A pre 1939 public information advertisement. If the cyclist was in a crowd I don’t think the image would be quite as unnerving, as a cutout and staring straight at you I can just imagine the words “are you my Mummy?” coming from the loud hailer.

‘Sounding a loud alarm through a loudspeaker clamped to the handlebars of his bicycle, a masked rider wheeled through London streets recently, like a modern Paul Revere, to test the efficiency of a new method of warning the public against sudden aerial gas attacks in war time. Equipped with gas mask and respirator, the cyclist broadcast warnings through a microphone built into the mask and wired to the battery-operated loudspeaker.’

Off duty at the Interpanetary Space Fleet Headquarters Dan Dare settles down to catch up with his correspondence. He is interested in a letter from his housemaster, now head of his old school.

The classic Dan Dare strip from the third Eagle Annual can now be found in the History section.

These are scans from the original annual. Hopefully they will entice you into the world of Dan Dare and to purchase the excellent Titan reprint series from the Eagle.

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Best known, by me at least, for his work on ‘Ministry of Space’, Chris Weston was commissioned to produce the designs by Underground Toys Ltd.

Chris says, “The figure will be as faithful as possible to the original 1950’s character, as created by Frank Hampson… and I have received some input by Mr. Barzilay himself, Britains foremost Dan Dare expert, to help get it as accurate as possible”.

Chris loves Dan Dare, having turned down drawing the latest Virgin Comics Dare re-hash, when he found out that the original Frank Hampson designs weren’t going to be used.

Good on him.