Eagle Comic
Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future, in glorious photogravure.
A comic founded by a vicar, printed to a standard nothing else matched, and read by close to a million children a week.
Marcus Morris launched Eagle in 1950 partly as a wholesome alternative to imported American horror comics. It worked. The front page Dan Dare strip was painted by Frank Hampson and his studio with an obsessiveness that still looks extraordinary.
The cutaway diagrams on the centre pages taught a generation how things worked. Plenty of British engineers date their career to that spread.
Cost back then
3d a week
Goes for now
£10–£80 an issue, more for number one
