by Rod Barzilay. Illustrated by Graham Bleathman
Published by Haynes Publishing at £16.99
Hardback 128 pages, with colour on every page
Review by Steve Winders
The Book: A technical manual devoted to the Space Fleet organization featured in the famous Dan Dare Pilot of the Future strip from the 1950s and 60s Eagle weekly. The book includes over thirty highly detailed cutaway illustrations by Graham Bleathman, of space vehicles and bases, with fourteen in colour. These are supported by a large amount of background information by Rod Barzilay, about Dan Dare’s adventures, the aliens he encountered and the principal characters in the stories. Rod’s informative and well researched pages are supported by illustrations from the original Eagle and almost all the cutaways are accompanied by small pictures of them from the strip.
The Review: After the U.S.S. Enterprise, the Millenium Falcon and Thunderbirds, Dan Dare’s spaceships have become the latest iconic space vehicles to receive the Haynes treatment. Graham Bleathman’s accurate cutaways are well up to the standards he set in his popular Thunderbirds illustrations and in quality, echo those of real vehicles which adorned the centre pages of the 1950s Eagle, when Dan Dare appeared on the front cover. All the principal cutaways are printed across two pages however and consequently a little detail is lost in the guttering between the pages. Clearly considerable effort has been made to minimise this issue, because the problem is not as noticeable as in Daniel Tatarsky’s 2008 Eagle Annual of the Cutaways.
Although a few of the spaceships have been featured previously in cutaways in the author’s Spaceship Away! magazine, the cutaways in the book are all new. Spaceship Away! is a periodical originally devised to carry new Dan Dare strips in the original style and in the case of Barzilay’s own Phoenix Mission and Green Nemesis stories, predominantly drawn by Don Harley, who worked on the strip in the 1950s Eagle. Two episodes of Green Nemesis are featured on the endpapers of the book and Dan Dare’s new spaceship from these adventures, the Marco Polo, is also included as a cutaway. The stories in Spaceship Away were also set during the period of Dare’s original adventures in the 1950s and 60s Eagle and the Spacefleet Operations Manual restricts itself to this time, avoiding the 2000 A.D. comic’s version of Dan Dare and the adventures of his great great grandson in the 1980s Eagle.
In examining the technical aspects of Dan Dare in detail, this book explores an aspect of the saga that no previous book has covered and in quality and presentation it maintains the high standards that have established Haynes as a leading technical publisher. It is an essential work for fans of Dan Dare and should also interest more general science fiction enthusiasts.
• Buy the Dan Dare: Spacefleet Operations Manual from amazon.co.uk
• Buy the Dan Dare: Spacefleet Operations Manual from Forbidden Planet
• More Dan Dare books from Forbidden Planet
• Read Jeremy Briggs interview about the book with Graham Bleathman
• Daily Mail feature, 18th May 2013: Looks like your electrosphere primary accelerator’s gone, mate
- About the Author
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Born in Preston, Steve Winders has been a lifelong fan of Dan Dare and Eagle and of Doctor Who since its first episode. He has written many articles about the 1960s Eagle, the various incarnations of Dan Dare and the fictional exploits of the Harris Tweed Appreciation Society for Eagle Times and its predecessors and regularly reviews new works about British comics for Down The Tubes and Steve Holland’s Bear Alley blog.
He has also written articles about another interest, Robin Hood, for the online Adventures of Robin Hood Appreciation Society Magazine.
Other interests include the American West, which was inspired by the famous Eagle strip, Riders of the Range, Astronomy and soccer. He is a supporter of Preston North End. He has taught for over 40 years, in Lancashire, Mid Glamorgan and Plymouth. He is married and has three children.
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