Dan Dare may be a household name in the U.K., but in the U.S., the households that have heard of him are a little fewer and farther between. Virgin Comics is seeking to change that with a new ongoing series, launching this month with Dan Dare No. 1.
It may be a bit of a tough sell.
Dare’s fictional career began in 1950 as the star of a strip in a British boys’ magazine, when “the pilot of the future” kept the Earth of the 1990s safe from alien invaders, and Dare’s comic-book adventures have gone through several reimaginings and reboots over the course of the last half-century, keeping the name and character in the imagination of British comics readers, but never really making it quite as big across the Atlantic.
At first, writer Garth Ennis seems a potentially ill fit for new tales of this old character. After all, Ennis’ name is synonymous with comical ultraviolence, pitch-black humor and outrageous genre parody. However, if there’s one thing Ennis always takes seriously, it’s fighting men of the heroic variety, and his resume is dotted with sober, even somber stories extolling the virtues of soldiers and the deleterious effects of politics and war on a country’s soul. He’s also previously attempted to rehabilitate a British comics hero of the 1950s in last year’s Battler Britton.
Sure enough, Ennis’ Dan Dare is closer in keeping to Battler Britton and his other war stories than the darker, more over-the-top comics that helped make his name.
It’s some time in the far future, and Dare lives the life of a jaded recluse, content to live in the holographically recreated past and watch his country from afar, occasionally shaking his head at its state. But when his enemies suddenly resurface, Britain’s weasely prime minister personally calls on Dare and asks him to return to service and save the day. It’s all played arrow-straight, with just enough pessimism and a twist or two in the story to give it a bit of an edge.
Art comes courtesy of Gary Erskine, who previously worked with Ennis on WWII story War Story: Archangel, and his highly representational art is well suited to the WWII-in-space aesthetic of the world of Dan Dare. Perhaps more importantly, it bears a striking resemblance to the work of Dare’s creator and original artist, Frank Hampson.
It’s unlikely that the character’s 1950s popularity will return, as he’s something of a British Buck Rogers, and the American Buck Rogers doesn’t exactly have a lot of heat in 2007 (nor do Americans tend to embrace British heroes, be they David Beckham or Judge Dredd).
Regardless, Ennis and Erskine are both accomplished comics creators, and watching them do a postmodern take on the character is entertaining enough. Watching where they’ll take it next, down the path of deconstruction or political allegory, or just sticking to a sort of modern matinee serial in which the values of the past save the mixed-up people of the present, will prove a step above entertaining—it should be interesting.