IN AND OUT OF THE EAGLE 25

Congratulations to 2000 A.D. weekly which celebrates its impressive 45th anniversary this February. It was the comic which brought back Dan Dare after a seven year break following the end of his repeated adventures in Lion. However it was a rather different Dan than the one that EAGLE readers remembered. Having been seriously injured in an encounter with the Mekon, Dan was placed in suspended animation until his wounds could be healed and returned with a new face to the much changed world of 2177. Initially featuring artwork by Massimo Belardinelli, who drew two eleven part serials about Dan's battle with the Biogs on Jupiter and an encounter with the Mekon on a planet close to a Black Hole, the strip was taken over by Dave Gibbons who drew most of the long Space Fort saga about Dan's expedition to the 'Lost Worlds' and the whole Crystal of Life story, where he again faced the Mekon. Unfortunately 2000 A.D.'s merger with Tornado which necessitated the dropping of some strips to allow some Tornado characters to be included curtailed Dan's adventures with him being chased by Earth's security forces after being framed by the Mekon. Although there were plans to complete his story with a plot that would have involved him travelling back in time to prevent the incident in which he received the serious injuries, thereby allowing him to resume adventures in his original form, it never happened and his next appearance was in a revived EAGLE in 1982, when the stories focused on his great great grandson. 

Although Dan Dare was the lead strip at the launch of 2000 A.D., M.A.C.H. 1 a strip inspired by the then popular TV series The Six Million Dollar Man was initially the most popular strip, but it was soon overtaken by Judge Dredd, about a future lawman in a giant city which is still hugely popular and has spawned two feature films. Over the years 2000 A.D. has featured many other successful strips, including Strontium Dog, ABC Warriors, Rogue Trooper, Slaine and Nikolai Dante. 

There were many links between the 1980s EAGLE and 2000 A.D. Pat Mills, who created 2000 A.D. wrote the first long Dan Dare story for the 1980s EAGLE and John Wagner, who created Judge Dredd contributed to this story. Alan Grant, Gerry Finley-Day, Alan Hebden and Tom Tully also wrote for both publications. Several artists, including Carlos Ezquerra, Mike Dorey, John M. Burns, John Ridgway and David Pugh, also contributed to both, with Tom Tully and John M. Burns having worked on the original EAGLE as well, where Tom Tully wrote Heros the Spartan and John Burns illustrated Wrath of the Gods. 

2000 A.D. produced two Dan Dare Annuals (for 1979 and 1980) based on their version of the character, with the first chronicling the story of how the original Dan received his injuries and became the 2000 A.D. version in a strip drawn by Trevor Goring. These annuals also included repeats of U.F.O. Agent strips from the 1960s EAGLE, while the 1979 and 1980 2000 A.D. Annuals included repeats of Guinea Pig strips from EAGLE. Three strips from 2000 A.D., M.A.C.H. 1, M.A.C.H. Zero and Ant Wars, were later reprinted in the 1980s EAGLE.