HAPPY BIRTHDAY EAGLE - SEVENTY FIVE YEARS OLD

It is now seventy five years since EAGLE was launched, on April 14th 1950. A huge success for its first decade, it ran until 1969, when it was absorbed by its rival paper Lion. Created by the Rev. Marcus Morris, a Southport Vicar, its early success was primarily due to the work of artist Frank Hampson and his creation 'Dan Dare Pilot of the Future'. The popularity of Dan Dare cannot be overstated. The strip made science fiction acceptable and respectable at a time when many older people dismissed it as ridiculous and EAGLE was read by a lot of older people as well as its principal audience of 7 - 16 year olds. It also promoted interest in outer space and the possibility and credibility of space travel. Stephen Hawking cited 'Dan Dare' as the reason he became a Cosmologist. EAGLE also made comics acceptable to many adults, although it would never admit to being a comic! The fact that the editor was a Vicar and that EAGLE promoted a 'muscular Christianity' in its pages brought parents and teachers onside. The early issues of EAGLE also included the popular radio character 'PC 49', written by Alan Stranks. Initially drawn by Strom Gould it was illustrated for most of its seven year run by John Worsley. There were three other strips by Hampson in the first issue: 'Rob Conway', 'Tommy Walls', an advertising strip for Walls Ice Cream and the life of St. Paul, but he quickly passed these on to other hands to enable him to focus on the runaway success of 'Dan Dare'. 'Captain Pugwash' by John Ryan also made his first ever appearance in the first EAGLE. The centre pages featured 'cutaway drawings' of aircraft, cars, ships and other technological marvels. The most prolific 'cutaway' artist was Leslie Ashwell Wood. The 'cutaways' would run for the entire life of  EAGLE and Ashwell Wood illustrated the first and the last. The early issues also included an informative science strip called 'Professor Brittain Explains' and a regular sports page, which featured contributions from well known sportsmen. Over the next few years, other popular strips joined 'Dan Dare'. 'Riders of the Range' was by Charles Chilton and was based on his radio series about cowboys in the American west, This strip began in the Christmas issue in 1950 and was originally illustrated by Jack Daniel and then by Angus Scott, before Frank Humphris took over in 1952. The strip ran until 1962. 'Luck of the Legion' (1952 - 61) was written by Geoffrey Bond and illustrated by Martin Aitchison, 'Jack O' Lantern' (1955 - 59) told the adventures of a boy in the early nineteenth century and was written by George Beardmore, with illustrations by Robert Ayton. 'Storm Nelson - Sea Adventurer' (1953 - 1962) was written by Guy Morgan and drawn by Richard Jennings and 'Harris Tweed Extra Special Agent' (1950 - 62) by John Ryan, replaced his 'Captain Pugwash' who went on to greater success in books and on television. Another comedy strip was the three frame weekly 'short' 'Chicko' (1950 - 62) by Norman Thelwell. The famous Belgian cartoon hero Tintin also made his first ever appearance in English in EAGLE (1951 - 52). The back featured biographies of saints and famous Britons, including Saint Patrick, Saint Louis of France, Alfred the Great, Lord Nelson, David Livingstone and Baden Powell, illustrated by Norman Williams. Many of these biographies were written by the Rev. Chad Varah, who founded the Samaritans. Later, Frank Bellamy illustrated the life of Winston Churchill and King David for the back page, before taking over the 'Dan Dare' strip for a year and subsequently drawing 'Fraser of Africa' (1960 - 61), the life of Field Marshal Montgomery (1962) and finally the celebrated 'Heros the Spartan' strip in the early 1960s. In 1960 - 61, Frank Hampson illustrated the story of Christ for the back page. Sadly, this was his last major work for EAGLE.  

EAGLE featured more than strip cartoons. It had its own 'Special Investigator', Macdonald Hastings, who wrote articles on a wide range of subjects and even performed several dangerous feats to amuse the readers. George Cansdale wrote many half page strips about wildlife and Anthony Buckeridge created Rex Milligan's prose adventures for EAGLE, which would later serialise some of his 'Jennings' stories. Peter Ling wrote school based stories about 'The Three 'J's' before creating Crossroads and writing a Doctor Who adventure for television. EAGLE engaged well with readers. It featured reader's letters and organised competitions. Douglas Adams' first published work was a poem he sent to EAGLE and Gerald Scarfe and David Hockney won prizes in an art competition. EAGLE encouraged acts of charity, selflessness and consideration for others with monthly awards for nominated readers. It ran its own club for readers, arranged trips to sports matches, Adventure Holidays with the Y.H.A. and an annual national Table Tennis competition, along with its companion weekly 'Girl'. Each year readers voted for their 'Sportsman of the Year'. Every Christmas EAGLE invited readers to Carol Services, held around the country and usually led by Marcus Morris. It produced many books on a range of interests in addition to its annuals and even published novels about several of its characters. Its popularity gave rise to a great deal of licensed merchandise with everything from toys to clothing based on its most popular heroes. It even had its own weekly radio programme. There was also a daily Dan Dare radio serial, which ran for five years on Radio Luxembourg. In the 1950s it was not so much a comic, more a way of life. 

EAGLE fell into decline in the 1960s. Its steady downfall was primarily due to changes of publisher and cuts to its budget. It dropped all its reader activities, except the 'Readers' Letters' page and the Y.H.A. Holidays. Marcus Morris left in 1959 and his successor Clifford Makins left in 1961. A new editor, Bob Bartholomew arrived in late 1962 and managed to make improvements, but the downhill slide in sales was impossible to stop. Nevertheless, there were still shining moments. In addition to 'Heros the Spartan' (1962 - 1966), which was written by Tom Tully, there was 'Blackbow the Cheyenne', written by Edward Cowan and drawn by Frank Humphris, which joined EAGLE when it absorbed Swift in 1963 and ran until 1969. There was also 'The Iron Man' by Ken Mennell and others, which joined in 1964 when Boys' World was absorbed and ran until 1969. It was illustrated by Martin Salvador and later by Miguel Quesada. 'The Guinea Pig', (1965 - 1969) was written by various hands and drawn by Colin Andrew, Brian Lewis and finally by Gerald Haylock.  'Dan Dare' continued with stories by David Motton and art by Keith Watson. The 1960s EAGLE also featured some new informative features, including 'The Futurescope' which began in 1967 and speculated about life in the future. It was written by Dr. Lyall Watson, who would later write the bestselling book Supernature.  

 Despite its decline and fall, EAGLE made such a strong impression that a new version was launched in 1982 and ran until 1994. At a time when comics were generally in decline, it was a notable success for many years. EAGLE fandom survives to this day with the EAGLE Society celebrating the anniversary year with a Gathering in Plymouth, later in April. Our quarterly magazine EAGLE Times celebrates its own 150th issue this year too and Spaceship Away magazine, which began in 2003 continues to feature new adventures of Dan Dare. Fans of the 1980s EAGLE have a podcast 'Where EAGLES Dare' and a Facebook page. Dan himself featured in a B.B.C. radio series in 1990 and an audio series in 2021 and 2022, which was later broadcast on B.B.C. Radio Four Extra and a CGI television series which was broadcast on Channel Five in the U.K. in 2002.             

THE MAN WHO DREW DAN DARE

EXHIBITION REPORT BY DAVID BRITTON

A reception was held on Thursday evening 20th September at the Atkinson Art Gallery in Lord St. Southport, to launch three new exhibitions that all have a local relevance. The one of particular interest to our readers is dedicated to “The Man Who Drew Dan Dare”, an exhibition marking the 100^th Anniversary of the birth of Frank Hampson and his life’s work. The evening was opened by Stephen Whittle, Principal Manager at the Atkinson, who gave a brief background to each of the exhibitions and introduced Peter Hampson as guest speaker for Frank Hampson’s exhibition. 

Peter then related the story behind Frank’s career commencing with his demobilisation from the Army and the attendance at Southport College of Art. On leaving the College he was initially involved in producing commercial work for advertising and did illustrations for “Anvil”, Marcus Morris’ local church magazine that was later taken up by the Anglican Church. When Marcus decided to embark on his mission to create a comic or magazine to compete effectively with the gratuitous, pulp comics that were flooding the country from America, setting a higher moral standard yet appealing to children with an exciting product, he collaborated with Frank and EAGLE was born.  Shortly after Jocelyn Thomas, Greta Tomlinson and Joan Porter joined them at the Bakehouse, 22, Botanic Road, Churchtown. The Bakehouse has been restored recently and has a plaque honouring those who worked there in the early days of EAGLE.  Joan remained Frank’s assistant right through to the end.

Peter talked about the move to Epsom, the development of the studio at Bayford Lodge and of the humour that accompanied the hard work and weekly deadlines. That was followed by the unhappy departure from Odham’s , The Road of Courage for EAGLE , working for Ladybird books, more commercial work, such as an advertising strip series for the National Coal Board and finally the North East Surrey College of Technology (NESCOT) where he taught and worked.

The exhibition is really very well laid out and has examples of Frank’s work from the very beginning, with some beautifully executed pencil sketches and work in pen and ink. It continues through the early work on Dan Dare, illustrated by pages from the start of The First Venus Story, later episodes, pencil roughs and ending with post-EAGLE illustration for Ladybird books, a period that Peter described as a very happy one after the trauma of the final years with Odham’s. One of the highlights is some original pages for “The Road of Courage”, which for many represents the pinnacle of Frank’s output. Peter also pointed out the fact that Frank loved to put lots of detail into the background of his frames. This is apparent throughout his work.

The recognition that Frank received in Lucca in 1975 - The Yellow Kid  and his award of the title 'Prestigio Maestro' - the Best Comic Book Artist Since the Second World War, were also on display. 

Overall, the evening was a great success, although attendance may have been curtailed by a disastrous night of bad weather, with high winds and very heavy rain, as the tail of Storm Bronagh passed Southport. We were graced however by the presence of Frank’s sister Margaret, currently 91 years of age and her daughter Tina and son-in-law Les, as well as Peter’s wife Sue.

The exhibition runs until 16th March 2019 and is a must for all EAGLE, Dan Dare and Frank Hampson fans.

Classic Bible Stories

The first of an intended series of books reprinting Classic Bible Stories from Eagle has been published by Titan Books. The first volume collects two stories: 'The Road of Courage', the story of Jesus of Nazareth, written by the Revd. Marcus Morris and illustrated by Frank Hampson, and 'Mark the Youngest Disciple', written by the Revd. Chad Varah and illustrated by Giorgio Bellavitis. 'The Road of Courage' which appeared in Eagle in 1961, was Hampson's last work for Eagle and shows him, arguably at his best, and certainly at his most consistent. 'Mark the Youngest Disciple' appeared in 1954, and has been described as Giorgio Bellavitis' finest work for Eagle.

Although The Road of Courage was previously published as a hardback book by Dragon's Dream in 1981, none of the other Eagle bible stories has previously been seen in book form. A future volume of Classic Bible Stories is expected to collect 'The Shepherd King', the story of David, by Clifford Makins and Frank Bellamy, and 'The Great Adventurer', the story of Saul/Paul of Tarsus, by Chad Varah, Frank Hampson (and team) and Norman Williams.

The format of Classic Bible Stories is very similar to Titan's Dan Dare reprint series; ie, 9" x 12" red covered hardback with dustjacket. As with the Dan Dare series, all the strips in Classic Bible Stories are reprinted from scans of Eagle pages. It is well known that most of the original artboards for strips that appeared in Eagle have been lost, destroyed or dispersed to various collectors, so that most Eagle reprint series cannot be from original artwork. However, Dragon's Dream's 1981 offering of The Road of Courage was almost entirely (ie, with the exception of the third page) from the original artboards of that story, and comparison of the two versions is inevitable.

Whether the artboards were not available to the current publishers, or it was an editorial decision not to use them to achieve consistency of quality with the other stories in the series, or for some other reason, this reviewer does not know. Although a close side-by-side comparison with the Dragon's Dream version shows some increase in image contrast and loss of detail due to line thickening in the Titan Books version, the quality of reproduction is as good as the best of their Dan Dare reprint series, ie excellent. An advantage of reproducing the strip from scans of the published comic strip (combined with some careful restoration) is that the result is a close facsimile to the original published edition. A detraction of the Dragon's Dream issue was that new captions had to be created because they were not present on the original boards. Unfortunately, the captions were produced in an unsympathetic type-face, the size of which often was too small for the boxes in which the captions were placed.

Readers of Titan's Dan Dare reprint series might be surprised that, apart from the two stories, the title and credit pages and some brief information provided on the dustjacket, this volume has no further editorial content. It would seem this book has undergone a few changes along the way, meaning that some of the information on the book (eg at Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com), indicating feature content, is inaccurate. It would have been nice to have seen the article by Frank Hampson that was published in Eagle when 'The Road of Courage' was first published, describing his trip to the Holy Land and the research that went into the strip.

Although pre-publication pictures emphasise the Eagle legacy by use of the Eagle emblem and the name of Frank Hampson on the cover (with no mention of the other contributors!), neither of these elements are present on the front of the published dustjacket (though Frank Hampson is credited on the book's spine), nor does the Eagle emblem appear anywhere in the book. Presumably the book is aimed at a wider audience than "just" Eagle (or comics) enthusiasts.

Inside full credits are given to the creators of the strips including, on the dustjacket front flap, mention of Frank Hampson's assistant, Joan Porter. The rear dustjacket provides some extremely short biographical information on Marcus Morris, Frank Hampson, Chad Varah and Giorgio Bellavitis.

Classic Bible Stories [ISBN 9781848565258] is published by Titan Books at £14.99.

At the time of posting it was available from Amazon.co.uk at £10.74

Happy Birthday, Sir Arthur

Arthur C Clarke – Eagle contributor - reaches his 90th birthday.

As Arthur C Clarke, former Chairman of the British Interplanetary Society (BIS) and world-renowned science and science-fiction writer, reaches 90 let’s remember the contribution he made to the Eagle in its early days. Marcus Morris’ biography tells us that two days after the issue 2 of the Eagle appeared on newsstands, Arthur Clarke (then Assistant Secretary of the BIS) wrote to the Eagle’s Editor to report that, at a meeting of the Royal Geographical Society where he had been lecturing on space navigation, another speaker (D H Sadler, head of the Nautical Almanac Office) had ended a highly technical series of remarks about navigation in space, etc. with the question “Will Dan Dare reach Venus?” While another speaker was sure that he would, Clarke “had expressed fears that he might encounter space-pirates!”

Within the month Clarke had been commissioned by Morris to write a synopsis for 'Dan Dare'. This resulted in three episodes in the first 'Dan Dare' story. There is uncertainty which three, but it seems Clarke was responsible for suggesting the outline of Treen behaviour to Frank Hampson, and might have been responsible for appropriating the word Treen (from a town in Cornwall, or from a descriptor for small carved wooden articles) as the name of the belligerent Venusian race. Clarke became a consultant on 'Dan Dare', and it has been suggested by Stephen Baxter, (in Matrix, the media magazine of the British Science Fiction Association) that the Treen’s use of communications satellites is a sure sign of the Clarke touch. It was Clarke who first suggested (in Wireless World, May and then October, 1947) the use of geostationary satellites as radio communications devices. Clarke was also commissioned to write a 'Dan Dare' story (presumably to appear as a strip) for one of the Eagle Annuals. This appears to have come to nothing, but a four page article “Is Space Travel Possible” was published in the 1953 Dan Dare's Space Book.

Separate from Clarke’s approach to Eagle in 1950, it was Eagle’s Fiction Editor (Chad Varah) who discovered an unsolicited manuscript sent in by the agents of a then comparatively unknown science fiction writer. It is unclear whether the story that appeared under the pseudonym Charles Willis was originally submitted as the work of Arthur C Clarke, but the story “The Fires Within” appeared in Eagle Vol 1 No 17 , dated 4 August, 1950. This was one of a number of stories written in the 1940s by Clarke when he was a student at King’s College, London. He variously used the pseudonyms Charles Willis and E G O’Brien at that time. It is unclear whether Eagle’s editors knew that a story of the same title had already been published under Clarke’s other pseudonym in Fantasy, The Magazine of Science Fiction, in August 1947!

Eagle - How it began

The Eagle magazine was the brainchild of the Revd. Marcus Morris, the Southport Lancashire vicar who became its first Editor. Having engaged a young Southport-trained artist, Frank Hampson, and then others, in enlivening his parish magazine, The Anvil, and turning it from local church magazine to a nationally distributed periodical, he sought Hampson’s assistance in creating a Christian-based comic strip. The idea, fuelled by both men’s enthusiasm and Hampson’s artistic creativity, and not a little influenced by another man of the cloth (the Revd. Chad Varah), eventually resulted in not a comic strip but a complete magazine for boys. The Eagle, comprised a mix of comic strips, factual features and text stories. Rather than a Christian padre, as originally intended by Morris, the Eagle featured on its front cover the stirring science-fiction adventures in full colour of Dan Dare: Pilot of the Future. Inside it featured a variety of black-and-white, and colour, strips plus illustrated text stories and factual articles. The first “dummies” that sold the Eagle idea to its publishers, Hulton Press, were almost entirely the work of Frank Hampson, but soon a large team of writers and artists was needed to keep up with a weekly publication schedule.

There have been several fairly detailed accounts of the birth of Eagle, including (in order of publication):

• Best of Eagle, compiled by Denis Gifford and edited by Marcus Morris, Michael Joseph and Ebury Press (1977). This contains in an Introduction, Marcus’ own account – which can be read online, courtesy of Nicholas Hill’s Eagle and Dan Dare site.

• The Man Who Drew Tomorrow by Alastair Crompton, Who Dares Publishing (1985) is a Frank Hampson biography and the story of the Dan Dare studio, published the year of Hampson’s death.
  

• Before I Die Again by The Revd. Chad Varah, Constable (1993), is the autobiography of 'Eagle’s third man'.

• The Frank Hampson Interview by Alan Vince, Astral Publications (1994) records and updates an interview made by Alan with Frank Hampson in 1974. The interview has since been republished (further updated) in Dan Dare: The Voyage to Venus, part 2, Titan Books (2004).

• Living with Eagles, by Sally Morris and Jan Hallwood, Lutterworth Press (1998), is a biography of Marcus Morris by two of his daughters.

• Dan Dare: The Voyage to Venus, part 1, Titan Books (2004) contains an introductory article, ‘The Genesis of Dan Dare’ by Nick Jones.