EAGLE-TIMES

Eagle Times Vol 22 No 2

2009-06-30T10:41:00.006+01:00

Summer 2009 contents

Tom Adams, Fine Art Painter - a review of the work of the illustrator of 'Soldiers of the Queen' and many 'George Cansdale' nature strips which appeared in Eagle from 1954 to 1959
The Rivals of Jeff Arnold, part 1 - 'Rex Keene, Texas Ranger' from Junior Express
Frank Hampson and Ronald Searle - comparisons of the careers of two 1950's "icon makers"
'Operation Saturn' Revisited - commentary on Dan Dare's fourth adventure in Eagle, following the revelations of the story's original outline
An obituary of Giorgio Bellavitis, architect and former comics illustrator, whose work in Eagle included 'Mark the Youngest Disciple'
Report of the 23rd Eagle Society Weekend at Muswell Hill, where the guest of honour was Charles Chilton, writer of Eagle's 'Riders of the Range', and radio's 'Journey into Space'
Eagle Autographs - part 5 (Artists and storytellers, part 2)
PC49 and the Case of the Murderous Mouse - part 2 of the story adaptation
Eagle Club Holidays - a look at the adventure holidays organised for Eagle Club members (and Girl Adventurers) by the Youth Hostel Association
Free Gifts in Eagle, part 5 - the 1964 Olympic Games medals
'Heros the Spartan', part 3, concluding this series by way of the final Eagle story and the Eagle Annual stories
'The Man From Nowhere' remembered - a personal reflection on iconic moments from Dan Dare's 6th adventure in Eagle
The added or missing bar - some observations on changes to Sir Hubert's epaulettes during the 'Dan Dare' saga
Pop Music during Eagle Times - 1965

The cover illustration for this issue is by Tom Adams from the series, 'British Birds by George Cansdale', Eagle, Vol 7 No 39 (28th September, 1956)

Giorgio Bellavitis (1926 - 2009)

2009-05-28T10:05:00.007+01:00

Giorgio Bellavitis (1926 - 2009) was born and died in Venice, though he spent a number of years in England. Starting out as a comic book artist, but changing career to architecture, his reputation in his later years was for his contribution as an architect to the restoration of Venice.

After being held prisoner together by the Nazis during the Second World War, Bellavitis and his friends Mario Faustinelli and Alberto Ongaro later set themselves up as publishers and gathered more artists and writers to form the Grupo Veneziano (Venetian Group). Their first magazine, called Albo Uragano (White Hurricane), was later renamed Asso di Picche, after its lead strip, which was pencilled by Hugo Pratt and inked by Bellavitis and Faustinelli. After drawing the first episode of ‘Junglemen’, Bellavitis then drew ‘The Adventures of Robin Hood’ under the pseudonym George Summers. After 1948, when Asso di Picche folded, and until 1954, when he moved to England, he worked mainly on Il Vittorioso (The Conqueror). His strips in this period included ‘I Cavalieri del Corvo’, ‘Acqua Cattiva’, ‘Il Palio di Siena’, and ‘Amburgo 1947’.

In England, he was instrumental in introducing the Italian illustrator Rimaldo D’Ami (Roy Dami, founder of the Damy Agency) to Britain, and was the first of many Italian comic strip artists to be published in Britain via D'Ami's agency.

Bellavitis’ first English strip was ‘Paul English’ for Swift. He then drew ‘Mark, the Youngest Disciple’ to a script by Chad Varah, for Eagle. Bellavitis stood in for Richard Jennings on two complete ‘Storm Nelson’ adventures (which were was later reprinted in Italy as 'Kid Tempesta'), the first of which was set in his place of birth. He also drew for Eagle Annual and Swift Annual, including the illustrations for a text story ‘The Winged Devils - a tale of the Ancient Vikings’ in Swift Annual No 2. He worked for a short time on Express Weekly, drawing ‘Rodney Flood’, and he is known to have done some illustrations for the Sunday Pictorial Children’s Annual. In 1956 he helped out on Eagle’s ‘Jeff Arnold in Riders of the Range’. His work also appeared in Playhour and Treasure. In 1958, however, he returned to Italy to pursue a career in architecture.

For many years, and until his death, Professor Giorgio Bellavitis was actively involved in the conservation and restoration of Venice, advising UNESCO and other bodies. Giorgio Bellavitis' projects in Venice included the garden design and landscaping for Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, the home of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, and from 1997 to 2005 direction of the restoration of Ca’Foscari. Giorgio Bellavitis wrote and co-authored a number of books and articles, including ‘Venice: a City in the Sea of History’, which prefaces the Heritage Guide to Venice published by the Touring Club of Italy. His death was reported on 21 May 2009 in Venice, the city that inspired him.

A fuller obituary and bibliography can be read on Steve Holland's Bear Alley blog.

Previous posts on eagle-times:

Photo of Giorgio Bellavitis: Il Gazzettino

Dan Dare: The Phantom Fleet

2009-05-16T16:53:00.013+01:00

The latest in Titan Books' reprint volumes of the original Dan Dare series has recently been published. My copy arrived from Amazon.co.uk on 14th May, 2009.

The full list of published Dan Dare titles can be seen at the Titan Books website. Although the 10th story in the Dan Dare series, The Phantom Fleet is the 11th volume in Titan's series since the first (Venus) story and 'Operation Saturn' were each split over two volumes and 'The Ship that Lived' was appended to 'Reign of the Robots'. This book also includes the Dan Dare story 'Operation Plum Pudding', which originally appeared in Eagle Annual No 5. Thers is an Introduction by Jeff Wayne (composer of the award-winning musical version of War of the Worlds), and an article on the life and work of Frank Bellamy (Frank Hampson's successor on 'Dan Dare,), by Paul Holder.

With echoes of the first Dan Dare story, 'The Phantom Fleet' opens with a spaceship awaiting take-off. But, rather than the terrestrial "Headquarters of the Interplanet Spacefleet some years in the future", the scene is now "Spacefleet Base on the Moon, some years in the future...' On board is Dan Dare, Chief Pilot of the Spacefleet, making a routine check flight. Take-off goes well, but the ship has to return to the Moon in an emergency when all Spacefleet communications are mysteriously jammed. Dan and Co. investigate, and discover a race of highly intelligent aquatic aliens, the Cosmobes, who are intent on Earth colonisation. But it turns out the Cosmobes are fleeing a much more aggressive foe, from their dying home world...

Die-hard Eagle fans may already have their collections of original Eagles and the Hawk Book reprints, but that shouln't stop them collecting these too! Beautifully produced in hardback with wrap-around dustjacket and in a convenient size, if you don't know what Dan Dare is about, or came to Dan Dare in one of his later incarnations, this series is the best place to start to find out about the original 1950s Frank Hampson creation.

First published beginning 25th April 1958, the opening episodes of 'The Phantom Fleet' shows some of the Dan Dare production team's best work. It's good to see this series continuing. Although I appreciate there may be formatting issues with some of the later stories, I can only hope that Titan manage to complete the reprints of the whole series, rather than cut it short as the Hawk Books series did.

Although at a reduced size compared with the originals, with pages a little over A4 in size, this does make for a more handleable product. The more observant will notice that picture of Dan on the cover is different from that used for promotion before publication, which recycled an image of Dan from 'Operation Saturn'.

Eagle Society Weekend and Dinner, 2009

2009-04-09T17:55:00.004+01:00

Please note that bookings for this year's previously advertised Eagle Society's Weekend and Annual Dinner at the Guy Chester Centre, Muswell Hill are now closed.

Eagle Times Vol 22 No 1

2009-03-27T11:30:00.001Z

Spring 2009 contents

Operation Saturn - but not as we know it. Details of Frank Hampson's original 1952 story outline for Dan Dare's 4th adventure, revealed and reviewed
Heros the Spartan - a review of EAGLE's popular 1960s sword and sorcery strip, part 2
By a Hair's Breadth - artwork by Frank Hampson, from Ranger, 1965
Prisoners of Space revisited - a new review of the Pilot of the Future's 5th EAGLE adventure
PC49 and the Case of the Murderous Mouse - part 1 of a new story adaptation
Edward Beal - more information about the creator the Railway Page that appeared in EAGLE's dummy second issue
Rick Random, Space Detective - a review of Prion Books' recently published collection of 1950s interplanetary adventures
More memories of Denis Gifford's Ally Sloper magazine
"I was there" - part 5, memories of the Society of Strip Illustration Awards Dinner, December 1976
More Crockett and Krispies - from the series Heroes of the West, drawn by Ron Embleton for Kellogg's Rice Krispies
Eagle Autographs - part 4, the artists and storytellers
Pop Music during Eagle Times - 1964

This issue's front cover features the Valiant spaceship from 'Operation Saturn' (EAGLE, 1953)
superimposed with images of Saturn and the Eagle Nebula (NASA photographs) .

Spaceship Away #17

2009-02-06T10:53:00.001Z

Spaceship Away is a three times a year, full colour, 44-page A4 glossy magazine that publishes newly created 1950’s Eagle style 'Dan Dare' strip stories (licensed by the Dan Dare Corporation) along with other science fiction strips and articles. Issue 17, which is just out, continues the 'Dan Dare' serial strips 'The Green Nemesis' (written by Rod Barzilay; drawn by Tim Booth), 'The Gates of Eden' (written and drawn by Tim Booth) and 'Rocket Pilot' (written and drawn by Keith Page). There is also a new full colour 'Dan Dare' centre-spread by Mike Noble, plus the humorous strips 'Dan Bear' (by Andy Boyce), 'Mekki', 'Our Bertie' (both by Ray Aspden), and 'Dan Dire' (a satire by Eric Mackenzie).

Factual articles include an original story outline for 'Operation Saturn', by Dan Dare's creator Frank Hampson*, and 'Working with Frank Bellamy', by Dan Dare artist Don Harley. The latter is nicely illustrated with a picture by Don recollecting Frank Bellamy delivering a page of 'Dan Dare'. There is also an article by Jeremy Briggs on Dan Dare's personal spaceship Anastasia. The Anastasia article is accompanied by a cutaway drawing of Anastasia's cockpit by Graham Bleathman. An article on 'Eagle and TV21' by Stephen Baxter is illustrated with examples from the Eagle artists who contributed to TV21: Frank Hampson ('Fireball XL5'), Frank Bellamy ('Thunderbirds'), Don Harley ('Thunderbirds'), Eric Eden ('Lady Penelope'), Ron Embleton ('Stingray') and Keith Watson ('Captain Scarlet').

In addition to the 'Dan Dare'-themed material, Spaceship Away includes three other SF strips: a reprint of Charles Chilton's 'Journey into Space - Planet of Fear' serial that originally appeared in Eagle's rival paper Express Weekly (1956), drawn by Ferdinando Tacconi, 'Ex-Astris', a computer-rendered strip by John Freeman and Mike Nicholl, and 'Nick Hazard Interstellar Agent', written by Philip Harbottle, drawn by Ron Turner and coloured by John Ridgway.

For further details of Spaceship Away, including how to subscribe, please go to the Spaceship Away website.

* Further information and comment by David Britton on Frank Hampson's outline for Operation Saturn will appear in the next (Spring 2009) issue of Eagle Times.

Eagle writers - J.H.G. Freeman (1903 - 1972) aka Gordon Grinstead

2009-01-30T14:04:00.014Z

John Henry Gordon ("Don") Freeman was born in Croydon, Surrey, and attended St. Joseph’s College, Streatham. The youngest of three children, all of whom developed an early interest in writing stories and compiling "magazines" from their efforts, he was the only one to actually go into publishing. When he did, the majority of his lifetime output was as a staff writer for the Daily Mirror, which he joined in 1918 at around the age of 15.

Initially taken on by the Daily Mirror as an office boy, his first published work in the Mirror is believed to have appeared on the children’s page in January 1922, although he also worked on the sports page around that time. He became assistant to Bertram. J. Lamb, who as "Uncle Dick" was the editor of the Mirror’s children’s pages, and he provided story lines and many of the rhymed adventures of ‘Pip, Squeak and Wilfred’ in the Mirror and in the cartoon characters’ associated annuals published between 1923 and 1940. Following, or shortly before, Lamb’s death in 1938, he took over as "Uncle Dick". His contributions included stories credited to himself (as J.H.G. Freeman), and other pieces credited to "Uncle Dick" or other pseudonyms. His poems were published daily for at least five, possibly ten, years in the Daily Mirror. In 1930 a collection of his verses, The Rhymes of Merry Andrew was published. Also in the early 1930s a school story by J.H.G. Freeman, entitled Plain Smith IV: the Story of a Fortune was published as part of the Nelson "Red Star" series, reprinted later as part of the same publisher’s "Captain" series.

Gradually the Daily Mirror’s cartoon page became more adult. In 1936, "Don" Freeman (as he was known) adapted Edgar Wallace’s Terror Keep into a comic strip (drawn by Jack Monk). When that strip was "pulled" for copyright reasons he developed a new character, ‘Buck Ryan’, again with Monk as artist. The strip ran from 1937 to 1962. The number of strips he was scripting increased. From 1938 he began to write ‘Jane’ (“the strip that won the war”) for Jane’s creator, the artist Norman Pett, and when Michael Hubbard took over the drawing, Don continued scripting ‘Jane’ until 1953. In 1943 Don also took on ‘Belinda Blue Eyes’ (created by Steve Dowling), recasting it as simply ‘Belinda’ with its new artist Tony Royle. ‘Belinda’ folded in 1959. In the meantime, from 1944 until 1952 he also wrote ‘Garth’, which since its debut the year before had been written and drawn entirely by its creator Steve Dowling, who continued to draw it. Don was responsible for developing many of the characters and plot devices in Garth, including Garth's origin story.

While Don "wrote" many strips, his technique involved more than that might imply, and his contributions were more collaborative. Rather than typing out his scripts, his technique was to "rough" out the story, sketching it in pencil as he visualised it, for the artist to use as a guide.

In 1941 he had married and in 1945 the family, which by then included a son and daughter, moved to East Grinstead in Sussex, where a second son was born in 1946. Shortly after moving to East Grinstead, Don began using the pen-name "Gordon Grinstead", possibly so that he could take on non-Mirror work. Under his new pen-name, he produced a novel, Angela Darling, which was published by Rylee in 1949. Between 1959 and 1963 he wrote seven children’s educational books for Cassell & Co Ltd under their “for Silver Circle readers” banner. His other freelance work included that for Hulton Press: firstly ‘Sally of the South Seas’ which appeared in Girl and then ‘Knights of the Road’ for Eagle.

‘Knights of the Road’, the adventures of “Sir” Ted Knight, a lorry driver and his younger brother Frank, who were partners in a road haulage business (“Go Anywhere – Carry Anything” was their motto), appeared weekly in Eagle for two years from 19th March 1960 until 7th March 1962, drawn throughout by artist Gerald Haylock. It was no coincidence that the character “Lofty” in the ‘Knights of the Road’ story ‘The Grange Street Gang’ looked remarkably like the younger of Don Freeman’s sons. 'Knights of the Road’ also made a couple of appearances in Eagle Annual, once as a text story, and then in comic strip form.

Don was well read, and largely self-educated. All his stories drew on history and geography, which he researched thoroughly, often taking his family on holidays to research the places he wrote about.

In the early 1960s Don moved with his family to Bexhill on Sea. He continued his historical research joining associations in pursuit of his interests, but gradually he wrote less, though he continued with some editing work. It had been his ambition to write a Great Novel, but this remained unfulfilled when he died at Bexhill on 8th July, 1972.

Eagle Strips (writer): 'Knights of the Road'

First story (untitled) (Vol 11 No 12 – Vol 11 No 27)
'The Hoodoo Run' (Vol 11 No 28 – Vol 11 No 47)
'The Grange Street Gang' (Vol 11 No 48 – Vol 12 No 14)
'Pilgrimage of Peril' (Vol 12 No 15 – Vol 12 No 32)
'Carnival of Death' (Vol 12 No 33 – Vol 12 No 51)
'Dutch Courage' (Vol 12 No 52 – Vol 13 No 9)

Eagle Annual (writer):

'Snowbound! But the Knights of the Road get through' (text story) Eagle Annual No 11, 1962
'Knights of the Road in ‘Treat her Rough!’' (strip story) Eagle Annual No 12, 1963

Note: The text story in Eagle Annual No 11 is credited to “George Grinstead”. The strip in Eagle Annual No 12 is uncredited. Illustrations are by Gerald Haylock.

Links:

Pip Squeak and Wilfred Wikipedia
Jane Wikipedia
Jane Toonpedia
Jane Bear Alley
Belinda Wikipedia
Garth Wikipedia

ET Refs:

Gould, David. Eagle Scriptwriters No 4: J. H. G. Freeman (Gordon Grinstead) Eagle Times Vol 2 No 2 pp 16 - 18.
Sheaf, Richard. A Weekend at Ely: The Society’s 15th Annual Dinner Eagle Times Vol 14 No 2, pp 32 – 35.
Gittens, John Mortlock Biography of John Henry Gordon Freeman - dictated to Tom Rawlinson. Eagle Times Vol 15 No 3 pp 2 - 4.
Gould, David. Recollections of J.H.G. Freeman (aka Gordon Grinstead) - as told by his sons Richard and Nick in April 2002. Eagle Times Vol 15 No 3, pp 5 – 9.

The Eagle Society Weekend and Annual Dinner, 2009

2009-01-14T08:30:00.009Z

The Guy Chester Centre

Muswell Hill

24th - 26th April 2009

Our Social Secretary, Nigel McMurray, has again asked me to post, for the benefit of Members, the highlights for the Eagle Society Weekend, which this year will be held at the Guy Chester Centre, Muswell Hill, London.The package will include 2-night’s accommodation and most meals, including the Society’s Annual Dinner, plus two days of activities including talks and tours, beginning in the late afternoon of Friday, 24th April and concluding after lunch on Sunday, 26th April. The centre, which is a Methodist Retreat set in 10 acres of gardens and woodlands, has a car park, en-suite rooms and disabled facilities. Highlights of the weekend will include:

The Eagle Society’s Annual Dinner at the Guy Chester Centre
A visit to the RAF Museum at Hendon
A History of Muswell Hill presented by a local historian
Lunch at the Spaniards Inn (with its claimed association with Dick Turpin)
Special Tour of Highgate Cemetery
Fights in Eagle - a themed talk from by Eric Fernie
“He wants to be ... a cab driver”
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be - a look back at previous Eagle Weekends
Treasure Island with John Worsley, Millar Watt and Dudley Watkins - a presentation and talk by John Swan
Speedway and Eagle - Terry Stone, President of the World Speedway Riders Association, addresses the Eagle Society. And he's bringing a 1928 speedway machine!
Sunday Service at Muswell Hill Methodist Church

For Members of the Eagle Society, the cost for the weekend, which includes two nights accommodation, is £110 sterling per person for a shared room, with an extra supplement of £20 per person for single rooms (subject to availability). Non-members wishing to take part should enclose in addition the appropriate (UK or Overseas) Membership Fee (separate cheque, please) with their application.

If you would like more details, or to confirm details and/or availability of places, please contact Nigel by e-mail . Or to make a definite booking would Members please write, enclosing payment (in £ sterling, please, cheques made payable to the Eagle Society) to:

Adrian Perkins
19, Wolsey Way,
Cherry Hinton,
Cambridge,
CB1 3JQ
United Kingdom

The illustration is the opening frame of 'Black Bess', from the series 'Famous Horse Stories', drawn by Raymond Sheppard. It appeared in Eagle Vol 5 No 40 (1st October, 1954).

Eagle Times Vol 21 No 4

2008-12-13T09:00:00.000Z

Winter 2008 contents

Memories of Christmas Past - seasonal cards and drawings by some of the best
A Kennedy Christmas - some of Ian Kennedy's Christmas-themed comics and annual covers
The Career of Ian Kennedy - part 2, from the eighties to the new millenium
More of EAGLE's 2nd issue dummy, including Norman Thelwell's 'Pop Milligan' and Frank Hampson's 'The Great Adventurer' - with Joan Porter's recollections of the Bakehouse Studio in the 1950s
Frank Hampson at the Festival - a contemporary note written by Frank Hampson on the Angouleme Comics Festival, 1978
PC49 - The Case of the Galloping Ghost
An account of the Chad Varah Memorial Service at St Paul's Cathedral, held on 12th November, 2008
"I was there" - the launch of Denis Gifford's Ally Sloper Magazine in 1976
Who's who No. 50
The Eagle Annual of the Cutaways - book review
Heros the Spartan - part 1, beginning a review of EAGLE's popular 1960s sword and sorcery strip
Tony Weare - part 2, concluding the life of a favourite artist
Books for Christmas - a seasonal review
EAGLE on the web
Pop Music in EAGLE Times - 1963

This issue's cover shows some Memories of Christmas Past - cards by Peter Jackson, Tony Weare and Keith Watson - courtesy of Alan Vince.

Dan Dare helps Science Museum to Tourism Gold

2008-11-30T17:07:00.001Z

The winners of the Visit London Awards 2008 were presented at the Royal Albert Hall on 27th November. The Science Museum, which among its many attractions is currently exhibiting 'Dan Dare and the Birth of Hi-Tech Britain', won 'Gold' as the Visitor Attraction of the Year. The award recognises the Science Museum's appeal to adults and children, with its world-class collections, exhibitions and events.

The 'Dan Dare and the Birth of Hi-Tech Britain' exhibition has certainly given the museum a boost. Not only has it provided an excellent exhibition (see the review at our earlier post) but it has brought the museum additional publicity through press exposure. For example, apart from its coverage when it launched back in April, 2008, The Times has since chosen to list the exhibition among its Top Five Museums on at least five occasions.

David Britton has provided a quote from John Liffen, who is a co-curator of the exhibition with Professor Andrew Nahun. The following came in response to David's question on the how the exhibition was going:

As you know, we had a good press reaction and an independent study thought that the value to the Museum of the exposure was high. I quote from Andrew Nahum: ‘It was done by an able PR professional and it rates value of every mention according to size of the article and each paper or magazine's advertising rate. There is also an industry convention multiplier reflecting the fact that editorial material is far more influential than paid for advertising and “can't be bought”. According to these calculations, the Science Museum would have had to spend almost £700k to achieve the same presence in the media with “paid for” marketing. Of course, this publicity contributes to public perceptions of the whole Museum and not just to the Dare show.’ “Aside from that, the exhibition was well-received internally (which matters a lot!) and the visitors seem to like it. I haven’t yet seen a qualitative visitor survey, but I hope we shall have done something on those lines. People are stimulated to write in with notes of appreciation about the whole exhibition, but often they focus in on just one item which has particularly caught their attention ... I haven’t heard of any adverse comments, and perhaps that’s a good test, too”

The Exhibition runs until October 2009, so there is still plenty of time to see it, if you haven't already.

The picture (from the Science Museum's Dan Dare Exhibition press pack) shows one of the murals drawn for the Museum in the 1970s by Frank Hampson, Dan Dare's creator.
Dan Dare is © The Dan Dare Corporation Ltd.

Footnote: Those interested in memorabilia might like to note that the Science Museum now has sets of 'Dan Dare Exhibition' tie-in souvenir postcards and notepads, 'Dan Dare' (and Mekon) T-shirts (small and medium only, unfortunately!) and badges, and some very attractive 'Dan Dare' spaceship LED keyrings.

The Eagle Annual of the Cutaways (review)

2008-10-13T16:40:00.002+01:00

The latest in the series Eagle Annual of the… has now been published by Orion Books.

The Eagle Annual of the Cutaways takes the same look and format as last year’s Eagle Annual - The best of the 1950s comic, with an identical page-count (176 pages), but is priced at £14.99 (£2 more than the earlier book). Rather than the dark green spine with yellow lettering previously used, though, this book has a dark blue spine with cream lettering. Both books have a "distressed" look and feel. The Editor is again Daniel Tatarsky, and the book has a Preface by Colin Frewin, Chief Executive of the Dan Dare Corporation Limited, and an Introduction by Jonathan Glancey, Architecture Critic, the Guardian.

The Eagle Annual of the Cutaways collects together, in (what seems to this reader's mind) a less than systematic manner, around 142 of the 946 cutaway drawings that appeared in Eagle throughout its life from 1950 until the penultimate issue in 1969. For anyone who fondly remembers Eagle and its cutaways, but who doesn’t still have their collection, this will be a “must buy”. But the market for this book is clearly “nostalgia” rather than serious appreciation or study. This book will sell, and deserves to, but it will also disappoint the more serious collector or student.

Comparisons are inevitable with Denis Gifford’s earlier collection, The Eagle Book of Cutaways (Webb & Bower, 1988). While covering less material and restricting his book (with one notable exception*) to the work of Leslie Ashwell Wood, rather than the full range of Eagle cutaway artists, Gifford treated the material with more respect than is evident here. In Denis' book, the page layout and colour reproduction were excellent, there was no cropping of the illustrations – and the pages are clean! Here, there is better coverage of the work of the many artists who produced cutaways for Eagle, but sometimes their illustrations are cropped - to the extent that occasionally explanatory text is partially lost, or the artists’ signatures are partially, and in some cases completely, lost. As an example Laurence Dunn’s ‘The Dome of Discovery’, from Eagle, 4^th May, 1951 (which incidentally is reproduced less cropped in the Eagle Annual - Best of the 1950s comic) is cropped top and right, in the process losing some of the illustration and Laurence Dunn’s signature. In addition nearly all the pages carry that artificial "distressed" look which was a problem for many (including me!) when we saw Orion Books’ earlier offering. In my opinion, putting artificial "grime" on the pages detracts from the content and shows a lack of respect for the original artists, especially when it strays onto the artwork. I don't think these aspects sit easily with this dedication, quoted here from the Preface:

"This book is dedicated to all the highly talented artists who created these wonderful cutaways."

There is much to commend this book. Eagle Society member Steve Winders has already written an excellent review, posted at Steve Holland's Bear Alley blog. Any more detailed comments I might make would inevitably repeat much of what he has said there, so I will leave my comments to those above. There is also a review by Jeremy Briggs, well worth reading, at the Down the Tubes blog.

Further related links:

eagle-times initial post (May 2008) on the Eagle Annual of the Cutaways
more from eagle-times on Eagle's cutaway drawings with a list of artists
Jeremy Briggs follow-up post to his review at Down the Tubes: Eagle cutaway art.

* The cutaway of Dan Dare's spaceship Anastasia, published in Eagle 7th February,1958, was not by Ashwell Wood, although Denis Gifford included it in his book. By the way it does not appear in the Eagle Annual of the Cutaway.

Eagle Times Vol 21 No3

2008-09-30T07:00:00.005+01:00

Autumn 2008 contents

The Career of Ian Kennedy - part 1, the 1950s to the 1970s
More of the EAGLE's second issue dummy (including 'Rob Conway' in colour!)
The Final Winner? - what happened to the EAGLE 'Sportsman of the Year' trophy
Frank Hampson at NESCOT (1972 to 1977) - another 'I was there' article
Tony Weare, artist for all seasons - who turned down an offer to draw 'Dan Dare'!
Another 'Anastasia' - how a classic car artist (Jack Lewis) came to create a tribute to Bruce Cornwell
Marcus Morris and the 1953 Coronation recording
Dan Dare, the Audio Book: Voyage to Venus - part 1 (a review)
The magic of Pelikan Inks
EAGLE on the web
PC49: The Case of the Pink Panic - part 3 (conclusion)
Nether Wallop - in Surrey? - a church that might have been the model for a scene in the first 'Dan Dare' story
Dan Dare - the Virgin Version - a review
Crockett & Krispies - on Ron Embleton's 1956 'Heros of the West' series for Kellogg's
Snakes Alive! - artist Geoffrey ('Luck of the Legion') Bond's fascination with snakes
Looks familiar! - How 1959 'Dan Dare' artwork provided the reference for newspaper illustrations ten years later
Pop Music in EAGLE times - 1962

The 'Dan Dare' illustration on the front cover this issue of Eagle Times is by Ian Kennedy
and appeared in the ('new series') Eagle, 8th January, 1983.

Eagle Writers - Peter Ling (1926 - 2006)

2008-09-24T23:17:00.023+01:00

Peter (George Derek) Ling was born on May 7th 1926 at Thornton Heath, near Croydon, Surrey. For education, he attended the Winterbourne Elementary School, followed by the Whitgift School at Haling Park, South Croydon. He soon developed a passion for English composition, and at the age of 14 he had an article published in Good Housekeeping, the first step in a distinguished and varied writing career.

“Called up” as a Bevin Boy during the Second World War, he went to work in a Derbyshire coal mine but after three months, due to ill-health, he was transferred to the Army Pay Corps. After the war he was diagnosed with tuberculosis, and spent about 2½ years in a British Legion Sanatorium. His first novel, Voices Offstage, was published in 1947. Deciding to try his luck as a gag-writer, he sent in some sample scripts to various BBC radio comedians, with the result that Jon Pertwee turned up in person to encourage him to write material for his radio show, Waterlogged Spa. In 1950, Peter began to write comedy material for television. A children’s magazine programme called Whirligig was broadcast every other Saturday, and included a serial, celebrity guests, with comedy links provided by Humphrey Lestocq and ‘Mr Turnip’. Peter wrote all their material.

In 1952, when introduced (by Goons creator, Jimmy Grafton) to Eagle Editor’s assistant Ellen Vincent, Peter jumped at the chance to write a schoolboy serial for Eagle. The first ‘Three J’s’ story, set in Northbrook School, a setting broadly based on Whitgift School, appeared in 1953, with 32 text serials published over the next six years, wonderfully spot-illustrated by Peter Kay. In addition to writing the ‘Three J’s’ stories in Eagle, Peter Ling also wrote ‘Three Js’ stories in five Eagle Annuals, and an Eagle novel: The Three J’s and the Pride of Northbrook. In 1958 he adapted the Three J's for television. Trouble at Northbrook consisted of five 5 fortnightly episodes and was followed by another 6-part adventure called Northbrook Holiday. Unfortunately no recordings of the serials are known to exist. In 1954 Peter had married Sheilah Potts, an actress and writer who had appeared in Whirligig, and who used the professional name Sheilah Ward. They collaborated on some serials for Girl: 'Two Pairs of Skates' (1956-57) and 'Penny Starr' (1957), plus a Girl novel: Angela has Wings (1960).

He also turned his hand to songwriting and one song, Why Not Now performed by Matt Monro, made it into the charts in 1961. That same year, Peter helped Hazel Adair to develop Compact, a television soap opera set in the offices of a women’s magazine. They co-wrote the series, which appeared on BBC twice-weekly from the beginning of 1962 until the Summer of 1965. They also wrote the Compact Annual which was published in 1963 “by arrangement with the BBC”. Their professional partnership continued when, in 1964, they co-created Crossroads, another soap opera, this one set in a motel. The highly popular Crossroads ran for 24 years (despite its reputation for “wobbly sets”!), and a total of around 4,500 programmes were broadcast before its final show in 1988. Initially the series was shown only on Central and Southern ITV but it was networked nationally from 1972. Although Hazel Adair left Crossroads after the first year, Peter remained as a writer until 1987, when a new producer decided he wanted to write his own stories.

Among Peter Ling’s many writing credits for television are episodes of Dixon of Dock Green, Sexton Blake, No Hiding Place, The Avengers and Doctor Who. His contribution to Doctor Who was the serial ‘The Mind Robber’ (1968, starring Patrick Troughton) for which he also later wrote the Target novelization (1986). He also wrote many radio dramas, including adaptations of Sherlock Holmes stories, the Arnold Bennett story Imperial Palace, and John Dickson Carr’s Doctor Gideon Fell detective stories, and (in 1969) he originated the BBC radio soap opera Waggoners’ Walk, which replaced Mrs Dale's Diary, and ran for 11 years, until 1980. In the 1980s and into the mid-1990s, he wrote novels under his own name, including the 'Crown House' and 'Watermen' trilogies, plus Halfway to Heaven and Happy Tomorrow. He also wrote a number of "bodice ripper" romances under the pseudonym “Petra Lee”.

In his later years Peter produced and directed plays for his local theatre, The Stables, in Hastings, East Sussex. His wife Sheilah, who latterly published as Sheilah Ward Ling, died in 1997. They had four children.

The Eagle Society was pleased when Peter agreed to be interviewed in 1998, and that Peter consequently agreed to come along as an invited guest for the Eagle Weekend at Pinner in 1999. In his later years Peter fought bravely against Alzheimer's disease. He died on September 14th 2006.

Eagle stories (writer):

'The Three J's' serials - Eagle Vol 3 No 39 -Vol 10 No 16.

Eagle Annual stories (writer):

'The Three J's' - Eagle Annual Nos 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9
'Hawkeye without his glasses' - Eagle Annual No 10 (1961)

Eagle novel:

The Three J's and the Pride of Northbrook (Hulton Press, 1957)

Links:

ET Refs:

Gould, David. Peter Ling. Eagle Times Vol 12 No 1, pp 2 - 7.
Gould, David. Peter Ling (1926 - 2006) Eagle Times Vol 19 No 4, p 2.

The picture shows Peter Ling signing autographs at the Eagle Weekend in 1999.

Who reads Eagle

2008-07-31T19:48:00.000+01:00

Towards the end of 1963, in the second story of the new television series Doctor Who, the Doctor and his companions travel to Skaro where they meet the Daleks for the first time. So successful was the series, and this particular story, that it spawned a movie adaptation: Doctor Who and the Daleks. Peter Cushing was chosen to play "Doctor Who" (as he was named in the film), along with Roy Castle, Jennie Linden and Roberta Tovey as Ian, Barbara and Susan, respectively.

The opening scene pans around Doctor Who's living room (in the film he is an eccentric human professor). His granddaughter, Susan, is reading 'Physics for the Inquiring Mind' and Barbara is seen reading 'The Science Of Science'. As the camera pans to Doctor Who, we see that he is reading ... a copy of Eagle and Boys' World! He has the comic open, apparently at 'Heros the Spartan' (drawn by Frank Bellamy) on the centre pages - clearly he liked a bit of fantasy! - but presumably he has already read 'Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future', which is prominently on view on the front and back covers. The issue date can clearly be identified from Keith Watson's artwork from 'The Moonsleepers' adventure: it is the issue dated 20th March 1965 - most probably the current issue at the time of filming, as the movie had its UK premiere on 26th June.

More about this on the Frank Bellamy Checklist site.

Eagle Writers - Charles Chilton (1917 - )

2008-07-30T15:07:00.003+01:00

Charles (Frederick William) Chilton, MBE, is best known to Eagle readers as the scriptwriter of ‘Riders of the Range’ and the author and producer of the classic 1950s BBC radio serial ‘Journey into Space’.

Charles’ father was killed, at the age of 18, at Arras in the so-called Great War, so Charles never knew him, and he was born into poverty in Sandwich Street, King’s Cross, London. His mother died in the post-war flu epidemic when he was about 6, and afterwards he was raised by his grandmother. He left school at the age of 14 and, after an unrewarding “apprenticeship” with an electrical sign-maker, at 15 he joined the BBC as a messenger. The BBC sponsored day and evening classes, and he developed a life-time appetite for self-education. At 16, he became an assistant in the BBC’s gramophone library. By the age of 18 he had moved into radio presentation and production. He developed a passion for jazz, forming the BBC Boys’ Jazz Band in 1937. He presented many music programmes including ‘Swing Time’, and ‘Radio Rhythm Club’. His first major production was Alastair Cook’s ‘I Hear America Singing’.

During the Second World War, although initially a conscientious objector, he enlisted with the RAF, and served three years as a radio trainer before being transferred to Armed Forces radio. In Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) he ran the forces radio station with David Jacobs. After the war he returned to the BBC in London and met and married Penny, a secretary at the BBC. In 1949 he created and produced a popular weekly radio show called ‘Riders of the Range’.

In 1950 the Editor of Eagle, Marcus Morris, sought and obtained permission from the BBC for a comic-strip version of ‘Riders of the Range’. In October that year Morris sponsored a trip by Chilton to Arizona. Chilton’s account of the trip was published in Eagle as a series of articles called ‘Ticket to Tombstone’. His third article was followed the next week by the appearance of ‘Riders of the Range’ (featuring Jeff Arnold and the 6T6 Outfit) in comic-strip format, drawn initially by Jack Daniel. Chilton continued to write and produce the radio show until its demise in 1953, and to write the scripts for Eagle’s ‘Riders of the Range’ strip and the scripts and stories for numerous ‘Riders of the Range’ and Eagle annuals, into the early 1960s. He also wrote the script for ‘Flying Cloud’, a western strip that appeared in Girl and he is credited with some writing for Swift Annual. As the comic strip ‘Riders of the Range’ developed, helped by Penny with the research, he became an expert on the Wild West and introduced authentic historic western stories into the series. He also wrote historical accounts of the West, such as The Book of the West (Odhams, 1961) which, after publication in America, earned him The Western Heritage Award for Juvenile Books in 1963.

When ‘Riders of the Range’ finished on radio Charles Chilton was tasked by the BBC with creating a science fiction series. The result was the hugely successful ‘Journey into Space”, and he wrote and produced three series (58 episodes) between 1953 and 1955 with a repeat production of the first story ‘Operation Luna’ broadcast in 1958. The hugely successful radio serials and their subsequent translation to book and comic strip form under his own authorship assured Chilton’s international recognition. Among his other radio production credits in the fifties are a several editions of ‘The Goon Show’ in 1953, 1957 and 1958.

In 1962 Charles Chilton wrote and produced a radio musical based on World War 1 songs, called ‘The Long, Long Road’. In 1963 this was transformed through his collaboration with Joan Littlewood and the Theatre Workshop into the stage production: ‘Oh! What a Lovely War’, and in 1969 was turned into a film by writer Len Deighton and director Richard Attenborough.

In 1976(?) Charles Chilton was awarded the MBE, which was presented to him by the Queen Mother. Although he retired from the BBC soon after, he has continued to write and for many years he has been a Guide for London Walks. In the 1980s he wrote a sequel radio play ‘Journey into Space: The Return from Mars’ and two science fiction serials in the ‘Journey into Space’ vein: ‘Space Force’ and ‘Space Force II’. More recently, he wrote a further ‘Journey into Space' radio play ‘Frozen in Time’, which was broadcast by the BBC on 12th April 2008.

The picture shows Charles as an honoured guest of the Eagle Society at Bath, in 1995. Also present for the weekend was the first Eagle 'Riders of the Range' artist, Jack Daniel.

Eagle articles:

‘Ticket to Tombstone’ (Vol 1 Nos 33, 35 and 36)

Eagle strips (writer):

‘Riders of the Range’ (Vol 1 No 37 – Vol 13 No 9)

Note: In Eagle 'Riders of the Range' consists of 23 stories, which are told over 576 episodes.The vast majority are written by Chilton, although some episodes may be by another, as they are not credited.

Eagle Annual strips (writer):

'Riders of the Range' Eagle Annual No 1 - No 10 (1961)

Note: In addition to the above, from 1951 Juvenile Productions Ltd published a series of Charles Chilton's Riders of the Range Annual. Juvenile also published a Jeff Arnold in The Bozeman Trail picture strip book. When the Juvenile annuals finished, Hulton Press followed on with six Eagle Riders of the Range Annuals, the last being for 1962. All were written by Charles Chilton, who also wrote a serial 'Jeff Arnold and the Battle of Quitman Creek', which appeared monthly in the ABC Film Review in 1953.

Links:

ET Refs:

Smyth, Bob. Eagle Scriptwriters No 1: Charles Chilton. Eagle Times Vol 1 No 2 pp 18 - 24.
Evans-Gunther, Charles. Goon ... but not forgotten. Eagle Times Vol 1 No 3 p 15.
Howard, James. Charles Chilton and Riders of the Range. Eagle Times Vol 4 No 3 pp 30 - 31.
Chilton, Charles. A tribute to Frank Humphris (1911 - 1994) Eagle Times Vol 7 No 1 pp 2 - 4.
Horn, Cowhand. Besides Jeff Arnold ... Eagle Times Vol 7 No 1 pp 40 - 41.
Horn, Cowhand. Yipp-e-ee! An afternoon with Mr and Mrs Charles Chilton. Eagle Times Vol 7 No 4 pp 34 - 38.

Eagle Times, Vol 21 No 2

2008-06-30T15:00:00.001+01:00

Summer 2008 Contents

An EAGLE nobody knows - the dummy second issue
The many faces of Jeff Arnold - illustrators of Riders of the Range
Blackbow the Cheyenne - from Comet to Swift to EAGLE
Comics 101 - I was there (part 2)
Guy and John - wartime experiences of Guy (Edward Trice) Morgan and John Worsley
Never again will anyone envisage Man's future like this - Frank Hampson's vision
Arthur C. Clarke (1917 - 2008) - a personal tribute
EAGLE on the Web
Journey into Space: Frozen in Time - a review of Charles Chilton's new BBC radio play
The Science Museum's Dan Dare and the Birth of Hi-tech Britain exhibition reviewed
PC49 - The case of the Pink Panic (part 2)
A Dan Dare postscript to 'An EAGLE nobody knows'
The 2008 Eagle Society Weekend - review and photographs
Great EAGLE O'er the Silvery Forth - a poetic tribute to the Eagle Society's visit to Edinburgh (in the style of William McGonagall)

The picture on the front of this issue of Eagle Times is from Eagle Riders of the Range Annual 1961 and is by Harry Bishop.

Eagle Artists - Giorgio Bellavitis

2008-06-30T12:00:00.006+01:00

Giorgio Bellavitis (1926 - ) was born in Venice. As a teenager during World War II, he was a member of the anti-Nazi resistance movement and was imprisoned for several weeks with Mario Faustinelli and Alberto Ongaro. The three friends invented a costumed righter-of-wrongs called ‘L’Asso di Picche’ (‘The Ace of Spades’). After the war they set up a publishing company, gathered a number of artists and writers together to form the Grupo Veneziano (Venetian Group), and launched a magazine called Albo Uragano (White Hurricane), which later became renamed, (after its lead strip) Asso di Picche. The strip was pencilled by Hugo Pratt and inked by Bellavitis and Faustinelli. After the revamp, one of the first new strips was ‘Junglemen’, the first episode of which was drawn by Bellavitis, who then drew ‘The Adventures of Robin Hood’ under the pseudonym George Summers. After Asso di Picche folded in 1948, the majority of Bellavitis’ work until 1954 seems to have been for Il Vittorioso (The Conqueror). His strips included ‘I Cavalieri del Corvo’, ‘Acqua Cattiva’, ‘Il Palio di Siena’, and ‘Amburgo 1947’. Early(?) in this period he also created ‘La Strada Senza Fine’ (‘The Road Without End’), for Corrierre dello Scolaro.

In 1954, Bellavitis moved to England, and some time after, he was instrumental in introducing the Italian illustrator Rimaldo D’Ami (Roy Dami, founder of the Damy Agency) to Britain. He was the therefore first of many Italian comic strip artists to be published in Britain.

Bellavitis’ first strip after arriving in England was ‘Paul English’ for Swift. He then drew ‘Mark, the Youngest Disciple’ to a script by Chad Varah, his finest work for Eagle. Bellavitis stood in for Richard Jennings on two complete ‘Storm Nelson’ adventures, the first of which was set in his place of birth*. He also drew for Eagle Annual and Swift Annual, including the illustrations for a text story ‘The Winged Devils - a tale of the Ancient Vikings’ in Swift Annual No 2. He worked for a short time on Express Weekly, drawing ‘Rodney Flood’, and he is known to have done some illustrations for the Sunday Pictorial Children’s Annual. In 1956 he helped out on Eagle’s ‘Jeff Arnold in Riders of the Range’. His work also appeared in Playhour and Treasure. In 1958, however, he returned to Italy to pursue a career in architecture.

Professor Giorgio Bellavitis is now actively involved in the conservation and restoration of Venice, advising UNESCO and other bodies. Girogio Bellavitis' projects in Venice have included, in the 1980s, the garden design and landscaping for Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, the home of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, and from 1997 to 2005 direction of the restoration of Ca’Foscari. Giorgio Bellavitis has written and co-authored a number of books and is the author of ‘Venice: a City in the Sea of History’, which prefaces the Heritage Guide to Venice published by the Touring Club of Italy.

The picture above is from 'Mark the Youngest Disciple', Eagle, 12th November, 1954.

* The Eagle strip 'Storm Nelson' was later reprinted in Italy in Giorno dei Ragazzi as 'Kid Tempesta'.

Eagle strips

‘Mark the Youngest Disciple’ (Vol 5 N0 46 - Vol 6 No 23)
‘Storm Nelson: The Quest of the Golden Queen’ (Vol 6 No 29 - Vol 6 No 46)
‘Storm Nelson: The Quest of the Southern Cross’ (Vol 6 No 47 - Vol 7 No 14)
‘Riders of the Range : The Hooded Menace’ (half of 1 episode, Vol 7 No 23)
‘Riders of the Range: The Wreckers’ (with Brian Lewis) (Vol 7 No 36 - Vol 7 No 44)

Eagle Annual strips

‘Storm Nelson in The Mystery of the Purple Patch’ Eagle Annual No 6

Links:

Previous post on eagle-times: Regarding Giorgio Bellavitis
Lambiek Comiclopedia entry: Giorgio Bellavitis

ET Ref:

Tiner, Ron. 'Giorgio Bellavitis'. Eagle Times Vol 13 No 1 p16 - 21.

Eagle Artists - Michael Charlton (1923 - 2008)

2008-06-26T23:50:00.001+01:00

Michael Alan Charlton was born in Poole, Dorset, and studied at Poole School of Art and Edinburgh College of Art. An illustrator in black and white and colour, his only know contribution to Eagle was the single black and white picture shown here, which he drew to illustrate an Arthur Catherall story called ‘Ten Days to Christmas’ - “a short story of Ojibwa fur trappers in the land of perpetual snow”. It appeared, appropriately enough, on 14^th December, 1951 (in Eagle Vol 2 No 36). He also illustrated ‘Professor Kitto and the Magic Ray’ in another Eagle-associated publication: Swift Annual No 2 (Hulton Press, 1955), for which he drew three black and white pictures. Charlton illustrated dozens of books from 1954 through 2003, including the children's book Wheezy (Bodley Head, 1988), which he also wrote. He lived in Dorset, and died there after a long illness on 23^rd June, 2008.

An obituary and bibliography of Michael Charlton can be read at Steve Holland's Bear Alley, which is where we learned of Michael Charlton's death.

Dan Dare Cap Badge - supply your own cap!

2008-06-23T16:00:00.000+01:00

Out soon, in case you missed the news at down the tubes and elsewhere, a new piece of licensed Dan Dare* merchandising will be available very soon from Termight Replicas - Dan Dare's Spacefleet Cap Badge.

The illustration shows Chris Weston's concept art for the badge, which is based on Frank Hampson's original 1950s design. Readers of Eagle Times will have seen the article on Chris' Dan Dare action figure designs in the Spring 2008 issue, which followed up on information originally posted on Chris Weston's blog.

Cast in zinc alloy and gold plated with red and black enamel circles on the front, the badge will have a diameter of 45mm and a maximum thickness of 4mm (not including the brooch pin). The enamel will be applied to recesses in the metal, so the red and black areas on the actual badge will be flat, rather than as shown in the concept art.

The badge can be ordered from Termight's site. The preorder price is £9.95, and they badges should be ready by the beginning of July, 2008.

Eagle's cutaway drawings

2008-05-20T18:45:00.001+01:00

Eagle's cutaway drawings feature ran from the very first issue, 14th April, 1950, until 19th April, 1969 (Vol 20, No 16). The run was not continuous - on about 40 occasions other features replaced it, such as 'Chicko's Christmas Party' (1954 Christmas issue) or, on 14 occasions, the results of painting competitions. Also, some features that are sometimes counted as part of the series are not strictly "cutaway" drawings. It was not headlined as 'An Eagle Cutaway Drawing' until 1963. It was however, the longest running feature in Eagle (since, apart from a four-episode original story which began at the end of Vol 18, 'Dan Dare' had gone into reprint at the beginning of Vol 18, and remained as such until Eagle's demise in 1969 (Vol 20 No 17).

From 1950, and for over a decade, "cutaways" filled the top half of the centre pages as a full colour centre-spread. Later the feature was moved, initially still in colour, to fill the back page and then back inside the magazine, but on a single page in black and white. There seemed no limit to the technologies covered: from the historic, to the contemporary, to the futuristic: trains, boats and planes, trams, hovercraft and rockets, spacecraft, cars, buses, motorways, underground railways, fighting vehicles, motor cycles, power stations - and the photocopier.

By far the most prolific artist was Leslie Ashwell Wood, an example of whose work is seen above*. Of the (depending how you count it) 946 issues of Eagle that included cutaways, 617 were by him, including the very first, and the last (in the penultimate issue of Eagle).

In all, around two dozen artists contributed to the feature, the most notable after Leslie Ashwell Wood being: J. Walkden Fisher, John Batchelor, Geoffrey Wheeler, Laurence Dunn, Hubert Redmill and Roy Cross. It is likely that in many cases authorship of the text that accompanied the drawings is attributable to the artists themselves. This is certainly the case for the leading artists, who would have done their own technical research, and may be true for many of the lesser-known artists too.

The following is an alphabetical list of all the artists who are known to have contributed to Eagle cutaways, together with the numbers of their contributions. In some cases only a single name (presumably the surname) is known. Around a dozen contributions are unattributed to any known author.

P. J. Ashmore (1)
John Batchelor (44)
__? Blake (1)
__? Bowyer ( 3)
Bruce Cornwell (4)
Roy Cross (23)
Gordon Davies (10)
Laurence Dunn (48)
Eric Eden (3)
Albert Charles Martin Ellis (3)
Dennis Fairlie (2)
Charles Hurford (4)
R. Nicholl (1)
Paul B. Mann (5)
Gerald Palmer (19)
Hubert Redmill (39)
T. C. Renwick-Adams (1)
John S. Smith (2)
J. Walkden-Fisher (59)
Brian Watson (1)
Geoffrey Wheeler (44)
Leslie Ashwell Wood (617)

Selected cutaway drawing from Eagle are reprinted in:

The Eagle Book of Cutaways, Denis Gifford (Ed.) Webb & Bower, 1988. (Although credited with featuring exclusively L. Ashwell Wood drawings, one illustration, of Dan Dare's 'Anastasia' spacecraft, is by Eric Eden)
The Eagle Annual of the Cutaways, Orion Books, September 2008.

*The cutaway drawing of the aircraft carrier HMS Eagle by Leslie Ashwell Wood appeared as the centrespread in Eagle's second birthday issue, Vol 3 No1 (10th April, 1952).

Eagle Annual of the Cutaways

2008-05-15T17:21:00.003+01:00

Last year Orion Books produced Eagle Annual: the Best of the 1950s, with the promise of this year bringing out a sequel, Eagle Annual: the Best of the 1960s. Well it now seems the latter has been put back a year, to 2009, and the intervening space will be filled by the Eagle Annual of the Cutaways, which is due for publication on 18th September, 2008. According to the Orion website, the book will be 176 pages (some sources are quoting a longer book, but this seems to be an error), which makes it the same length as last year's Annual - although it will be priced £2 more at £14.99.

To quote Orion's publicity:

"After Dan Dare, the most famous and fondly remembered part of the Eagle comic was the cutaway. Basically, these were beautifully detailed drawings of the inner workings of pretty much anything: from steam trains, jet liners and racing cars, to oil wells, suspension bridges and tube lines beneath Piccadilly Circus. The Eagle had a team of three or four artists, but the king of the cutaway was undoubtedly L. Ashwell Wood, whose forensic attention to detail - be it a cross section of the Cutty Sark or a grand landscape of how electricity is generated - enthralled a generation of school boys."

As seen above, the book will have the "distressed look" of last year's Annual. We have seen it reported elsewhere that the "distressed look" will be confined to the cover. This appears to be based on some illustrations that appeared in a Daily Mail article (9th May, 2008) about the Dan Dare and the Birth of Hi-Tech Britain exhibition at London's Science Museum. However, a 12-page handout on the Eagle Annual of the Cutaways that was made available at the press launch of the Dan Dare and the Birth of Hi-Tech Britain exhibition implies otherwise. Unless the publishers have had a change of heart since printing that handout (which, to be fair is identified as an "uncorrected proof sampler - not for resale or quotation"), the distressed look will pervade the whole book. Which will not please many of Eagle's original readers, judging by some of the reactions we heard to last year's Annual.

Dan Dare - man of iron?

2008-04-30T23:00:00.023+01:00

So, does Dan Dare do the ironing - or does he have more pressing engagements?

I was amused by this graphic of Dan Dare while attending the press preview of the 'Dan Dare and the Birth of Hi-tech Britain' Exhibition (which is open at the Science Museum in South Kensington until November, 2009).

For its time, the 'Dan Dare' strip was forward looking, socially as well as technologically, anticipating the further emancipation of women: Jocelyn Peabody never fitted the classic "dumb female" stereotype of hero fiction - she was a scientist, a space pilot too, definitely not there just to scream and be rescued. I'm not sure I ever expected to see Dan with an iron in his hand, though, unless it was for playing golf - on the moon or elsewhere!

But what of the exhibition? Well, I can assure you that it's well worth a visit. That applies not only to fans of the original Eagle and their contemporaries, but to anyone who wants to know more about the development of technology in Britain between 1945 and 1970, and the impact on home life of design and innovation in those "Eagle times".

There are three sections. The first, as you enter, focusses on 'Dan Dare', and tells in brief how Eagle and Dan Dare came into being, how the 'Dan Dare' strip was produced, and some of the merchandise that was available to children of the 1950s.

Highlights of this section include artist Frank Hampson's 'Dan Dare' murals, which were originally commissioned by the museum in the 1970s, and two cabinets, one of which includes some examples of original 'Dan Dare' artwork plus one of Frank Hampson's "ideas books" used when he was planning the alien technology that would appear (in 1956) in the 'Dan Dare' strip 'Rogue Planet'.

The other cabinet displays other the 'Dan Dare'-related memorabilia: the 'Dan Dare': Stamp Album, Card Game, Radio Station, Construction game, etc. To anyone who attended the major Eagle exhibitions in Southport in 1990 and 2000 (Eagle's 40th and 50th anniversaries), this aspect of the display might appear more modest, but this exhibition is not just about 'Dan Dare'. 'Dan Dare' is used as a symbol of the times, a model for the optimism of Britain, its faith in technology in the post-war years, and a lead-in to the rest of the exhibition.

The "signature exhibit", providing a bridge to the technology, through another Eagle link, is a Bristol Bloodhound air defence missile, a pillar of UK's defence against the Soviet threat between 1958 and 1964. Reminding us that Eagle was not just a comic, a reproduction of Leslie Ashwell Wood's cutaway drawing of the Bloodhound (from Eagle Vol 10 No 5) is also on display.

Having set the theme, the second part of the exhibition is 'Building a New Britain' and covers everything from the creation of the National Health Service to the investments of government in nuclear power and the atom bomb. The third part looks at the reinvention of the home, the merging importance of design and the impact on everyday life with the arrival of previously unheard of consumer goods. Arguably, more use of Eagle imagery might have been used in these sections. For example, the section featuring the Dounreay nuclear research station might have, but did not, include L. Ashwell Wood's cutaway (from Eagle, 18th October, 1957). Several other examples, occur to me, where Eagle imagery could have been exploited. Seeing a section of the upper fuselage of the De Haviland Comet 1 aircraft that crashed in 1954, I was reminded that the Comet had featured as 'The First Four-Jet Airliner in the World' in Eagle's 4th issue. The Festival of Britain coverage could have used Lawrence Dunn's cutaway of the Dome of Discovery, or L. Ashwell Wood's cutaway of the (3-D) Telecinema. The WE177 air launched nuclear bomb, which entered service in 1966, never featured in Eagle, however, as it was on the top secret list!

While you're there, take a look elsewhere in the museum. On the ground floor in the permanent exhibition you'll find four more original 'Dan Dare' artboards. Nearby, you'll find a V2 rocket, like those which, as he watched them rise into the sky over the Scheldt Estuary in the closing stages of World War II, inspired Frank Hampson (though in Antwerp, at the receiving end) to dream of space travel.

Links

Science Museum:

Audio introduction to Dan Dare Exhibition (mp3)
Online Stuff (including Frank Hampson's Dan Dare murals)
Object Wiki (Objects from the Dan Dare Exhibition)

BBC News videos:

Dan Dare creator's son: "Peter Hampson, son of the Eagle comic strip character's creator Frank, says Dan inspired a generation. The character Flamer was based on Peter."
Dan Dare 'inspired innovation': "The Science Museum's Ben Russell and John Liffen on technology that reflects the ideals of the comic hero created by Frank Hampson."

British Satellite News video:

Celebrating the birth of High Tech Britain (may not work in all browsers)

Guardian picture gallery:

In Pictures: Dan Dare and the Birth of Hi-tech Britain (gallery of 9 pictures)

Dan Dare spaceship models to go on sale

2008-04-28T12:26:00.005+01:00

David Britton has announced that he is "planning to sell most of the spaceships that were made by Martin Bower for Alan Vince". The models were made in the 1980s, and previously formed part of the Eagle Exhibitions display, which toured UK in the early 2000s.

The picture on the left is a model of the Mars Space Station that featured (in its original drawn form!) in the 'Dan Dare' adventure 'The Red Moon Mystery' (Eagle, 1951).

For anyone who doesn't know, the models' creator Martin Bower is a professional model maker, who has worked on many science fiction films, TV shows and publications, and "is one of the most prolific model makers and designers to the film, TV, advertising and publishing industry". Since 1969, he has produced over 1000 professional works. The models that David is selling were privately commissioned by Alan Vince, and further pictures and information on their creation can be seen on the Dan Dare page of Martin Bower's site.

For sale are:

First Venus Ship
Rescue Ship “St Christopher”
Treen Fighter
Treen Telezero
Gogol’s Transporter
Space Station Mars and the shuttle “Delaware”
Treen Blaster Pistol

David can be contacted directly at info@davidgbritton.com , or they will be listed on eBay from 2nd May, 2008.

Please do not contact Eagle Times regarding this sale, though comments, as always, are welcome.

50th Anniversary of Dan Dare (April 2000)

2008-04-19T20:34:00.015+01:00

Back in the year 2000, the Eagle Society marked the occasion of Eagle's and Dan Dare's 50th Anniversary by commissioning a bronze bust of Dan Dare, and which was unveiled in Southport on 15th April that year. Members of the Society (principally David Britton, Ron French and Nicholas Hill) also collaborated in the setting up of an exhibition which ran at the Atkinson Art Gallery in Southport, from 15th April - 1st July, 2000. The story of 'The Dan Dare Bust - from conception to completion' was told by David Britton in Eagle Times Volume 13, No 2, Summer 2000 (coincidentally this was Eagle Times' 50th issue). The text of the article, with pictures of the event, can be read on Nicholas Hill's website.

Arnie Wilson has reminded us that in that 50th anniversary year he wrote a feature for the Financial Times about his personal relationship with Dan Dare. He says "I don't think it was ever picked up by Eagle Times, though it appeared in the FT with a brilliant Dan and Dig pastiche drawing".

If you would like to read Arnie's article it is on his website. Unfortunately the pastiche to which Arnie refers isn't there, but if anyone has a copy, we'd love to see it.

Another link to 'Dan Dare at 50' on the web: BBC News - 10th April, 2000.

Eagle Artists - Terry Maloney (1917 - 2008)

2008-04-10T22:44:00.012+01:00

Francis Joseph Terence Maloney was born in Mortlake, Surrey, on 20th April, 1917, the son of a Fleet Street printer. He attended the Richmond School of Art, and as a student joined the Communist Party. At the age of 20, he volunteered for the International Brigades, fighting for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. In August, 1938, he survived a shrapnel wound to the chest at the battle of Ebro, returning to England later that year. During the Second World War he served in the Royal Corps of Signals, after D-Day seeing action in France, Belgium, Holland and Germany. He had married Dorothy Toms in 1943. After the war, in 1946, Maloney worked as a commercial artist, helping to design posters for London Underground and becoming art editor of Spain Today, which was produced to publicise Franco's repression of the Spanish people.

Maloney had a growing interest in astronomy and the possibilities of space travel. After setting up a 10-foot long telescope, with a ten inch mirror, in his garden in Kew, Surrey, he spent many hours observing the night sky. He joined the British Astronomical Association, and subsequently was made a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. In early 1950, Maloney was recruited by Marcus Morris to work on the (yet to be launched) Eagle magazine, and for a short time he joined Frank Hampson's 'Dan Dare' studio in Southport. Later, he drew a number of colour and black and white illustrations for an article on rocketry and space travel for Dan Dare's Space Book (Hulton Press, 1953). He produced a number of book covers for paperback science fiction novels before, from the mid-1950s, concentrating on becoming a writer/illustrator and book editor.

Maloney's first self-written-and-illustrated title was Other Worlds in Space, a children's guide to the planets. Coincidentally it was launched the same month as Sputnik 1, in October, 1957. His other titles included The Sky is Our Window, and A Dictionary of Astronomy. He edited for various publishers before retiring in 1981, when he moved with his wife to West Knighton, near Dorchester, where he died on 16th March, 2008, aged 90.

The illustration above is from the article 'The Life Story of a Rocket' and shows a captured V2 being lifted into position for a test firing at the U.S. Experimental Rocket Station at White Sands, New Mexico. (From Dan Dare's Space Book, Hulton Press, 1953)

Links: