Classic Comics

the revamped Dan Dare as he first appeared in the pages of 2000AD - double page spread taken from the first issue of 2000AD.

Yesterday's papers - The Eagle MKII

The Eagle comic was so well regarded and legendary in British comic circles, that there was a second version of the comic launched more than a decade after the original run had ended due to falling sales.

When the relaunched Eagle was first published it was unusual for a boy's comic, in that it contained photo stories. These were common in girl's comics but not so much with publications aimed at boys, and the experiment wasn't a success and photo stories were soon dropped in favour of the more traditional comic book strips.

Dan Dare was, as in the original run of the Eagle, the main character and in the edition pictured above he gets both the front and back cover as well as the full colour centre pages. The rest of the comic being in the more traditional black and white. The artist of the Dan Dare strip was one Oliver Frey who would later do those stunning covers for the likes of Crash Magazine and Fear, and I know he often reads the Archive so hello, Ollie!

One of the joys of looking through old comics is the letters page; these can give a good insight into what issues concerned children back in the day. The page here contained the announcement of the winners in a recent competition - readers had to answer the following question: Who was Kermit's nephew in the Muppets. The answer was Robin and the winner, Kevin Markworth, received a, "Super Taco Microscope", and "Bags of Goodies from KP Foods". KP Foods being the makers of crisps (potato chips) and various varieties of peanuts. Kind of puts the National Lottery to shame that one. 20 runner's up received a animal encyclopaedia which they could read until the internet was invented. Six lucky readers who had sent in photographs of themselves got a postal order for £4 - quite a sum, back in the day.

A favourite strip of mine was One Eyed Jack - Jack was a mean bastard, imagine Dirty Harry if you'd just plopped one of his eyes out, and that's only a fraction of how mean One Eyed Jack was. Now I'm not sure of the character's origins but I'm sure he first appeared in Valiant, and I know he was a character in Battle for a short while. He was written by John Wagner and was very much an early version of Dredger and Judge Dredd which were both characters Wagner had a hand in.

Someone stole my eye. Bastards!

The new Eagle though could not match its illustrious forefather - times had changed and the comics of the Eighties were much tougher than this new Eagle, which kind of sat in some strange middle ground between the innocence of early comics and the grittier style of the times. The new Eagle would go onto fold in 1994 after more than 500 issues. Certainly not a failure by any standards, but it is not as well regarded as the original comic.

Next we look at an issue of Lion which was the comic that the original Eagle merged with before the Eagle name was dropped. This was usual with British comics - when a title started to lose popularity it would be merged with a better seller but only it's most successful strips would survive the transfer. It is interesting that the original Eagle merged with Lion since when Lion started to sag it would merge itself with Tiger. And when Tiger itself started to slump it merged with the MKII Eagle.

EAGLE ANNUAL the best of the 1950's

EAGLE ANNUAL 1950'S
£12.99
Orion Books
Edited by Daniel Tatarsky

Firstly I want to make it clear that I don't remember the original Eagle Comic. It's first incarnation ran from 1950 - 1969 when it was merged into Lion.

WIKI quote:

The Eagle was the creation of the Reverend Marcus Morris, then vicar of St James' church,Southport, Lancashire, who intended it as a Christian antidote to what he saw as the bad influence of American comics during the post-war period. He strove to produce high quality, inspirational literature unlike any existing at the time, involving the work of teams of graphic artists such as Frank Hampson and Frank Bellamy - even creating mockups of spaceships to use as reference for Dan Dare. The Eagle and its sister papers Girl, Swift and Robin were designed by renowned typographer Ruari McLean, and were read by millions throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Eagle was one of the most popular comics in British history, selling just under 1 millioncopies per week.


END WIKI quote


This collection comes in a great

retro looking boards that have bee produced to look aged and at first glance the book does appear to be a keepsake from the 1950's.



Reading it now is great fun - you can tell a lot about an era from reading its magazines and the 1950's must have been a far more innocent time. Look at the panel here in which Dan Dare fro licks in the bath after a mission. That would be slightly suspect to say the least in today's comics and would get the likes of the Daily Racist (whoops sorry, Daily Mail) in a right spin.

A nice touch with this book is the side panels giving a pocket history of the strip characters. For instance I learned here that Harris Tweed: Extra Special Agent was created by John Ryan who would later go onto create TV's Captain Pugwash. And that world YO-YO champion, Art Pickles recommends the Outspan Whistling Yo-Yo.

The comic wasn't only about strips and as well as text stories it also carried magazine type features that would interest the 1950's comic reading boy. This book contains many of these features such as HOW TO LOOK AFTER YOUR GOLDFISH, TRAINING YOUR FOX TERRIER, HOW TO BECOME A POSTMAN, JIU-JITSU FOR SELF DEFENCE AND MOST BIZARRE COLLECTING CHEESE LABELS - a hobby known as fromology.

Eagle of course was intended for boys but there was a companion title called Girl for girls and there is an annual collection of that magazine also available in the shops.

These books are excellently put together with a great eye for detail in the presentation and are great buys for anyone interested in the history of comic books...or cheese label collecting.