian Bolland among many others) was a star – Dan Dare. A very different Dare, resurrected from cryogenic sleep and far tougher than his 50s incarnation. My father read it too and told me of a far superior Dan Dare comic from his youth and of exciting Dan Dare adventures on the radio in the 50s. Flash, I discovered, had also been a comic strip in his day (indeed later Flash strips would pull in legendary talent such as Frank Frazetta and Harry Harrison to work on them).

And that brings me to the point of this wallowing in nostalgia for old heroes (forgive my indulgence, but they are wonderful): both are being made available once more to new generations. The proper versions, not a re-imagining of them as some updated, post-modernist tale, but the original strips. Checker Publishing have been restoring Alex Raymond’s fabulous Flash Gordon for several volumes-worth now (volume 5 is due this winter) alongside several other classic comics series (like Dick Tracy or the early work of Winsor McCay). Here in the UK Titan have been busy with the Classic Dan Dare volumes (complete with features and interviews as a bonus). Both are restoring these classic, priceless strips and offering them in very affordable hardback volumes.

We’re delighted to be able to offer those wonderful books on our web site. Not just because they offer a warm glow of nostalgia for times long gone or because they offer our cynical modern age a glimpse of how earlier generations saw our future. Not just because Flash and Dan represent incredibly important strands of both comic book and Science Fiction history. Not just because both have been hugely influential on generations of writers and artists (the recent Sky Captain drew heavily on Flash and Buck, while Warren Ellis’ award-winning Ministry of Space owes a debt to Dan – just check out the cover – to name but two examples). Those are good reasons, but no, the main reasons I commend these lovely hardback volumes to you is simply because they are wonderful.

Forget the retro-future chic of the artwork (how the future used to look – like Metropolis both old-fashioned and yet imaginatively futuristic to modern eyes) or the science which was proved wrong decades later and, instead, allow yourself the sheer luxury of indulging in a highly imaginative, beautifully illustrated slice of exciting adventure. I love reading complicated anti-heroes like Richard Morgan’s Takeshi Kovacs or empathising with the difficult emotional life of Peter Parker, but there are times when you simply need a good adventure yarn and a clean-cut hero. The more troubled our world becomes the more that need for such a hero is apparent. And when we need them, there they are, one the embodiment of the gung-ho All-American boy the other the unflappable British hero: Flash Gordon and Dan Dare, pilot of the future.

Thanks to the folk at Checker and Titan for help and graphics.