The Easter weekend has passed. The Brown Muir is covered in sna' again. I'm on "stay-cation" ( dreadful expression) and, having re-read half of the collected IPC strips, realising why I postponed the Dan Dare posts for almost a year! Today, we time-travel over forty years into the past, to the post-Action world of British comics.
2000 AD was, alongside the Marvel weeklies, a mainstay in our house for almost a decade. The tone of the comic was informed by the pre-Star Wars, adult era of US cinematic sci-fi ( 2001: A Space Odyssey. Silent Running and Dark Star) and by the body horror of Cronenberg's Shivers, Rabid and especially Spielberg's Jaws. There was also a pronounced vein of anarchic, mordant British humour you could trace from Alexei Sayle (who would break through in a few years), Monty Python to the Goons.
In 2000 AD, I was drawn to the art of Massimo Bellardinelli, who had drawn the spacecraft for Gold Key's Star Trek ( the reprint fixture of the UK annuals) had an organic European sensibility, foreshadowing Ridley Scott and Giger's Alien. There was so much synchronicity about the feature, which was my favourite of the original line-up in the comic. As we saw last time, I had had some exposure to the classic Eagle strip. Let's look at some of the influences, conscious or otherwise, that cropped up in this revival of the Pilot of the Future.
The opening arc presents a very different Dan Dare, who physically resembles Mr. Spock but ventures "beyond the final frontier." He also has a line in US tough guy quips, far removed from the jaunty RAF repartee of the Fifties: " Ain't such a hero when you can't use your (gun), huh?" Like Judge Dredd, he also swears, albeit with futuristic profanity: " Drokk it!" Outraged fans would probably be in their thirties and forties ( an unthinkable age for comics readers in the late 70s, haha!)
Accompanied by the albino giant from Mars, Mr. Monday and winsome Bowie-esque medic Perry- er, Ziggy Rodann, a vengeful Dare breaks all the rules to explore the "living nightmare" of Jupiter, where, amid islands of crystal and titanium. pressures can crush a poor devil to a dot.
Among the "savage beauty" of the giant planet, buildings of living tissue have been constructed by the loathsome Biogs and their hideous servitors. The Biogs and their environment remind me of Axos from the eponymous 1971 Doctor Who serial
but in "taming" a living axe as a ferocious alien pet, Dare himself reminds me of Moorcock's Elric with his parasitic sentient sword, Stormbringer. We'll return to this motif in a future post.
Dare pretends to betray his allies to the Biogs, who ingest their victims or unleash grisly "slime attacks". The invading infestation is defeated with the self-sacrifice of Mr. Monday and his "final trip", as tropes from WWII films mingle with hippy jargon. ( Of course, I still met hippies in Glasgow five years later, in the early 80s)
In the coda, Dare is discharged from the space service for disobeying orders, completing his transformation from Biggles to maverick. He ponders upon who directed the Biogs to our solar system; it was of course, Dare's arch-enemy the Mekon, ushering in a twelve -episode saga, "The Hollow World".
This serial opens with a striking and unusual vertical spread, depicting London, 2177. The UK is a floating pleasure island, able to drift to sunnier climes.
There's a new ally in the form of Rok from the planet Wolf-5, a canine warrior with a modish "lazer-sword". The cashiered Dare accepts Rok's offer to join the merchantman crew of Captain O' Grady. After a disastrous "jump to light-speed" where a crewman ages to death, they crash on a planet orbiting a red giant.
Coincidentally, this is the home of the Two of Verath, variously a "mutant" or a convict fused together as a grotesque punishment. Two has liberated the Mekon and they are plotting an assault on the "Federation". The Mekon has a flashback of the "despicable worm" Dare, enabling younger fans to experience the hero's classic look.
Belardinelli populates the hollow world with plant beings and talking lizards. Through an interrogation by an gelid alien, we learn of how Dan survived into this century through suspended animation, attempting to save an orbital power station and how his appearance was altered. His references to the 20th century and the whole Rip Van Winkle characterisation tend to be less important as the serial progresses.
The serial is very like the chapter-play adventures of Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers, with many episodes ending on a death-trap cliffhanger. For example, Dare survives flesh-eating maggots, in a sequence that reminds me of Barbarella and the parakeets
In the climax of the serial, Dan discovers the Mekon has betrayed Two by transforming him/them into a living bomb, set to destroy the Galactic Council and the planet of Congress. Not unlike the Organians in Star Trek, or the High Evolutionary however, the council have ascended into bodiless entities of pure thought.
The two villains end up trapped together and bickering after the destruction of Congress, like the Crime Syndicate of Earth-3.
The Belardinelli era is visceral, violent and punky. Its aesthetic is in keeping with the tone of early 2000 AD. Despite the European visuals, Dare has a very American sensibility: a cross between Nimoy and Clint Eastwood and his adventures are in the pulp tradition. The Mekon is very reminiscent of Yellow Peril villains such as Ming or Fu Manchu.
A caption at the end of the last "Hollow World" instalment informs us that Dan will "take a short holiday". It last for five weeks and when he returns, the hero and the series have a bold new look.
In the next post, we'll look at how the post-Star Wars world influenced Dare by Dave Gibbons, who'd draw the Fourth and Fifth Doctors and Green Lantern.
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