>Watching one of the old 60s Dr. who and the daleks movies and the opening scene shows peter cushing's iteration of the doctor reading Dan Dare comicsWas dan dare really that huge in britain at the time? I find it fascinating how britain and other countries seem to have all these well known and popular comic book stories and characters that are largely just unknown to us amerifats
>>153700426I think they probably gave him a comic to read because that would be eccentric and silly for an older scientist to read something like that in 1960s.
>>153700491>I think they probably gave him a comic to read because that would be eccentric and silly for an older scientist to read something like that in 1960s.We naturally that was the intent, my point wasnt that so much but kore of the fact that dan dare and eagle comics were so huge in britain at the time that they even appeared for a brief moment in the film intrigues me since if you ask any old schmoe in america today who dan dare is they wouldn't have a clue.Also for any britbongs that happen to be in the thread, can you comment on this and if dan dare is even widely remembered or referenced in british culture anymore?
>>153700426Man Out of Time: Dan Dare in ComicsAt its peak in the early 1950s, Eagle comic—which featured Dan Dare: Pilot of the Future as its flagship strip—sold nearly one million copies a week. The first issue, released on April 14, 1950, sold out its initial 900,000 run within hours, followed by a second run of 500,000.Dan was sold as "Spitfires in Space", similar to Star Trek's "Wagon Train in Space" pitch.Remember, Britain had lost its empire in WW2 and there was great nostalgia for the old days when they were a world power. Sir Hubert called the shots even though there were foreign pilots in the Space Force.
>>153700426Isnt this just like Captain Marvel, Plastic Man or Blue Beetle were such big things and than dropped to C-list characters? Sometimes things were popular than drop into obscurity.
>>153700426Well I'm not british and I obviously wasn't around in the 60s but I know he was still popular enough in the 80s to have multiple computer games (which themselves seem to have been pretty popular)And why not. The comics were well drawn and fun.
One thing that was a massive missed opportunity was producing a guidebook like pic rel but for Doctor Who.
>>153701777There are several books like that?
>>153700426Eagle was selling about 500k/week in 1961; it folded at the end of the 1960s because it changed up the content (people blame "The Last of the Saxon Kings" for this generally) and hurt sales, to the point they never recoveredit was remembered fondly and resurrected little more than a decade later for another 15 years or so, but by then it just couldn't re-establish itselfthere's probably a book somewhere about how IPC fucked up the UK comics market in record time without even really trying>>153701777About Time
>>153702002>selling about 500k/week in 1961>and hurt sales, to the point they never recoveredSo they made alot of money and instantly dropped it? Didnt they had enough money to return to the old form? Or were they so cheap that they didnt had savings? Or knew that returning would be too expensive and so took the momey and ran?
>>153702084it had been running for about 10 years, but it dropped about two-thirds of sales in a very short time and couldn't make them backit was less a question of the expense of fixing Eagle and more the fact that the had other titles to sell; in Brit comics, which tended to be anthologies right from the start (as US comics often were in the 1940s), when something was cancelled the characters would generally be rolled into another title, often one that wasn't doing that well itself and needed some new ideas/readers carried over from the other titleyou've also got to understand that to go from initial sales of about a million a week in the early 1950s with a gradual fifty-percent slide and sudden drop to one-tenth of that just a decade later probably spooked a lot of people into thinking it wasn't working any more; "fixing" it just meant rolling it into something else to change it up
>>153702247Ok, that explains it. Thanks anon.
>>153702608well I mean what really killed Eagle was merging with its relatively lowbrow former competitor when that lost sales, but yeah, basically it was sales dropping suddenly
>>153700491Probably this.
>>153703013>>153700491maybeCushing was both a /co/mrade and a fa/tg/uy irl; that would probably have been the most recent issue during filming that scene, and he did like to make suggestions of changes to wardrobe etc, so it's possible he simply had it on set that day and they went with it
>>153701591Dan still has a following.The rights have been bought and revivals attempted 5 or 6 times since Eagle folded.Another one is due in November.>https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/apr/08/dan-dare-reboot-space-comicMultiple changes but the arch-villain is still The Mekon.A good trick since, in the 2008 Virgin series, The Mekon (and a quisling PM) fell into a Black Hole. >https://www.dandare.com/virgin-comics.htmOh, well. The Mekon was originally from Venus. I guess that's been retconned away.
>>153703154Even Garth Ennis loved Dan Dare and wrote him without any of his usual contempt for 20th century characters.
Interesting
>>153700426Comics?
>>153704761yeah you see how he's reading a comic?and how the thread is a discussion of Dan Dare, a comic book character?>>153703243in fairness it would be harder to produce a grittier version of Dan Dare than The V.C.s, which it would inevitably be compared to
>>153700426All I know about Dan Dare that he was raped by that grapeheaded villain
>>153703243That doesn’t surprise me, Garth Ennis really seems to have a thing for a lot of that old British war/adventure comic style, even if it’s from a left-wing perspective. I suppose you could argue that it was a more ‘grounded’ worldview than the more fantastical one embodied by idealistic superheroes.
>>153702002>there's probably a book somewhere about how IPC fucked up the UK comics market in record time without even really tryingFuture Shock- The Story Of 2000AD doesn't go into extreme detail, but it does suggest that IPC was more concerned about churning out content and less about overall quality. It's amazing 2000AD (or any other of IPCs other titles) survived as long as they did
>>153700426Popular enough to get rebooted/revived several times in later decades.
