The Christmas EAGLE (1950)

Scanned directly from the actual comic, this first Christmas Eagle might not have snow on the logo but the decorative holly around and between the panels gives it a nice festive look. Surprisingly for a serial, it manages to include references to Christmas Day within the story too. A wonderful Dan Dare strip by Frank Hampson and his team. 

Even the centrespread by L. Ashwell Wood that issue had a festive connection...

A festive feature/strip on Christmas trees. The latter drawn by 'Ross'. Anyone know who he was?

A Christmas Chicko mini strip by Normal Thelwell...

An advert in the issue...

A brilliant Harris Tweed page crammed with detail by the distinctive John Ryan...

...and on the back page, nothing could be more appropriate for a Christmas issue than the episode of The Great Adventurer reaching the point of the birth of Christ. Written by Chad Varah and drawn by Frank Hampson and Norman Williams...

There'll be one more Christmas flashback tomorrow, on Christmas Day! Drop by whilst eating a mince pie and find out what year our final destination is!

The Christmas EAGLE (1955)

This issue of Eagle from exactly 60 years ago was published the same week as the issue of Girl that I covered the other day. Such an influential and popular comic, the cover featured Dan Dare at the height of the strip's run during one of the best serials, Rogue Planet. Wonderful artwork by Frank Hampson and Don Harley.

As was the norm with adventure strips, they didn't often go off at a festive tangent just because it was Christmas week. However, this P.C.49 serial did just that, breaking the fourth wall by sending a Christmas message to the readers. Art by John Worsley. 

The fantastic centrespread cutaway by L. Ashwell Wood that week featured London's Christmas Rail Traffic. I've also retained the Luck of the Legion part of the spread, even though it has no festive theme, as it seemed a shame to crop off such great art by Martin Aitchinson.

The Eagle reader's page featured a message from the editor reminding us that it was Jesus' birthday (although that's debatable) and a humour strip, Chicko, by Thelwell.

Harris Tweed by Captain Pugwash creator John Ryan. This is the sort of humour/adventure serial that I wish British comics did more of as it worked well enough in Europe for decades. Still, at least Tweed did lead to Leo Baxendale's Eagle Eye, Mike Higgs' The Cloak, and I suppose we can add my Combat Colin to that too. (And The Phoenix runs humour/adventure serials these days.) 

Eagle carried a lot of features as well as strips of course. Only 9 and a half of this issue's 16 pages were strip, even though we still refer to Eagle as a comic. I'm including Christmas and its Customs as one of those strips, even though it's more of an illustrated article as it's not sequential storytelling. Art by Norman Williams...

I hope you're enjoying these flashbacks to old Christmas comics. I'll be posting my final selection sometime on Christmas Eve, with samples from not one but two issues of a vintage story paper. See you then! 

Frank Hampson art for sale

Image from The Art of Frank Hampson site.

Peter Hampson, the son of Frank Hampson, the creator of Dan Dare, has launched a website and gallery of his late father's work. Some of the classic Dan Dare pages from Eagle are up for sale, as are some pages that Mr.Hampson illustrated for Ladybird books. 

The Dan Dare pages are not cheap but after all they are important works in the history of comics and the quality of the illustration is so superb. There are few UK comic characters as iconic as Dan Dare, and Eagle changed the face of British comics forever.

There's also a gallery of original pages that are not for sale, such as The Road of Courage artwork telling the story of Jesus. 

Image from The Art of Frank Hampson site.

You can take a look for yourselves over at The Artwork of Frank Hampson at this link:
http://www.frankhampsonartwork.co.uk/index.html

Dan Dare celebrated in his Southport birthplace

My thanks to Sara Teiger for this information and for the photographs.....

This imposing metre tall fibreglass Mekon peers down at visitors to a new local history museum in Southport.

The Mekon and his nemesis Dan Dare were of course created in the Merseyside seaside town by artist Frank Hampson.

The new permanent exhibition at The Atkinson celebrates Hampson and his work alongside other local notable figures, including Frank Hornby, the inventor of Meccano, Dinky toys and Hornby model trains.

Memorabilia on display includes artists’ models of some of the main character heads, including a large colour bust of Dan Dare. The models were used by the artists when they were drawing the cartoon so that they could accurately draw the heads from all angles.  Other artists’ models on permanent loan to the museum number a space ship and a Mars space station.

Much original artwork is on show, alongside Dan Dare merchandise from the 50s and 60s and an Eagle artists’ spraygun.

Peter Hampson, son of Frank said: “The idea to produce a new sort of comic for boys was the brain child of Marcus Morris, an Oxford-educated vicar with a parish in Southport.

“Morris deplored the influx of cheaply produced American 'horror comics' with their crude and senseless violence, and he wanted to combat their influence with a high quality strip cartoon publication, promoting wholesome, Christian values.

“But that his great idea was ever realised - and with a brilliance that must surely have exceeded his wildest expectations - was due entirely to the creative genius of Frank Hampson. My father always stated that the title, story, drawings and inventions were all his and that my mother christened the new publication Eagle.

“Production began in 1950 in a studio set up in a ramshackle old bakery in Churchtown, near Southport and my father set about assembling a team of artists: Joan Porter, Greta Tomlinson, Harold Johns, Jocelyn Thomas and Bruce Cornwell. 

“My grandfather, soon known to everyone in the studio as 'pops', now retired from the police force, became a willing general helper, as well as the very recognisable model for the Controller of the Space-Fleet, Sir Hubert Guest.”

Between Land and Sea – 10,000 years of Sefton’s Coast

New permanent exhibition opened February 2015

The Atkinson, Lord Street, Southport PR8 1DB

http://www.theatkinson.co.uk/

1969: Final flight of the EAGLE

Final issue of EAGLE, April 1969.

Exactly 45 years ago today, the most famous adventure comic in Britain ended its 19 year run. The final issue of Eagle bowed out on Wednesday April 23rd 1969 (cover dated April 26th) with Vol.20 No.17.

When the publishing giant IPC took control of the Odhams and Fleetway comics they ruthlessly cut through the poorer selling titles. The period from late 1968 to early 1969 saw the end of Fantastic, Pow!, Jag, and Eagle, and Smash! was revamped beyond recognition. (IPC had their own ideas for adventure comics, as the following years would prove... but few had longevity.)

Eagle had been on the decline for years, and ended in a poorer state than its high quality beginnings. Yet even its final edition still contained good artwork. Let's take a look...

I'm sure the cover above must have raised a wry smile with older readers. "The  modern paper for the modern boy" led with a 1950s Dan Dare reprint! Having treated Dare's creator Frank Hampson disgracefully (see Alistair Crompton's book Tomorrow Revisited for the full story) and replaced him on the strip years earlier, the publishers had then added more insult by replacing the new artists with reprints of Hampson's work (without paying him of course).

The first strip inside the issue was The Waxer. A creepy serial about living waxworks, it was illustrated by Reg Bunn, famed for his work on The Spider for Lion. 

The wheelchair-bound crimebuster Lightning Stormm was clearly inspired by TV's Ironside. Art by Barrie Mitchell.

By 1969 Western strips were nowhere near as popular than in their 1950s heyday, and this was the final bow for Blackbow the Cheyanne. Art by Frank Humphries.

Ancient gladiators vs Nazis! Only in comics...

The Circus Wanderers had been given the full colour centrespread for some reason. A somewhat silly strip of circus performers becoming footballers, it never made the leap to the merged comic.

What's that? Merged comic? Yes, the next page explained it all, with a typical "Great News, Pals!" announcement. Eagle was merging with Lion! Ironic, considering they were originally by rival publishers, and that Lion was the younger upstart, initially a poor imitation of Eagle. 

Over the page, The Day the World Forgot, with art by Tom Kerr, may have been a reprint from somewhere. 

Wild of the West was certainly a reprint. (Perhaps from Top Spot?) I think the art was by Ted Kearon but I'm unsure.

Finally, The Iron Man's last adventure. Yes, Eagle had its own Iron Man superhero, although this version was a robot and bore no similarity to Marvel's character. The strip had originated in Boy's World in 1963 before moving over to Eagle. Art by Martin Salvador.

The following week, readers were greeted with Lion and Eagle, with poorer paper quality and less colour than they were used to. Admittedly the title was revived with much publicity in 1982 and ran for several years, but the true original Eagle ended in 1969. 

Mono version of the cover by Geoff Campion.

Christmas Comics: ALLY SLOPER (1976)

Ally Sloper was the first recurring character in British comics, having originated in the paper Judy in 1876 before moving onto his own very popular title Ally Sloper's Half Holiday in 1884. That publication ceased in 1914 (due to the war perhaps) and was revived for 23 weeks in 1922. Another (quite poor) revival in 1949 only lasted one issue. 

Then, in 1976, cartoonist, writer, and comics historian Denis Gifford attempted another revival with his ambitious Ally Sloper magazine co-published by Alan Class. The original Sloper paper had 8 tabloid pages, but Denis' new comic had 32 pages plus a card cover and full colour on the outside covers. Priced at 20p it was considerably more expensive than other British comics, and considerably slimmer than any imported American comic at that price (such as Eerie or Monsters Unleashed for example). Unsurprisingly, it only lasted for four issues.

However, the third issue was the Christmas edition so I thought I'd show some pages from it here today. (As always click on the images to see them larger.) Veteran comic artist Walter Bell had been commissioned by Denis to produce a new Ally Sloper image on page three of every issue and the 83 year old didn't disappoint. You'll notice caricatures of several politicians of the day, including Harold Wilson, Enoch Powell, and Dennis Healey.

Denis managed to attract quite a bit of talent to produce pages for Ally Sloper, including the legendary Frank Hampson. Here's the first (and sadly only) appearance of Frank's new creation Dawn O'Dare...

The next legend to appear in the comic was Leo Baxendale, firstly in an interview conducted by Denis...

...and then producing a new page for the comic...

Ready for another giant in the industry? How's about Raymond Briggs, with this one off Father Christmas story for adults...

The middle 8 pages of this Ally Sloper series always featured a pull out 'Nostalgicomic' of classic material. In this issue it was the old Daily Mirror strip Pip and Squeak and the cover was taken from a 1921 newspaper supplement...

Artist Ray Aspden did his page as a mock up of a classic UK comic cover, and a very nice job he did too. Philpot Bottles Orfis Boys Own revived the old Chips feature character, deliberate bad spelling and all.

Cartoonist Ed McHenry, who produced a lot of work for various IPC comics including Oink!, had a regular strip in Ally Sloper about a hairdresser-come-superhero Kaptain Kween...

Bob Dewar, another artist known for his work in children's comics, gave us Copout and Mumble, with gags that, whilst not intentionally offensive, would definitely be considered non-PC today...

The back page featured another Leo Baxendale illustration, advertising his Willy the Kid book. Excellent stuff.

The 1976 version of Ally Sloper was a brave attempt at producing a variety comic for the adult British market, and it was sold in newsagents as well as comic shops, but despite containing some quality material there unfortunately wasn't enough support for it.  

Tomorrow Revisited

Of all the classic British adventure strips, Dan Dare of the original Eagle is the one that the public often most fondly remember. Quite understandable, considering the care and dedication that Frank Hampson and his team put into each set of pages.


In 1985, Alistair Crompton wrote The Man Who Drew Tomorrow, telling the story behind Dan Dare and the man who created him. Now the author revises and expands the subject with Tomorrow Revisted: A Celebration of the Life and Art of Frank Hampson, a hardback with over 200 pages.

On the website of the publishers of the book, Crompton writes:
"...when PS Publishing invited me to update the work, the Hampson family was happy to collaborate, for which I am grateful. I believe Tomorrow Revisited tells the whole story of Frank’s career, and I hope some of my readers share the rage and disgust I feel over the way Frank was ousted from Eagle in 1962. The outrageous corporate firing did irreparable damage to his health, and scoured out of him a great deal of his talent."


The book promises to be a must-have for all Eagle enthusiasts. Here's a brief rundown:

• Your chance to study some of the artwork of the best strip cartoon storyteller in the world.
• How Frank Hampson created Dan Dare
• His contribution to UK’s most missed comic EAGLE
• His ‘lost’ strips published for the first time
• Photographs, sketches, models and other reference tools he used to create the
strip
• Some of his best artwork, reproduced as it was meant to be seen, so much more complete than in comics.
• Voted best strip cartoon storyteller since the end of WWII by a convention of his peers, and awarded a Yellow Kid at Lucca in Tuscany in 1975

A full-colour illustrated biography by Alastair Crompton.
208 pages with colour on almost every page
11” x 8” hardback.
Price £29.99 ($49.99)
Available on Amazon where you can check out the five-star reviews.