Before there were cinematic space epics everywhere you looked, there was Dan Dare. One of Britain’s great comic heroes (right up there with Roy of the Rovers), blasting off in 1950 and running weekly until 1967, then returning from 1977–1994, syndicated worldwide.
Creator Frank Hampson imagined a thrilling, high-stakes space opera with astonishing art -one that helped inspire creators from George Lucas to Ridley Scott. Dan Dare, pilot of the British Space Fleet, and his crew, Digby and Professor Peabody, faced down robot armies, rogue planets, and alien masterminds with cliffhangers to spare.
In First Contact, the science is updated making Dan’s world one we can understand from our current point of view: a world of bickering oligarchs, broken nations, and climate disaster. The stakes are immediate: humanity is only just getting faster-than-light travel. We’re no longer the space-age grownups we think we are. We’re the kids at the table, suddenly bumping into civilisations that are vastly older, stranger, and more powerful than anything we’re ready for.