November
21 Review: Dan Dare #1

Creators: Garth Ennis, writer; Gary Erskine, artist

Virgin Comics, 32 pages, color, $2.99. On sale Nov. 28.

So? It’s tough for those of us who didn’t grow up in England and don’t know much about Dan Dare to truly evaluate whether this revival is true to the classic installments of Frank Hampson’s adventure pilot. As a single issue, this is promising start to what looks like a good, old-fashioned sci-fi space romp. This issue re-introduces Dan Dare, who’s lured out of a retirement where he dreams of the Green and Pleasant Land of Yore and back to a world where America’s been bombed back to the Stone Age and British space forces face a new threat from the alien Treen. As an archetypal British flying ace, Dare is an appealing hero even with a few years on him, still wearing his 1940s style leather pilot’s jacket. Ennis does a good job of setting things up here, but what will be more fun will be to see how Ennis’ usual sly humor and penchant for big stuff happening will play out. Erskine is a terrific choice for the art. It seems unlikely that die-hard fans of the character will be doing backflips over this first issue — it’s just too heavy on the exposition to really tell how the space stuff everyone wants to see will work out over the next six issues of the series — but it seems to have enough of the right tone and care put into it to be worth sticking with. Grade: B+