Issue 60


Issue 60 (36 pp) Summer 2023	Page	Contents - Issue 60
	Front	Reprise of front page of our first Issue
	2	Editorial, subscription info. Ad for our binders
	3-6	Dan Dare, in "The Corium Experiment", Episode 2. Digby is test-flying the corium-gas-filled spacesuit, but it becomes over-inflated and the suit takes him for a ride.
	7-13	Silents is Golden: The Story of the Silent Three, by Andrew Darlington. This is a walk-through of several strip-illustrated stories of three school-girls who make a part-time career of putting wrongs right, on the front page of "School Friend", an illustrated magazine for girls, beginning publication, like The Eagle, in 1950. It outsold The Eagle, and so Hulton Press then brought out "Girl" in 1951. Andrew gives us an in-depth discussion of the psychology behind the characterizations. In Girl, Marcus Morris at Hulton Press felt that the Kitty Hawke character was excessively assertive (We wouldn't think that now) for the times, and that had caused a loss of popularity amongst the readers. So, the stories were made more romantic and feminine. Incidentally, the success of The Silent Three prompted the publishers DC Thomson to launch "Bunty" magazine in 1958, including a similar group called "The Four Marys". How imaginative of them. I once met five Steves at the same time. Beat that.
	14-16	Jeff Hawke, "The Comet's Tale", Part 7. Illustration and story by Sydney Jordan.. Jeff starts exploring the seamier side of Galactopolis, way below the surface, and, early on, get s a beating for his pains. There is some compensation, however, following his rescue by a scantily-clad and beautiful woman. Some time later he persuades Jena to lead him to the villain Chalcedon, where he discovers the whereabouts of Ortzan..
	17	Space Review, by Ray Wright. The SpaceX Starship and heavy booster combination take off on the first experimental flight. Scientists say that there is no such thing as a failed experiment. Try telling that to an engineer. SpaceX got a slap wrist from the US Federal Aviation Authority and a demand for a large number of issues to be fixed before they try anything like that again. The James Webb Space Telescope dominates the rest of the Review with its stream of breathtaking discoveries, including that of a massive dusk ring around the star Fomalhaut.
	18-19	Dan Dare in "Old Times' Sake" Part 2: by John M Burns and David Motton. Dan gets one over the Mekon. (He never can make it permanent, though, can he?)
	20-22	Space Review continued
	23-25	Target Earth. Part 10, Story: John Richards, Illustration: Harry Winslade. Tom and the Prof are marooned in orbit, by the dictator Stiel. That is, until they guess the the remote control signals that keep the spaceship disabled are coming in over a radio link. Disconnect the radio, then? Bingo! It worked, Now they can fly down to the surface of Beta to attempt a rescue of their fellow crewman, Gerry. Story concludes.
	26-29	Garth Ennis, Virgin's Dan Dare writer. by Jeremy Briggs. This biography follows Garth Ennis from the start of his career through his involvement with 2000AD and Virgin Comics and, later, with other publishers.
	30-32	Invaders from Time, A Nick Hazard, Interstellar Agent story, Part 7. Script: Phil Harbottle, Art: Ron Turner, based on "Lords of 9016" by John Russell Fearn. Editing. & additional material: John Lawrence.: Nick and his friends do their best to return Rianna's consciousness to her own body from her mortally wounded Tegati avatar. They all avoid a catastrophic collapse of the Tegati underground city, just in time. The war is not yet won, though. Story continues.
	33	Space for Humour: Earthward Bound: Screwy is painfully awoken in his Lunar dungeon, and believes that he is hallucinating. He is not.
	34-35	We celebrate 20 years of Spaceship Away, by Rod Barzilay. Rod Barzilay headed the effort to publish new Dan Dare adventures, drawn by artists who had worked on the original stories in The Eagle, where Dan Dare first appeared, in 1950. Rod had been working with Keith Watson, who, sadly, died in 1994, He then approached Don Harley, who, very kindly, agreed to help, and, after trying to find a publisher for his idea, felt that the only way to proceed was to publish the magazine himself. You are reading the result, twenty years, later.
	Back	A montage, featuring The Mekon and some of his Treen subjects with the floating city of Mekonta in the background.