Flash Gordon daily strip artist Dan Schkade recently kicked off discussion of a Dan Dare reboot, prompting suggestions of a crossover with the King Features owned space hero.
Posting his take on Dan Dare, first seen in the British weekly, Eagle in 1950, Dan commented on BlueSky: “I don’t think we’ve had a new Dan Dare series in a while.
Dan’s been absent from comic shelves since the Titan Comics He Who Dares mini-series by Peter Milligan and Alberto Foche, but Flash Gordon is still battling evil across the universe, his current adventures available to read on Comics Kingdom.
“We really ought to get on that,” Dan suggested, adding “a Master and Commander meets Mobile Suit Gundam type joint maybe, could be a vibe.”
Although reboots of Dan Dare are a very hard sell to many fans of the original, comic artist Chris Weston was immediately enthused.
“You nailed it, sir!,” he responded. “Just recently I was imagining a Flash Gordon/Dan Dare crossover! I’m gonna think even harder about it now! … It would be fun to play up the British/American cultural differences! Flash is a bit more two-fisted than Dan! Ming and the Mekon could be great double act too!”
“Totally!” Dan replied. “There’s a great contrast between Dan being a disciplined military man who’s essentially just doing his job and Flash being this weird athlete turned freelance freedom fighter. I’d love to get Zarkov and Peabody in a room, too.”
Who will post their crossover art first, we wonder?
Dan Schkade [SHKAH-dee, rhymes with ‘body’] is a freelance comic artist from Austin, Texas. His credits include the ongoing daily Flash Gordon syndicated newspaper strip, the Eisner + Ringo Award-Nominated Lavender Jack, Will Eisner’s The Spirit Returns, San Hannibal, and Saint John, among others. He’s a member-at-large of the comic creator collective Helioscope.
This isn’t the first time Dan has visited, er Dan Dare. Back in 2022, he also drew The Mekon, “apparently a version that’s been getting his reps in.”
Chris Weston has been a professional comic strip artist since 1988. After studying for a year with Don Lawrence (artist of Storm and The Trigan Empire), he secured his first paid job for the UK’s 2000AD weekly comic drawing Judge Dredd, a character he’s regularly returned to right up to the present day.
Among his many other credits, he previously co-produced two critically acclaimed creator-owned series, The Filth and Ministry of Space, and recent projects include art on the mindbending Paranoid Gardens by Gareth Way and Shaun Simon.
• Dan Schkade is online at danschkade.com | BlueSky
• Check out the latest Flash Gordon adventures on Comics Kingdom
• Chris Weston is online at chriswestonart.com | BlueSky
• Creating Comics: An Interview with “Dan Dare” comic artist Alberto Foche
• British Comic Characters Profiled: Dan Dare
• Dan Dare Special Features on the Fumettomania Factory Association site
Dan Dare © Dan Dare Corporation
Flash Gordon © King Features Syndicate
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John is the founder of downthetubes, launched in 1998. He is a comics and magazine editor, writer, and Press Officer for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He also runs Crucible Comic Press.
Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine and Overkill for Marvel UK, Babylon 5 Magazine, Star Trek Magazine, and its successor, Star Trek Explorer, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics; and has edited several comic collections and graphic novels, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”, and Hancock: The Lad Himself, by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page.
He’s the writer of comics such as 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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