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 the first part of this rip-snorting story, Dan and his crew travel to Venus, hoping to find new resources to feed a starving Earth. But the planet is already the lair of the pint-sized megalomaniac, The Mekon, who has his own plans to conquer Earth! Includes background material exclusive to this book, with rarely seen art pages, an in-depth introduction to Dan Dare, and a new foreword by Dave Gibbons (Watchmen).
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Editorial Reviews
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" ... 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
" This is brilliant, original science fiction, paving the way for such projects as Star trek and Star Wars..." -- Gatewaymonthly.com October 2004
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Recapitulation of the Past,
By J. Michael Innes "(Mike)" (Australia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Classic Dan Dare: Voyage to Venus, Part 1 (Hardcover)
Dan Dare was created in 1950 in Great Britain at a time when that country was in the throes of depression and there was emerging a public consciousness that the country would not ever be the same after the tribulations of the Second World War. For small boys (at that time girls did not read, or at least did not admit to reading, comics depicting space travel) Dan Dare, published in the Eagle comic, was the epitome of all that was good about the past, honour, courage and brains, but was also creating a future which was bright, colourful, inviting and beckoning, unlike the drabness of the present. Americans would have been raised on the super heroes of the the 1930s and 1940s, but in Britain the Eagle, and especially Dan Dare, was the future and the expression of the hope that things would get better. It is difficult to create a realisation or understanding of what it was like to experience an expansion of consciousness based upon something so simple as a weekly comic strip, but Dan Dare did it for me and countless others of my generation. Not only the quality of the art work and the nature of the scientific concepts depicted in the comic was important (and it surely was very important) but there was a representation of concepts of justice and world order. The invasion of Venus was carried out by the United Nations, with command being held by soldiers from the Indian sub-continent, there had been an abolition of nuclear weapons, reparations were not to be imposed.. and so it went on. These ideas, represented in a common and not elite culture were transforming for boys changing their understanding of the experiences and hopes of their parents, who had gone through war and depression for the better part of the century. There have been countless analyses of the cultural impact of the depiction of comic books on the representation of social consciousness in the United States. I have yet to come across anything which has done something similar for the impact of the Eagle and Dan Dare on the thinking and the future development of children in Britain and Europe. Read this book and try to enter the minds of pre-teenagers in the middle of the century of the "War of the World" (Ferguson). The contemporary reader may feel the experience to be naive and superficial. But the readers at the time had their world transformed. And that must be something to be proud of as a publisher and an author, and especially the graphic artist, Frank Hampson, sadly little remembered and honoured in his own country.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The stolen heritage,
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This review is from: Classic Dan Dare: Voyage to Venus, Part 1 (Hardcover)
Dan Dare, Dan Dare. Can he and his faithful sidekick Digby save the Earth from invasion? Can they defeat the evil Mekon and his Treens, armed with nothing but a stiff upper lip and a good ol' British uppercut to the jaw?
Of course they can, who are you kidding? Seriously though and all kidding aside, I was marginally too young to read the Eagle from the very beginning, coming in somewhere just before "Operation Saturn". For years, having missed the start of the series was like a toothache; and in the 1980s I even went to the British Library and tried to find the original comics. I was told they'd been stolen! The young librarian (who couldn't even have been born when they appeared) was as indignant as I was: "They're part of our heritage!" he said. And so they are indeed. When I found that Titan Books were reissuing the whole series and got my hands on the first (this) one, I almost sobbed with joy. Time dulls the appeal of many things: I listen now to songs I raved about as a teenager and think "Did I really like that?" But Dan Dare remains as fresh as ever. Only now as an adult can I appreciate the extent of the intelligence and creativity, both literary and artistic, that went into the stories. Indeed, the Mekon is one of those wonderful characters whom, like Gollum, no one ever forgets. So unless (like St Paul) you have put away all childish things, I cannot recommend this series to you too heartily: may it give you as much pleasure as it has me. So far it consists of: Voyage to Venus (Part 1) Voyage to Venus (Part 2) The Red Moon Mystery Marooned on Mercury Operation Saturn (Part 1) Operation Saturn (Part 2) Prisoners of Space The Man from Nowhere Rogue Planet Reign of the Robots The Phantom Fleet Safari in Space Trip to Trouble
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Future, with a British stiff upper lip,
By
This review is from: Classic Dan Dare: Voyage to Venus, Part 1 (Hardcover)
Imagine a future where the British Empire is still strong and the heroes of the Battle of Britain are now spacefarers. Dan Dare encapsulates the can-do attitudes of WW2 Britain but places the stories in what the author saw as a distant future (2009 and beyond). Integrity, bravery, fairness and respect for all are the hallmarks of our hero, and while this may seem naive in our cynical times, the storytelling here is strong and the visuals very stunning.
These reproductions of the original Eagle comic magazine's front page Dan Dare stories are well bound and near full size: the copy process suffers on some pages due to a poor original, and the shrinking has made some of the text difficult to read (perhaps 90% of original size?). And yes, I was around as a child to get the Eagle as it was delivered every week through the letterbox with the daily paper. Fun times!
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