Classic Dan Dare: The Red Moon Mystery [Hardcover]

Frank Hampson (Author)

Book Description

Series: Classic Dan Dare | Publication Date: January 1, 2005

It?s chocks away and tally-ho, chaps - Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future, is back! First published in classic British comic The Eagle, these are the original adventures of one of the best known and loved of British comic characters, presented in a new series of gorgeous library editions from Titan. In this interplanetary epic, Dan and his trusty crew must head once more into the dangerous, icy depths of space to uncover the secrets of a strange red moon that has entered the Solar System and threatens Earth with destruction! Includes a brand new foreword by Uncanny X-Men scribe Chris Claremont and part two of a previously unseen interview with Dan Dare creator Frank Hampson!

Editorial Reviews

Review

" ... a wonderfully exciting collection of stories, escapism for boys in short trousers stuffed full of catapults and cigarette cards." -- BBC Cult online, review by Nev Fountain, 14 December 2004

" This is brilliant, original science fiction, paving the way for such projects as Star trek and Star Wars..." -- Gatewaymonthly.com October 2004

About the Author

Frank Hampson is perhaps best known as the creator and original artist for Dan Dare, but he also illustrated a number of children's books. Dan Dare was first published in the British comic The Eagle in April 1950 and was last published as an ongoing series in 1996 - although Dan had undergone more than a few changes by then.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 96 pages
• Publisher: Titan Books (January 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1840236663
• ISBN-13: 978-1840236668
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 0.6 x 12 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,384,856 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 'Fifties' Visions of a Bright Future, September 22, 2005

By 

Gord Wilson "alivingdog.com" (Bellingham, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Classic Dan Dare: The Red Moon Mystery (Hardcover)

"The dream of space travel is glorious, the contemporary reality is dismal," remarked William Sims Bainbridge in 1976. But nowhere was it more glorious than on the front page of The Eagle, a weekly British boys' paper, in Frank Hampson's visionary comic serial, Dan Dare. The Eagle was published from 1950 through 1969 by the Christian Publicity Society and Hampson also drew a never-rivaled story comic of the life of Jesus of Nazareth called "The Road of Courage." As he says in an interview in this volume, Hampson wasn't religious, but he felt that "young people were getting a rough deal in those years so soon after the end of the war...I wanted to give them something that made the future more hopeful, in human terms."

Hampson gave unstintingly, creating one of the most visually arresting comics ever, until the Eagle was taken over by corporate raiders, and the job fell to his friend, an equally fine artist, Frank Bellamy. As with Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, Dan Dare spun off numerous toys highly valued by collectors (Young, Duin and Richardson devote an entire chapter to Dan Dare in their book, Blast Off!: Rockets, Robots, Ray Guns, and Rarities from the Golden Age of Space Toys, Dark Horse Books), and in its heyday, 60,000 junior spacemen pledged their loyalty in the Eagle Club.

Titan Books, UK, has launched an ambitious publishing project to reprint all the color, two-page Dan Dare cliff-hanger strips in beautiful 9" X 12" hard cover, coffee table hardbacks. "The Red Moon Mystery" was the second Eagle serial, after "Pilot of the Future," and was originally published from vol. 2 #26 - vol. 3 #11 of the Eagle. As comic artist Cliff Claremont (X-Men) writes in the introduction, the weekly arrival of Dan Dare was one of the few things to lighten the gloom and doom of post-war Britain. As such, many now- grown fans will welcome his return. Amazon's low price makes Dan Dare the gift book of the year, and a new generation may find themselves captivated by Hampson's visions of the future.