The stories were very well thought out with a lot of detail and sometimes complex story lines but were always Plausible. The stories were set in the distant future of the late 1990's but had a World War II feel about it which earn Dare his tag of Biggles in space or the British Buck Rodgers.
At the time there was little known about our own solar system this was a time before the space race of the 1960's and there were no space probes to tell us about the planets so most of the early stories were based around our own solar system the first story has Dan Dare making the first successful flight to Venus and many of them included extraterrestrial life from planets within our solar system.
Most of the early stories saw Dan do battle with his arch enemy the Mekon and the Treens.
With its highly detailed art work by Hampson and his team on the story in the 1950's Dan Dare rocketed sales for the Eagle to well over the 900'000 copies the first issue sold but by the end of the 1950's Hampson had given up the rains on the story and in the 1960's it was taken on by Frank Bellamy,Don Harley,Keith Watson,Gerald Palmer and Bruce Cornwall. With the change of staff the strip change slightly from the rounded colorful rockets to more stylized sci-fi shapes of the 1960's some say that the change on the strip caused to be removed from the front cover of the Eagle to the inside pages and from color to black and white in 1962.
Dan was returned to the front cover in 1967 and stayed there till the Eagle ended in 1969.
There was no Dan Dare stories in any comics between 1969 to 1977. Dan was then reanimated from suspended animation to appear in a new comic called 2000 AD.
Dan Dare was now scripted by Ken Armstrong and Pat Mills with art work by Massimo Bellarddinlli.
In these stories Dare had been in suspended animation for over 200 years and was reanimated to do battle once again with the Mekon but other then these 2 there was no one else from the original cast brought back.
The tone of the story had changed as well to be tailored more to the punk attitude of the 2000 AD comic it's self.
Bellardinei's Dare is not much like the Dare of the 50's and 60's and is only really recognizable by his wavy eyebrows.
Dan's first stint on the comic ran for 23 issues then he had a months break to return now being written by Gerry Finley-Day with art by Dave Gibbons and was sent on a Star Trek like deep space mission.
This mission had some interesting stories with a cliff hanger ending of Dan alone adrift in space.
Dan was again rested for another 14 issues and returned in 2000 AD 100th issue or Prog now written by Tom Tully Dare is rescued by the Mekon but has lost his memory. Dan is conned by the Mekon into becoming one of his army.
Tom Tully re-imaged Dan again making him more superhero like with a colorful tight uniform only thing missing was a cape!
This story line ended in issue/prog 126 (18th Aug 1979) with Dan and Sondar on the run from just about everyone and in search of the Mekon to clear there names? This was the set up for the promised next story but it never came to be.
We now move on to the new Eagle which hit the shelves in 1982 and once again Dan Dare was the flagship strip.
for the launch the artist was Gerry Embleton and he brought Dan back in very much the style of the 50's and 60's Dan Dare.
This time Dan Dare was the great grandson of the original Dare this left the Mekon as the only original character from the original strip.
The comic and Dan had a massive change in 1983 where the comic change from a glossy type magazine to more like the standard UK comics of the time printed on poorer quality paper but some say that Dan had a bigger change with Ian kennedy making him younger and with blond hair.
This is about the time that I started to become a Dan Dare fan being born in the late 1970's I missed the 50 and 60's version first time round only now starting to pick issues up from this period and I was a little to young for 2000 AD although I now have a full set of the Dan Dare issues.
Between 1983 and 1987 Dan had many different writers and artist all bring in and getting rid of characters many of which mirror or where descendants of characters from the 1950's original strip.
Dan Dare stayed in this form until 1987 then the story became more violent with Dan in charge of a bunch of Space commandos.The story seemed to go on forever and was not some of his best work to be honest
On the 29th August 1989 The Eagle revamped Dan again into a style which was much like to original Dan Dare of the 50's and 60's
Some of the stories from this time are my favorite Dan Dare stories.
Dan was brought back with a full cast so all the originals from the 1950's were back in the strip.
Sadly by this time the Eagle was on the wain and in the early 1990's it went from a weekly comic to a larger monthly comic mainly filled with reprints of older stories but Dan Dare was original all the way till the end.
From 1994 to 2008 Dan appeared in a couple of comics that did not last very long.
Then in 2003 Spaceships Away Launched which is a mail order quarterly Magazine. Spaceships Away carries a Dan Dare Strip that is very much in the style of the 1950/60's Dan Dare.
In 2008 Virgin Comics brought out a monthly Dan Dare comic. Richard Branson the owner of Virgin is quoted to be a Dan Dare fan. Sadly Virgin comics did not last very long and the comic only ran for 7 issues last issue dated July 2008 with art work by Gary Erskine and script by Garth Ennis.
so from 2008 till now the only place you will catch Dan Dare will be in back issue form or from Spaceships away.
So is Colonel Daniel McGregor Dare destined to be a thing of comic book past or will we see him again in a mainline comic? Me personally I would love to see him back.
To carry on my resent posting of comics from my youth I will be posting some scans of Dan Dare stories from different era's of Dan's comic book run the one bellow is from the early 1990's and appeared in the Eagle comic just before the comic went monthly.
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