Say! What's going on Dan Dare?
2003-10-24

A note from the editor: Sprout is a columnist who regularly contributes to the 2000 AD Review website. Observant readers will notice that he nicked his logo from the back cover of issue 28 of The Brentford Mercury, so we blackmailed the thieving git into writing us an article.

Readers of my column on the 2000 AD Review website will know that I have a special place in my heart for 2000 AD's incarnation of Dan Dare, and it's about him I'd like to talk to you this evening / morning / afternoon / night (delete as applicable). Dan Dare began life back in 1950 as the lead character in the boys' comic Eagle. With glorious artwork by Frank Hampson and, later, Frank Bellamy, the strip was without a doubt the prime reason that Eagle was a success. Now, comics were big business in those days anyway (Eagle's print run for the first issue was over a million copies), but with Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future at the helm, it couldn't help but be a success.

So when IPC decided back in 1976 to launch an SF comic, they chose to revive Dare. But the original storylines had all been set in the year 1999, which had seemed a lot further away in 1950 than in 1976. Not only that, but Eagle's Dare was a product of the post-war era. Stiff upper lip and all that. Pip pip. Etc. It wasn't hard to picture Dare having gone to school with the likes of Billy Bunter and William Brown. There was no doubt about it: Dare had to be updated.

This is what they did: They decided that the original Dan Dare had been in a serious accident and had been put into cryogenic suspension, to be revived in the year 2177, when medical science was advanced enough to cure him. So... What we got was a Dan Dare who looked, sounded and acted nothing like the Dare from Eagle.

Dare was given the top spot in 2000 AD - centre pages, colour - and pushed heavily. This made no discernable difference to us kids, because we didn't know who Dan Dare was anyway. Besides, in issue 2 a new strip debuted. It was called Judge Dredd, and to be honest Judge Dredd crapped all over Dan Dare. Metaphorically.

Because of this, after about six months Dare he was taken away and re-re-envisaged. When he came back, he was in charge of a large starship, on a mission to seek out new life, new civ... Hold on a second! But this one didn't really take either, so it was decided to revive Dare's old nemesis from Eagle... The Mekon! Oooh, he was evil, he was! A cross between a space-hopper and a twiglet, he came from Venus (does that mean that he was really a woman?) and he'd had lots of diabolical schemes thwarted by Dare back in the old days. This time around, he brainwashed Dare into thinking he was a member of a galactic police force, on a mission to find a powerful device called the Cosmic Claw.

Dare managed to find the thing, but for some reason that I now forget the brainwashing wore off and his memory returned. So now he had this wonderful weapon, a nice new uniform, and along the way he'd met up with his old alien buddy Sondar. A couple of episodes later, Dare and Sondar picked up a cool new ship, the Crusader, and soon after a new companion, the female alien Morag. That was in issue 126, when this happened...

Well, we're now on issue 1359 of 2000 AD, and we're still bloody waiting for Dan and Sondar to return.

Sometime in the 1980s, Eagle was relaunched (that is, a completely new comic came out that was called Eagle), and Dan Dare reappeared. But this Dan Dare had nothing to do with the one from 2000 AD: this guy was the grandson or something of the Dan Dare from the original Eagle (I'm guessing that imagination didn't play much of a part when it came to names in the Dare dynasty). This one didn't make any kind of impression whatsoever and soon faded into obscurity.

In 1990 or thereabouts, Revolver appeared. This was an "adult" comic that wasn't really up to much (a comic strip about the life of dead junkie musician Jimi Hendrix? Oooh. Be still my heart), but it did feature an interesting revival of Dan Dare.

Called simply Dare, this was in some ways a "Dark Knight Returns" version: Dare is an old man, the world is crumbling around him, and so forth. It was interestingish, but what was more interesting was that Revolver was cancelled before the Dare storyline ended. History repeating itself? No, thankfully! The final episode of Dare was printed in 2000 AD's "sister" comic Crisis.

And so, finally, Dan Dare had returned to 2000 AD! Kinda. If you squint. And don't think about it too hard. Which, unfortunately, I have a tendency to do, because that's my job.

I'd still love to see the Cosmic Claw Dare return one day, because I thought it was a great story. Sure, I was much younger then, but I realised that it was silly stuff and I didn't mind. However, I seem to be all on my own on this one.

For all its faults, the 2000 AD version of Dan Dare is still important... It's possible that 2000 AD might never have made it if they hadn't had Dare's name to bandy about in press releases.

And without 2000 AD, the past twenty-six and a half years of my life would have been very different.

I'd probably have had to start reading books...