Read more about Dan Dare at: Wikipedia

Official Site: Public Domain

Dan Dare is a British science fiction comic hero, created by illustrator Frank Hampson. He appeared in the Eagle comic story Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future in 1950, dramatised 7 times a week on Radio Luxembourg.

The stories were set in the late 1990s but the dialogue and manner of the characters is reminiscent of British war films of the 1950s. Dan Dare has been described as "Biggles in Space" and as the British equivalent of Buck Rogers. Dan Dare was distinguished by its long, complex story lines, snappy dialogue and meticulously illustrated comic-strip artwork by Hampson and other artists, including Harold Johns, Don Harley, Bruce Cornwell, Greta Tomlinson, Frank Bellamy and Keith Watson.

Currently, one new Dan Dare publication is available. A recently completed mini-series of Dan Dare has been launched by Virgin Comics. It is written by Garth Ennis and illustrated by Gary Erskine and is a completely new and somewhat darker intrepretation of Dan Dare. ''

Dan Dare appeared on the cover of the first issue of the weekly comic strip magazine, Eagle, on 14 April 1950. There were two large colour pages of his story per issue. The artwork was of a high quality, the product of artists in a studio called the Old Bakehouse in Churchtown, Southport, Lancashire. The Eagle's founder, the Rev Marcus Morris, was vicar of the Southport church of St James at the time. It had scale models of spaceships, and models in costume as reference for the artists. Occasionally, Eagle incorporated "centrefold" of the fictional spaceships, such as Dan's ship the Anastasia, reminiscent of cutaway drawings of aircraft in aviation magazines or even Eagle itself. The storylines were long and complex, sometimes lasting more than a year. Later, artwork was produced at a studio in Hampson's house in Epsom, Surrey, where his production line techniques were continued.

Dan Dare has not been a contender in any CBUB matches.