A landmark Issue 50 of the Eagle and Dan Dare-inspired comic magazine Spaceship Away is available now.
Heading into the new decade, this milestone issue of Spaceship Away offers three new colour stories.
The first is six pages of a brand new “Dan Dare” strip, “Voyage of the Ankum, written by John Bailey, adapted by Richard Woods, drawn by William Naylor, lettered and edited by the magazine’s publisher Des Shaw, and coloured by Martin Baines.
“It’s been produced by teamwork, in a similar way to the original Dan Dare Studio.,” says Des. “Each page is drawn at 15 x 20 inches (380 x 510mm), allowing for sharper and more accurate art, linework etc.”
The second new strip (for the first time in colour), is the Jeff Hawke story, “Selena” by Sydney Jordan, which was originally published in the Daily Express newspaper in black and white.
John Russell Fearn‘s “The Golden Amazon” strip concludes this time, but the third new four page strip, “Target Earth” begins, by John Richards, drawn by Harry Winslade.
There are some smashing features in this landmark issue, too. Andrew Darlington provides a comprehensive look at the Captain Condor stories that appeared in the Lion comic during 1952 -1964; and Philip Harbottle examines the Possible Influences of Science Fiction on Dan Dare.
Ray Wright also keeps us up-to-date in the real world of space, with another of his Space News articles.
The Memorabilia page pictures the Dan Dare Cup that was distributed by Horlicks in the 1950s.
The centrespread this issue is a marvellous cutaway of the Galactic Galleon by Graham Bleathman, coloured by Martin Baines. This complements the new Dan Dare story that features this ship perfectly.
A splendid issue rounds off with its regular humour strip, “Earthward Bound”.
Congratulations to the Spaceship Away team on reaching Issue 50. A fantastic achievement!
• Spaceship Away Issue 50 is available to order now from the official web site here – subscriptions also available – and from eBay here
The founder of downthetubes, which he established in 1998. John works as a comics and magazine editor, writer, and on promotional work for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He is currently editor of Star Trek Explorer, published by Titan – his third tour of duty on the title originally titled Star Trek Magazine.
Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine, Babylon 5 Magazine, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics. He has also edited several comic collections, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”.
He’s the writer of “Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies” for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs” with Dave Hailwood.
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So far as I’m concerned, Dan Dare began and ended with Frank Hampson. Marooned on Mercury (crafted by other hands) was a silly hiccup, and Dan’s career ended part way through the promising Operation Saturn when Frank’s health failed him. In The Venus Story, Frank moved away from the comic book cliché of depicting all aliens as basically Caucasians with bizarre pigmentation by introducing the reptilian Treens. In The Red Moon Mystery he took this further, by presenting the enemy as space locusts with a “hive” mentality of sufficient collective intelligence to navigate a small planet through space. Early episodes of Operation Saturn indicated that the “black cat” mini-spaceships were piloted by insect creatures, before Hampson, preparing, perhaps to hand over to other artists and scriptwriters, announced that they were simply robots.