Mark Gorton on the 60th anniversary of the launch of a sci-fi pioneer

Monty Python member and film director Terry Jones says: “I remember Eagle being launched and my brother bought a copy. My mother hid it in a drawer and said ‘you must not tell your father you have a comic in the house!’

“Then she had to speak to my father and tell him the editor of Eagle is a clergyman, so it should be all right.”

Eagle soared, selling around 750,000 copies a week and generating merchandise – toothpaste, pyjamas, toy ray guns, slideshow projectors and countless other spin-offs.

Dan Dare was the Star Wars of his day – there was even a radio version of his adventures.

Interviewed in 1978, Hampson said: “Dan Dare came at a time of great shortages after a long, exhausting war.

“Everything was very bare, utility, right down to rock bottom.

“The fantasy of it had a great appeal, the colour, too, and generally it expressed the ideals of the time based on the United Nations organisation.”

May, who owes his enthusiasm for astronomy to Dan Dare, could not get enough of the space-faring adventurer.

He says: “I remember getting to the end of a page and it suddenly went ‘con’.

“My dad said to me ‘it says concluded.’ I said ‘what does that mean?’

“He said ‘the end.’ I went ‘no!’, because I had not realised a new story would start next week.”

The other strips and cutaway drawings of steam turbines and aircraft carriers were fine in their own way.

But it was Dan who drove its success. His struggle with the Mekon, the green and big-brained leader of the soulless Treens, was a corker of a story which had plenty to say about good and evil, right and wrong, and the limits of resistance.

Dan Dare had a good mind and a good heart. He had a ray gun, too, but preferred not to use it.

He was a hero for a new world, one which sadly did not last.

Eagle’s success endured for a decade. But then, with the comic under new ownership, Hampson’s studio, now in Epsom, was scaled back and he was ordered to shorten and simplify his long, complex stories.

He was also asked to write for characters he had not invented and in which he did not believe.

So Hampson chose instead to quit and his departure, combined with the advent of the 1960s and changing attitudes to Eagle’s tone, began its decline.

Dan Dare was removed from the front cover and, in 1967, his final mission ended on the inside pages.

This compounded another huge disappointment.

Hampson and Morris had signed contracts which, while paying them well, had sold the copyright to Eagle and Dan Dare: Pilot Of The Future.

Dan Dare merchandise made fortunes, but not theirs. It was a source of bitterness which would trouble Hampson for the rest of his life.

But at least the priceless legacy of Eagle and Dan Dare remains for all to share.

It is arguably the case modern British science fiction, currently a domestic and international success thanks to TV dramas like Doctor Who, Torchwood and Primeval, owes a great debt to a character who, 60 years ago, made it acceptable for everyone to imagine the impossible and ask: What if?

Equally certain is, thanks to Hampson and Morris, Eagle has its place in history as an artistic, editorial and commercial triumph which put Southport on the interstellar map.