8May 2017
As a conclusion to Sydney’s intended Dan Dare story for the Planet on Sunday newspaper, which we have published here in the last couple of months , I am delighted to be able to present a piece of his artwork connected with this story which has never before seen the light of day. In it we see Sydney’s depiction of the Entity after it has manifested on the edge of the Flamelands in Theronland. The Mekon, in his flying chair, as the only being in the Solar system who can engage with the entity and retain his sanity, is attempting to hold its attention while the asteroid, which is intended to destroy it, hurtles toward Venus. An exciting climax to what would have been a groundbreaking Dan Dare story. Unfortunately it was not to be. Skipper Prossitt
Hi Chris, Thanks for the new info on the first Sydney Jordan – Dan Dare story. Sydney never told me what the plot was to be and something bothered me when I first read it: I’ve now realised what it is.
The permission from the Hampson family to revive Dan Dare rested on its being completely compatible with the original Hampson stories. Sydney paid me to research them and I identified the available time-frame for new stories between ‘The Ship that Lived’ and ‘The Phantom Fleet’. As I previously said, the second story which I was writing would have been about clean-up operations in Earth orbit, removing leftover armaments from the battle in which the Mekon conquered Earth while Dan Dare was on Cryptos.
But if Venus was left uninhabitable at the end of the first story, Hampson fans would have been writing in droves. Venus is definitely habitable at the start of ‘Safari in Space’, where – to quote Norman Wright’s “Dan Dare Dessier” – “while taking a well-earned rest on the uninhabited island of Maraku, in South Venus, Dan, Digby and Flamer are kidnapped. The same fate befalls Lex, Sir Hubert and Jocelyn Peabody, who are enjoying their leave in the north of Venus.” If the Sunday Planet strip had gone ahead as planned, we would have had a problem talking out way out of that!
Sydney was very keen to align the Dan Dare universe to a closer approximation of what we know the Solar system is like today; to modernise it without destroying the “feel” of the original.To that end he really wanted to convert Venus into the hellish place that we know it is today. The only way to fit that into the Dan Dare timeframe was to set it after MOONSLEEPERS. His story would also tie up the mystery of where the Mekon ( in MOONSLEEPERS)had disappeared to instead of turning up as Xel’s ally in that story and the Mekon would succeed in carrying out his unfulfilled plan ( in ALL TREENS MUST DIE) of destroying the Treen race ( with a lot of collateral damage to the Therons and Atlantines!). The story would certainly have ruffled some feathers, but preserving the DD universe in aspic has been one of the main reasons while all attempts to revive the strip have so far met with failure. The first comment that Sydney made to me when I first broached the subject of his Dan Dare story some twelve years ago was ” First I would have to destroy Venus!”