IN AND OUT OF THE EAGLE 43

Superheroes in comics often have secret identities and while the original EAGLE's heroes had no need for them, some of their creators certainly used false names. Between 1950 and March 1962, EAGLE printed writer and artist credits on most strips, text stories and articles, but several contributors used pen names for their work. Geoffrey Bond wrote 'Luck of the Legion' using his own name, but wrote the back page biographies of Baden Powell and Abraham Lincoln as Alan Jason. Alan Stranks wrote 'PC 49's adventures as himself, but wrote the short 'Marvell of M.I.5' series as David Cameron. The screenwriter Guy Morgan didn't use his own name at all in EAGLE, writing 'Storm Nelson' as Edward Trice. Likewise, the television and film writer Leonard Fincham wrote 'Danger Unlimited' as Steve Alen and several text serials, including the 'Special Agent' series about Inspector Jean Collet of Interpol as Lee Mayne. He later developed this into a TV series called Interpol Calling, although he created new stories and changed the names of the heroes to avoid copyright issues. Another television writer, Basil Dawson, wrote part of the 'Dan Dare' story 'Operation Saturn' as Don Riley, but he wrote the novel Dan Dare on Mars using his own name. Francis Dickson wrote several books and three back page biographies for EAGLE as R.B. Saxe and J.H.G. Freeman, usually known as Don Freeman, wrote several books as well, as 'Knights of the Road' for EAGLE as Gordon Grinstead. The celebrated science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke had a short story 'The Fires Within' published in an early issue of EAGLE under the pen name of Charles Willis, which he used for several short stories at the time and Clifford Makins, who succeeded Marcus Morris as editor of EAGLE, wrote the back page biography of Nelson as Christopher Keyes. An EAGLE artist who used another name was Bruno Kleinzeller, who escaped from Czechoslovakia shortly before the Nazis invaded and subsequently used the name Peter Kay for his work in Britain, which included 'drop in' illustrations for the text stories of 'The Three 'J's' in EAGLE as well as several strips for Girl.   

The contributors had different reasons for using pseudonyms but none were for tax evasion or anything else illegal. The real writers have often been identified through surviving payment details which clearly record their true identities. As a contributor to the Daily Mirror, J.H.G. Freeman used 'Gordon Grinstead' for his other work. Geoffrey Bond used 'Alan Jason' to avoid having two strips appearing in EAGLE at the same time using the same name and Francis Dickson used 'R.B. Saxe' for all his writing. However, in the 1960s when EAGLE was produced by Odhams, there was a company rule that editorial staff should not be paid for any scriptwriting they did, leading to several staff being paid through agents when they were called upon to write stories. While writers and artists were no longer credited in the weekly, records of payment were obviously kept and could have revealed staff breaking company rules, so agents were used and named on the records.