Dan Dare: Six Questions For Writer Rod Barzilay

In the 1990s Rod Barzilay had the idea to bring Eagle comic’s best known character, Dan Dare, back into print, not updated for a Star Wars audience as in 2000AD or as a political commentary as in Revolver, but rather as the original character read and loved each week in the 1950s by hundreds of thousands of British schoolboys.

To remain true to the original Rod decided to approach the original 1950s artists to see if they would be willing to return to the comic strip of their youth. Keith Watson and then Don Harley agreed to this and the magazine Spaceship Away was born. 29 issues later, and with many more of the original 1950s and 1960s Dan Dare artists involved along the way, Spaceship Away remains a high quality, full colour, glossy magazine that is published three times a year. So it was no surprise that when Haynes decided to add Dan Dare to their list of science fiction technical manuals that includes Star Wars, Star Trek and Thunderbirds, Rod was the man to write it.

Jeremy Briggs spoke to Rod about this new Dan Dare Spacefleet Operations Manual from Haynes as well as Spaceship Away.

downthetubes: When did you first encounter Dan Dare and what made him standout for you amongst the other strips in Eagle?

Rod Barzilay: I first saw a copy of Eagle in May 1954, at the tender age of seven. I remember green men caught my attention, the Mekon and his Treens in ‘Prisoners of Space’, and although I liked other Eagle strips as well, the idea of outer space adventures appealed the most.

Desmond Walduck was illustrating the strip at this time while the following year Frank Hampson and his team took up the reigns again. To a lad who knew nothing about artists then, the strip just seemed to get better and better until the end of the 1950’s when Dan Dare was updated which was very unsettling to previous readers. Many characters disappeared, equipment and uniforms drastically changed, and continuity with past events was almost totally lost. When the strip went to black and white my interest waned and I stopped taking Eagle at the end of 1963 (mind you I was more interested in girls then!). However, from 1960 onwards I began to chase the early stories I had never seen. It took ten years to fill in all the gaps and when the original Eagle folded in 1969 I also started looking for the later issues to complete the run. It was only then that I saw some of Keith Watson’s later impressive colour Dan Dare work like ‘All Treens Must Die’.

DTT: You began Spaceship Away in 2003 and it is now on its 29th issue. What inspired you start the magazine and how has it changed over the years?

Rod: The magazine was started as a means to get new 1950s style Dan Dare stories in print for the fans who longed for the original Dan Dare to be revived.

Although Dan Dare is the main focus of Spaceship Away, from issue seven we started adding other sci-fi strips as well, including Charles Chilton’s Journey Into Space reprinted from Express Weekly with artwork by Ferdinando Tacconi, and Sydney Jordan’s “Hal Starr” reprinted from the Dutch comic Eppo and its first time being published in English. Later on we added Ron Turner’s “Nick Hazard”, John Freeman and Mike Nicoll’s “Ex Astris” and eventually the Daily Mirror’s “Garth” with art by Frank Bellamy and Martin Asbury.


DTT: Where did the idea for the Haynes Dan Dare manual come from, did you approach them or did they approach you?

Rod: I believe Graham gave Haynes the idea to do a Dan Dare book, along with the suggestion that I could write it. He did bounce the idea off me and I was up for it. As Dan Dare has gone through so many changes over the years we decided to just stick with the original up until the point when Dan was made controller of Space Fleet. This was the period I knew the best and when the strip had the most interesting technology and ideas. The book took about six months to write and I was tweaking stuff right up until it went to the printers at the end of March. Some sections were rewritten when I reread the old stories again and spotted some references that I had miss-remembered, or forgotten about. Also as some information in Eagle had no reference time-line, or was at odds with earlier stuff printed in the strip or elsewhere, this did present some problems, and I had to work it all in somehow. No doubt I’ll get some interesting feedback on my solutions! I would have liked to have expanded some areas of the book had there been more space. Let’s hope nothing important got passed over – no doubt fans will let me know if that is the case!

DTT: How did you and Graham decide on what to feature in the manual? For instance how did you choose the Spacefleet theme rather than feature any spaceships that were in the Dan Dare strips?

Rod: The idea was that when Dan became controller of Space Fleet, he commissioned a manual for new recruits. This would not only give an outline of Space Fleet’s history so far, but would also include details of any craft or equipment they could encounter, be it older Space Fleet craft possibly lost in space, or alien ones that had already turned up in the Solar System and might reappear again someday - forewarned is forearmed. We investigate different drive technologies that Space Fleet has tried out, and alien ones it has encountered. There is a good look at lots of Treen spacecraft including the M.E.K.1 space station, and other important alien craft too, like Tharl’s Battleship, Black Cats, the Crypt inter-star ship, and the Zylbat. We also have notes on Theron, Cosmobe, Pescod, Nav, Triton, Pittar, and Krevvid spaceships, plus some unidentified ones that turn up in the saga as well.

DTT: Artist Graham Bleathman has provided cutaways for Spaceship Away in the past. How much interaction did you have with him over the details of the interiors of the ships and other vehicles featured in the book?

Rod: We both have extensive Eagle collections, which are rich in background details of spaceships and equipment, and did compare notes from time to time, talking over things not fully covered. Two spacecraft, the Marco Polo and the Delaware, were drawn up from my notes and designs in the comic strips in Spaceship Away, but it is Graham’s genius that brings them all to life in such fine cutaway detail. However, Eagle and related publications are a bit thin on the ground with details of Space Fleets early history so I expanded this area taking into account ideas put forward by other fans over the years.

DTT: If the manual is successful enough to warrant a sequel, are there other aspects of the Dan Dare universe that could be featured in a second book?

Rod: Oh yes – we could do a book on all the alien worlds that Dan Dare visited, looking at everything found there, futuristic cities, novel equipment, robots, other spacecraft and strange transport etc – not only in the Solar System, but further afield as well. Venus, Mercury and the Moons of Saturnia are rich in things to have a closer look at, as are planets in other star systems such as Cryptos, Phantos, Terra Nova, Zyl, Platinum Planet, Moss, for example. It would be great fun to do.

DTT: Rod, thanks for taking the time to talk to us.

• There are more details of the Dan Dare Spacefleet Operations Manual on the Haynes website

• There are more details of Spaceship Away on the magazine's website and Facebook page

• There are more details of Graham Bleathman's work on his website.

Dan Dare: Six Questions For Artist Graham Bleathman

For most comics readers Graham Bleathman's name is synonymous with large detailed cutaway paintings of buildings, vehicles and flying craft both real and fictional. It was not surprising then that he is now the artist behind four of the new series of Haynes Workshop Manuals that feature fictional vehicles rather that the real cars that the publisher is best known for. The latest of these is the Dan Dare Spacefleet Operations Manual which has just been published.

Jeremy Briggs spoke to Graham about these new Dan Dare cutaways as well as the rest of his work.

downthetubes: You are perhaps best known for your detailed cutaways of Gerry Anderson craft from TV series such as Thunderbirds, Stingray and Captain Scarlet published in the various 1990s comics that covered those series and the large format hardback cutaway books that followed. When did your love of cutaways begin and did you set out to be a cutaway artist?

Graham Bleathman: I first came across cutaway illustrations in the TV21 (and related) annuals that I picked up mainly second hand in the early 70s. A handful of cutaways also appeared in TV21 itself, which I also started to collect at around the same time that I was buying Countdown every week. I never bought (or had bought for me) TV21 when it first came out, so I relied on second hand and charity shops in the early 70s, along with jumble and ‘bring and buy’ sales, where in those days comics like TV21 and Eagle could still be found reasonably easily. It was at these sort of events that I found my first few copies of Eagle, and was of course somewhat taken with the centrespread cutaways as well as the more well known strips like 'Dan Dare' and 'Heros the Spartan'.

I don’t think I set out specifically to become a cutaway artist; it just sort of happened after I left college. During my time at Exeter College of art, I painted a cutaway of Exeter Cathedral, which was followed a year or two later by cutaways of Salisbury Cathedral and a few other buildings which were commissioned by the Salisbury Journal newspaper.

I was also involved in the Gerry Anderson fanzine SIG at the time, and I produced my first Anderson cutaway for that, which was a black and white illustration of the Battlehawk (SIG  issue 15, Spring 1986), from the then current Anderson production Terrahawks. 

DTT: Other than the many Anderson cutaways and the Haynes Manuals, what else have you worked on?

Graham: I worked on quite a few magazines, comics, and other products over the years. Some have an Anderson link; drawing many of the covers for the Fleetway comics (for which I drew the cutaways of course), artwork for Anderson and Star Trek jigsaws, greetings cards for Space Precinct, illustrations of film/TV locations and cutaways for TV series features in Radio Times, Cult TV, Inside Soap (yes, I’ve illustrated EastEnders, Neighbours, Coronation Street and Casualty!). I seem to have drawn thousands of ‘Sketch Cards’ featuring the Anderson shows for a company called ‘Cards Inc.’

A few real world illustrations have been drawn too in more recent years, such as cutaways for the now defunct RAF Magazine, Radio Times and a few books. I also have a ‘secret life’ doing the covers for DC Thomson’s ‘People’s Friend’! Under the name ‘J Campbell Kerr’, a team of artists has painted the landscape illustrations on the covers of the magazine since 1946. I started around 7 or 8 years ago (although I did do a brief stint in the mid 1990s) and, since the death of cover artist Douglas Phillips last year, I now paint around half of them on average.

I have no idea why the 'J Campbell Kerr’ name has been used all these years; no one seems to know the its origins, and nobody wants to break with tradition!

DTT: Your work for Haynes began with the first of the Wallace and Gromit Haynes manuals, Cracking Contraptions, a book that sold so quickly that it had to be reprinted almost immediately it was published and has since gone to a third printing. After your second Wallace and Gromit book you moved on to the Thunderbirds Haynes manual which, given your artistic background seems an obvious choice, and now the new Dan Dare manual. Where did your interest in Dan Dare stem from and how did the Haynes manual come about?

Graham: My interest In Dan Dare originates through TV21; many of the artists on TV21 were poached from Eagle, and I began to notice the work of Frank Bellamy and others in Eagle as I started to pick up second hand copies. The Dan Dare stories seemed to have parallels with many of the concepts seen in the Anderson shows (particularly the way they were developed in TV21), such as a World Government and a (generally speaking) optimistic view of the future.

I became involved with Haynes when by bizarre coincidence both myself and the writer of the Thunderbirds manual (Sam Denham, with whom I have worked before on a couple of books) approached Haynes separately with a view to doing a Manual based on that series. Initially, Haynes weren’t too keen, but as they were moving into doing manuals based on fictional subjects anyway, they offered me the job of illustrating two Wallace and Gromit manuals instead, having seen my Thunderbirds artwork and in particular a Wallace and Gromit cutaway (of Wallace’s house) for the Bristol Evening Post. The Thunderbirds manual was therefore put on hold for 18 months or so. The success of the Wallace and Gromit manuals prompted Haynes to proceed with the Thunderbirds edition, and that has proved successful enough for them to commission something I had also thought about for a couple of years, Dan Dare. That book is now complete and I have returned to the Anderson world with another manual with Sam Denham to be published next year.

DTT: The writer of the Haynes manual, Rod Barzilay, is a familiar name to Dan Dare fans due to him creating and editing the long running Dan Dare magazine Spaceship Away. How did Rod come aboard and how did the pair of you sort out which spacecraft and other Dan Dare vehicles to feature in the book?

Graham: I knew Rod from Spaceship Away magazine, having initially met him at a Dan Dare ‘Open Day’ at an exhibition in Bristol a few years ago, at which Eagle and TV21/Countdown artist Don Harley was also present. I have since drawn around 10 or so cutaways of Dan Dare spacecraft (and real world locations such as the artists’ studios in Southport and Epsom), for SA over the years, and Rod’s knowledge of Dan Dare’s ‘fictional’ history made him ideally placed to supply the basic text of the book and provide the expert knowledge that I lacked; I almost got the impression that the future history of the Dan Dare universe was more real to Rod than our own!

This meant that he could concentrate on Space Fleet’s history and characters leaving me to deal with the artwork and technical bits. His comprehensive knowledge was ideal for me to bounce ideas from, with comments like ‘Space Fleet wouldn’t use that sort of space drive until such and such a date’, etc! We also selected the ships and locations on the basis of how important (Rod in particular) thought they were important to the Dan Dare history. I’m sure a few favourites will have been missed out, but with around 45 cutaways and illustrations in the book (not to mention lots of Eagle frames and other new artwork), I hope most people will be pleased with the results.

DTT: Those Dan Dare craft, along with the majority of the fictional vehicles you have painted cutaways of, were never created to be analysed in the sort of detail your work requires. How much of any given cutaway is 'creative engineering' on your part and do you have any background in the technical drawing of engineering subjects to help you fill in the gaps that the original artist's imagination did not need to show?

Graham: There is a fair bit of ‘creative engineering’ in the Dan Dare book in particular, although as much applies to the Anderson subjects as well (and especially Wallace and Gromit!). For Dan Dare, the main problems are visual inconsistencies between instalments, and often from frame to frame. After all, apart from the Anastasia and a handful of other cutaways, no-one at the time gave too much thought about how the ships worked or whether the details altered from frame to frame. In the 1950s, some effort was made to keep things consistent with the use of studio models and endless photographs, but no-one had time to ensure that fine detail (the detail that I would need years later, anyway!) remained true through all the stories.

In terms of scientific accuracy, the technology seen in the strip has not been seriously updated, although a couple of aspects such as radiation proofing in spacecraft and spacesuits and polarised heat resistant windows on spacecraft (for example) do get a mention every now and then. I don’t have a scientific background, nor do I have a background in technical drawing either, so it does seem a little odd to many people that the one thing I’m well known for are cutaways of vehicles, locations and spacecraft, both real and imagined!

DTT: The diversity of your cutaway subjects is remarkable, from the Eurofighter Typhoon fighter/bomber for RAF Magazine to Holby City Hospital for the Radio Times, from Thunderbird 2 for Thunderbirds The Comic to the Precinct House space station for Space Precinct magazine, there must be few types of vehicles or constructions that you haven't covered. Which of these has provided you with the greatest challenge to depict and which, of all of them, is your own favourite of your work.

Graham: The cutaway that gave me most problems was one of Wallace’s ‘cracking contraptions’ from the one of the Wallace and Gromit Manuals. It was a device for changing channels on a TV set that involved cogs and catapults in true Wallace tradition (as opposed to a simple remote control). Unfortunately, there was no visual consistency from shot to shot when watching the contraption in action on TV, and the solution I came up with was the only one that Aardman didn’t like. A compromise of sorts was reached, although the result isn’t terribly satisfactory. I guess the makers of said sequence weren’t really expecting some poor sod to try and make sense of it a few years afterwards; the contraption and the short film in which it was featured was created for a laugh, after all.

My favourite cutaway? Probably the Thunderbird 2 I painted for the Thunderbirds FAB Cross Sections book published by Carlton in 2000.

DTT: Thanks for taking the time to talk to us Graham.


There are more details of Graham Bleathman's work on his website.

There are more details of the Dan Dare Spacefleet Operations Manual on the Haynes website.

There are more details of Spaceship Away on the magazine's website and Facebook page.

Haynes to publish Dan Dare Operations Manual

Dan Dare Spacefleet Operations Manual
Promotional Cover only, subject
to change

British publisher Haynes is following up its successful fictional guides to the workings of Thunderbirds and Wallace & Gromit with a Dan Dare Spacefleet Operations Manual, written by Rod Barzilay with illustrations by Graham Bleathman.

Set for release next June, this innovative Haynes Manual will take a detailed look inside the spaceships, space stations and various other craft that played such a huge part in bringing the excitement of space travel to the Dan Dare stories featured in Eagle.

Beautifully illustrated with cutaway artwork by Graham Bleathman and supported by fabulous contemporary comic-strip art, Haynes tells us this  will be "the ultimate technical guide to the spaceships of Dan Dare and a wonderful addition to every comic fan’s bookshelf".

The book includes:

• An  introduction by Dan Dare and brief history of world government
• New discoveries, including cutaways of impulse drive and gravity motors
• Spacefleet and civilian spacecraft, including cutaways of all major craft
• Bases, space stations and defence craft, including Spacefleet HQ
• Alien craft including the Mekon's craft and feature on Dan Dare's own ship, the Anastasia
• New drive systems and what the future holds

Rod Barzilay will of course be well known to many downthetubes readers as the fouding editor of the Dan Dare-inspired comic magazine Spaceship Away, while Graham Bleathman's art has graced a huge range of newspapers and magazines, from cutaways of Thunderbirds and other Gerry Anderson craft to the workings of Walford's famous  square from EastEnders.

Haynes launches Thunderbirds Manual

On sale this week in all good bookshops is The Haynes Thunderbirds Agents’ Technical Manual featuring some terrific art by Graham Bleathman and offering unprecedented insight into the (sadly, fictional) workings of the Thunderbirds craft and associated rescue vehicles.

With its fleet of incredible Thunderbirds craft piloted by the heroic Tracy brothers, International Rescue, the creation of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson for the 1960s Thunderbirds TV show, is the world’s foremost rescue organisation, equipped to answer any call for assistance.

Haynes - who are enjoying success with these fictional manuals, which rub shoulders with their better-known real world guides to the inner workings of cars and bikes - tell us the confidential Thunderbirds Agents’ Technical Manual has been created "specifically to support agents on their most dangerous of missions and includes a personal introduction by International Rescue’s Founder and Commander in Chief, Jeff Tracy, as well as background information on inventor Brains’ amazing technological and scientific achievements of the late 21st Century."

All of which evokes memories in fans of a certain age of the kind of "shared secrets" that were part and parcel of reading TV Century 21 comic in the 1960s.

Featuring detailed and fully annotated cutaway drawings by renowned artist Graham Bleathman, agents will also have access to International Rescue personnel profiles and never-been-seen-before top-secret mission files relating to all major International Rescue call-outs. It details how Jeff Tracy can launch and manage missions from his Pacific island base, the secret hangars and specialised equipment used in missions to date.

The Manual has been compiled by Sam Denham, a leading authority on the work of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, creators of Thunderbirds, and has written a variety of books and publications based on their programmes, in addition to working on other classic TV related projects.

Graham Bleathman is renowned for his cutaway drawings and no one knows more about the inner workings of the Thunderbirds vehicles. DownTheTubes readers may have seen his cutaway work before, in the 1980s Thunderbirds comic and elsewhere, and he's the artist on both Haynes Wallace and Gromit User Manuals. 

Reflecting the cross generational appeal of Thunderbirds, the Haynes Thunderbirds Agents’ Technical Manual also includes contributions from original Thunderbirds production artist Mike Trim, designer of many of the programme's famous 'pod' vehicles, and computer generated art created by talented young artist and film-maker Chris Thompson.


- Thunderbirds Agents’ Technical Manual will be available from all good bookshops from 7th June 2012 and direct from Haynes at www.haynes.co.uk or call 01963 442030, priced £14.99.