Dan Dare's guest appearances

Although the majority of the Dan Dare adventures take place in Eagle comic, he has made odd guest appearances in other places, or in media other than comic form. Excluding the multitude of Dan Dare merchandising sold in the 50's and 60's, here are some of his most interesting appearences.

In the early 50's Dan Dare starred in his own radio series on Radio Luxembourg. The series was sponsored by Horlicks. It was cut onto large disks in London to be broadcast from Luxembourg. Sadly these disks are no longer in existance
Plans for a television series have been circulating for a number of years, as yet Dan Dare's only television appearances have been as the star of three advertisements for Mobil Petrol in 1987
The 2000AD Dan Dare met Judge Dredd, and a number of other 2000AD characters in a humourous strip in the 1980 Dan Dare annual.
The original Dan Dare has made it to computer screens three times in Virgin Games' series of computer games.
The Mekon featured in a Doomlord story in Eagle in the late 1980's, when Doomlord Vek shape-shifted into the Mekon's form, the picture of the Vek as the Mekon being carried away by terrorists featured on the Eagle's front page.
Dan Dare featured in two strips in the 1991 Comic Relief Comic. In the first he entered a large chin contest with a number of other comic characters including Desparate Dan and Judge Dredd. In the second he teamed up with all (then) seven incarnations of The Doctor to extract a donation for Comic Relief from the Mekon.
Thanks to John Lanham for sending in the following two appearances.
The 70's 2000AD version appeared in 'Tharg's Head Revisited' a one-off strip drawn by a number of artists in Prog500 of 2000AD. If I remember they had Dare giving Tharg an earful for ressurecting him in such an awful strip! I think he was also in one corner of the cover too.
Again in 2000AD. In an Armoured Gideon story, this time Dan is joined by the Mekon. The prog numbers are as follows: Prog 895 (8/7/94 - 70s Dare+Mekon), Prog 897 (22/7/94 - 50s Dare+Mekon) and Prog 899 (5/8/94 - 70s Dare+Mekon).

As well as these appearances there have been a number of Dan Dare parodies, including Danny Dare in Wham comic, Dan Dire in Private Eye and Ham Dare in Oink! magazine.

John Lanham also tells me that a recent issue of Viz carried a spoof called Dan Daren't, a rather cowardly character.

Last updated 13^thMay 1996

This Page has been accessed: Times since 6^th May 1996

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