Tuesday, October 17, 2023

I'm a casual fan, but I swear I've seen him relaunched like eight times.

Old 2000 AD Presents reprints with Dave Gibbons art, the Garth Ennis version, I've never been able to get the last two issues of the 'memoir' from Grant Morrison...I feel like there were more? Maybe if I had full runs of any of those, or of this one. From 2017. Dan Dare #2, "He Who Dares, part two: Fire" Written by Peter Milligan, art by Alberto Foche.
If you aren't familiar with the classic space hero, well, Dan Dare was basically the British Buck Rogers. And not unlike some other early comic strips, the art was high-end, and the storylines lengthy serials. The wiki there details his publishing history; I wasn't entirely aware the 2000 AD version differed so much from the original. His main recurring villain was the Mekon, an alien tyrant with a massive head, who always looked like he couldn't believe he kept getting beat by someone he considered too stupid to work pants. This version wasn't quite the full-scale deconstruction of Morrison's, or the war-is-hell/adventure story of Ennis; but a Dare perhaps a bit past his glory days: with the Mekon defeated and the system at peace, Dare was left with little to do and bored out of his mind. He idly prays for something to happen, and a new alien force invades: the Treen Imperium.
This issue, Dan meets a possible new ally: an alien spitfire, who seems moderately surprised a man could even be a space pilot; but he almost seems smitten with her already for having the spirit he felt he had lost. Kind of feels like Dan's midlife crisis there. Also, while the Mekon seems like a former foe this issue, there's a pretty good chance he wasn't anywhere near reformed and probably invited the Treen there. He was absolutely that bitch; even if there's an Elton John song that mentions him!

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