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Dan Dare-inspired Spaceship Away 51 zooms into our sights!

By John Freeman on July 14, 2020

The latest issue of Spaceship Away – Issue 51 – is on sale now, featuring a cover illustration and centrespread by John M. Burns depicting Dan Dare’s daughter…

The Dan Dare story “Voyage of the Ankum” by John Bailey, drawn by William Naylor and coloured by Martin Baines, continues.

There are five pages in colour of the Jeff Hawke story “Selena”, drawn by Sydney Jordan, a strip was originally published in the Daily Express in black and white, but published in colour in Spaceship Away.

“Target Earth” continues this issue with another four pages, and the issue concludes with the humour strip, “Earthward Bound”.

The magazine, edited by Des Shaw, carries a number of features, as ever, too. In “Spacesuits and Gymslips“, Andrew Darlington explores the Science Fiction and Fantasy strip stories that were published in Girls’ comics, while Rod Barzilay pays tribute to artist Tim Booth, in an item appropriately entitled “Hats off to Tim Booth“.

Spaceship Away 51 - Voyage to Venus - Jet Ace Logan.

Ray Wright keeps us up-to-date with another four pages of “Space News“, and we also get Part 4 of Frontiers of Space, as visualised in the 1950s.

David Ashford takes a Space Strip Journey through the little-known Comet and “Sun” magazines in his article, “Voyage to Venus – Jet Ace Logan“, while Sid Clark also provides photographs of his two fine Dan Dare-inspired models: Phant Food Capsules in their container, and a Phant Food Transport.

• Order Spaceship Away on subscription – and back issues, too – from the magazine’s web site here

• Limited copies of Spaceship Away 51 are also available from eBay here price £8.95

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John Freeman

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.