IN AND OUT OF THE EAGLE 45

A notable feature of the 'Dan Dare' strip, particularly in the early days, was that Dan and Digby had relatives, several of whom appeared in the strip. In the original Venus story, Digby actually has a wife and family, who are again featured in a text story in the 1953 Dan Dare Annual, called 'Aunt Anastasia Comes to Stay'. However, with the notable exception of Aunt Anastasia, Digby's family are forgotten in later stories. Aunt Anastasia actually helps to defeat the Mekon's plans to conquer Earth in the first Venus story, when she realises that Digby's apparently reassuring message from Venus about the Treens (made under duress) is actually a clever coded warning. Her contribution leads to Dan Dare calling his new Spaceship 'Anastasia' in her honour. Digby's Aunt appears again at the end of 'Marooned on Mercury' and in two EAGLE Annual stories 'The Double Headed Eagle' and ''Operation Triceratops'. She features alongside many other characters from the saga in Keith Watson's final frame for 'The Menace From Jupiter' in 1967, when Dan was promoted to Spacefleet Controller and even appears in a 'Dan Dare' strip in the new version of EAGLE in 1990 in a story also drawn by Keith Watson.  

Not to be outdone, Dan Dare's Uncle Ivor, an archaeologist, plays a major part in the second 'Dan Dare' adventure 'The Red Moon Mystery', informing Dan of the last visit of the deadly 'Red Moon', many thousands of years earlier, when it destroyed civilisation on Mars. He also appears briefly alongside Aunt Anastasia at the end of 'Marooned on Mercury', but plays a bigger role in 'The Phantom Fleet', where he is one of a group of V.I.P.s on a new spacecraft which is captured by an aquatic race who wish to settle in one of Earth's oceans and he becomes involved in successful peace talks with them. He makes his last appearance in EAGLE in the final frame of 'The Menace From Jupiter'. He also appears in Basil Dawson's 1956  novel Dan Dare on Mars. Three other relatives of Dan also feature in the saga. His nephew, Alastair features in 'The Double Headed Eagle' in EAGLE Annual Number Three, when he competes in the Interplanetary Olympic Games on Venus. Another nephew, Nigel, appears in the weekly EAGLE in the 1964 adventure 'The Big City Caper'. He is a member of a group of disaffected youths who the villain Xel tries to recruit to his cause, but is too sensible to be influenced by the evil megalomaniac. We never learn whether Nigel and Alastair are brothers. The eccentric Uncle Ivor comes across as a confirmed bachelor, which suggests that Dan must have at least one more Uncle. 

The last member of Dan's clan to play a part in the saga is his father, William Dare, who does not actually appear in the story, but is strongly referenced in 'Safari in Space', 'Terra Nova' and 'Trip to Trouble' in 1959. In this series of adventures, Dan travels to another star to search for his father who went missing on an expedition many years earlier. Sadly, the story ends with the discovery that his father has died.  

IN AND OUT OF THE EAGLE (1)

WITH JIM DUCKETT 
  

Eagle Times features a regular column called In and Out of the EAGLE and we are going to feature some of these to give a flavour of the magazine's content. 

Basil Dawson’s original EAGLE novel Dan Dare on Mars is well remembered by fans, but in 1977 the New English Library published a paperback adaptation of part of Frank Hampson’s first Venus story. The book was written by Angus P. Allan, a prolific comic strip writer, who contributed to TV Century 21 and became the principal writer for Look In, another comic based on television characters. He never contributed to EAGLE, but his father was Carney Allan, who wrote the wartime adventure strip Mann of Battle, which ran in EAGLE from 1962 - 64. The novel ends with Dan’s rescue of his friends from Mekonta and the Dapon’s sacrifice in destroying the Mekon’s Telezero ships, leaving out the Treens’ visit to Earth and the eventual defeat of the Mekon. Several frames from the original strip were used to illustrate the book, but reprinted in black and white.

1977 was a good year for Dan and EAGLE, for there was also Marcus Morris’ The Best of EAGLE, which reprinted extracts from many strips and features from the first decade of the weekly. Dan himself was revived for 2000A.D. comic, although in a much altered form, which did not please many of his old fans. The reason for this renewed interest was Frank Hampson’s Yellow Kid Award presented to him at an international convention of strip cartoon and animated film artists in Lucca, Italy, just two years earlier, when he was voted the best writer and artist of strip cartoons since the war by a jury of his peers. This awakened interest in him and in Dan Dare by the British press.