Do you know your Pilot of the Future from the Mekon? Test your knowledge and prepare yourself for the return of the iconic British space hero Dan Dare in a trilogy of all-new graphic novel adventures for B7 Comics.
B7 Comics has teamed up with bestselling author and screenwriter Alex de Campi (Rogue Trooper: Ghost Patrol and Duncan Jones’ Madi: Once Upon A Time in the Future) and Marc Laming (James Bond, Eden, Endeavour) for a three-book reimagining of the classic British adventure strip Dan Dare, with the full approval of the rights holders The Dan Dare Corporation.
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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.
Categories: British Comics, Comic Previews, Comics, Creating Comics, downthetubes Comics News, downthetubes News
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John., you should know better than this. In the first video, B7 claim that Dan Dare was co-created by Marcus Morris, and they even put his name first! Ignorance like this does not augur well for their ‘re-imagination’.
The Reverend Marcus Morris decried “horror comics” in the Sunday Dispatch, Sunday 13th February 1949, an article that began the road to the creation of the weekly comic published by Hulton Press.
Buoyed by positive response to the article, he and artist Frank Hampson worked up a concept he wrote, and Hampson drew, a strip called “Lex Christian” – meant not for children, but adults. They couldn’t sell it as it was, and their intended publisher, Terence Horsley of the Sunday Empire News, died on Sunday 24th April in a glider accident at Great Hucklow, Derbyshire, before they could improve it. (Horsley was, incidentally, one of Britain’s leading sailplane pilots).
Marcus claimed that Lex, a “tough fighting parson in the East End of London”, “went quite a long way towards evolving the character of Dan Dare”.
As Peter Hampson, Frank Hampson’s son relates: “Unperturbed they’d not launched the strip, from May 1949 they worked to create a complete comic. Lex became a flying padre, ‘the Parson of the Fighting Seventh’.
“That still didn’t seem right, so Marcus suggested he should journey into space. They then felt the name Lex Christian seemed less than perfect. Frank Hampson had dreamed of writing about a woman detective Dorothy Dare, so the padre became Dan Dare, ‘first parson to be launched in space’.”
That the name, look and universe of Dan Dare is the creation of Frank Hampson, supported by an imaginative team of incredible artists, is not in doubt; but it seems clear to me that Marcus Morris played an integral role in his origin, and most certainly was the driving force behind getting EAGLE published. Or am I missing something?
Fumettomania Factory – APS will be following this new production closely (since our Dan Dare special isn’t finished yet).
See you all on April 14th!