Rebellion and Rights to Eagle Strips

[Jim_Campbell]

Tower King is a minor classic — I think Hebden’s script would probably have looked a lot less impressive paired with a lesser artist than Ortiz, but House of Dæmon is a stone cold classic, pairing some utterly lovely Ortiz art with Wagner/Grant in their pumping-out-quality-scripts-all-the-time phase. The sheer pace that they turn over ideas in the short page count per episode seems to inspire Ortiz, who moves seamlessly from genre to genre.

[broodblik]

I still dream of a hardcover Complete Doomlord collection. Maybe one day, one day.

Since learning about Bloodfang (its got Jim Baikie art if I recall right???) I'm mad keen on getting that too.

Damn you Dan Dare Corporation!

I never knew that Baikie was the artist. That will explain why I loved the strip. I assume that FM Candor is the dynamic duo of Wagner/Grant.

Double damn the Dan Dare Corporation

[Art]

IIRC from the big Wagner interview (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMaQG-Wpvo0) it's F Martin Candor, named after some local shops and the F stands for fuck.

[The Amstor Computer]

Tower King is a minor classic — I think Hebden’s script would probably have looked a lot less impressive paired with a lesser artist than Ortiz, but House of Dæmon is a stone cold classic, pairing some utterly lovely Ortiz art with Wagner/Grant in their pumping-out-quality-scripts-all-the-time phase. The sheer pace that they turn over ideas in the short page count per episode seems to inspire Ortiz, who moves seamlessly from genre to genre.

Yes, Daemon is fantastic - aside from the conclusion, which felt as though it had perhaps been cut short and/or hacked about by editorial, it's a rollicking tale. It opens almost as a gothic romance, then spends the rest of the run shifting from horror, to adventure yarn, to comedy, to the kind of absurd horror Wagner/Grant would go on to perfect in The Thirteenth Floor (and it's hard not to see Daemon as a "dry run" of sorts for Max), taking in Vietnam war tales and others along the way. Brilliant stuff.

I never knew that Baikie was the artist. That will explain why I loved the strip. I assume that FM Candor is the dynamic duo of Wagner/Grant.

Double damn the Dan Dare Corporation

I think (though may be incorrect, as it's been a long time since I asked him on FB) that Bloodfang may have been Wagner alone. Regardless, it's a fun little dinosaur-POV tale, coupled with some cracking B&W linework from Baikie.

[Professor Bear]

Been doing a read-through of the Eagle at a leisurely pace but I'm finally at the RAT TRAP era the OP mentions and I think the strip may be the single biggest reason for New Eagle's demise, as its purpose seems to be to personally insult every single remaining Eagle reader one by one while telling them that they, their home town and their ideas all suck.

[The Monarch]

god the thought of titan owning the stuff rebellion now owns makes me shudder...

they can barely reprint other peoples stuff let alone their own

[matty_ae]

It's always slightly worth remembering the facts

The Dan Dare completed a 22-part animated cartoon series that was according to IMDB as being sold to 40+ companies but it was unsuccessful to the point where I think the DDC was being challenged for a £15 million dollar loan that one of the funding partners had borrowed.

They are sitting on an anachronistic character forever stuck in a 1950s that doesn't chime well with modern audiences as a setting for a Sci-fi drama. But if a tryst of Benedict Cumberbatch, Mark Gattis and HBO came calling it could be worth a great deal for the value of their IP.

And why they are hoping that reprinting Thunderbold & Smokey et al. probably isn't moving the dial but that said Hibernia clearly did broker multiple deals (include Dan Dare in the Holiday Special) that made sense to both parties so it can be done.

[Professor Bear]

My failing ADHD-riddled man-child memory is not to be taken as gospel on any matter, but as best I can recall, they can't reprint Thunderbolt and Smokey because photostrips are retroactively covered by changes to Equity's standard acting contracts made in the decades since, and I think John Wagner has asserted that his renegotiated creative terms with 2000ad retroactively extends to Eagle material as well, so Doomlord is also a no-no.

They are sitting on an anachronistic character forever stuck in a 1950s that doesn't chime well with modern audiences as a setting for a Sci-fi drama.

LOL the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy is on the phone - it says it want to talk to you about retrofuturism as a significant aesthetic movement within the modern creative industries.  Holding on line 2 is the cottage industry of period war dramas set in England, and boy does it have an earful for you.

What you call anachronism, others call a selling point.  Besides, with the exception of the Wagner/Mills scripts from the first year-and-a-bit of the relaunched Eagle and Garth Ennis' US miniseries, every update of Dan Dare has been a complete disaster.  Leaving aside the 2000ad reboot, Dan Dare was reinvented not once but six times between 1982 and 1989 in the New Eagle* and it sucked ass pretty bad every time.


* "Grandson of the original" Dare, "Star Trek" Dare, "Back-From-The-Dead Space Marshall" Dare, "Gritty Loner with a talking gun who hangs out with Vampirella and Johnny Five from Short Circuit and fights space bats" Dare (this is considerably less awesome than it sounds), "Fugitive Buck Rogers In The 25th Century fighting snake men on the werewolf prison planet" Dare, and finally back to "1950s original and best" Dare in the comic's final years, a retrospectively-bizarre creative choice given that this version would have been out of print more than a decade before the New Eagle's target audience of 8-13 year-old boys were even born, and a full decade-and-a-half before post-ironic nostalgia became a viable marketing strategy.

[matty_ae]

I always enjoy a spirited response.

Sorry I was not judging the possibility of reprinting photo-strips just making the small point that Dan Dare is really the crown jewels and everything else is nice crumbs. I'd love to see the Doomlord photo-strips back in print and TBH I think they could risk reprinting old photos if the run was sub 200. I mean what are the actors really going to sue for? A few hundred pounds?

Cheap shots aside. I do agree with Pat Mills long-term point that you 're-invent Dan Dare at your peril'. He belongs in the 1950s view of a sci-fi future. I'm not sure it's a 1950s that ever happened but who can argue with post-war optimism of a better world (if still slightly colonial). I wasn't arguing to re-invent his world again. No-one needs a great-great-x-grandson but just that probably only a top-tier current actor combine with a top-tier show runner could pull it off. I hope it happens. And so do the DD Corp but until then whether they approve tiny reprints of obscure stories (however fondly remembered from the old 1982 bird) aint going to pay any Studio Execs child's school fees.

Dan is worth doing right but it's a tough proposition. Probably tougher than any top-tier 2000ad IP especially as the first set of fans are now in their 80s and sadly dwindling in terms of a built in audience.

[Professor Bear]

I mean what are the actors really going to sue for? A few hundred pounds?

Probably, yes.  The scenario you describe is literally the kind of opportunistic exploitation that industry standard contracts are there to prevent.  The actors' union would pursue a case on principle, not how much profit was involved.

Dan is worth doing right but it's a tough proposition. Probably tougher than any top-tier 2000ad IP especially as the first set of fans are now in their 80s and sadly dwindling in terms of a built in audience.

I don't think they'd ever be the target audience, their only value would be as PR fodder in asserting Dare's cultural significance.  Dan Dare as a contemporary property could be probably be done if it leaned into its own Britishness and avoided US cliches about grizzled loners or whatever - though tbh this would also likely get it pegged as a Dr Who clone.

[broodblik]

With a good creators team Dan Dare will be able to work today. The 50s DD I do not think will work anymore. Unfortunately the "dreaded" reboot has to happen on the character for it to work in today's' age.

So even if Rebellion owned Doomlord for example to reprints would not include the photo stories?

[Professor Bear]

With a good creators team Dan Dare will be able to work today. The 50s DD I do not think will work anymore.

A good creative team(Ennis/Erskine) already made the 1950s version work.  Conversely, a US-produced Dan Dare comic book a few years ago went the reboot route and I don't think I've read a single word about it, despite it being from Peter Milligan, a not-unpopular creator around these parts.  It's not that it was either good or bad, but that it failed to register.

I do think you're right that in theory, there's no reason a good creative team couldn't make a Dare update work, it's just that every single time it's been tried, it's gone tits-up.

[broodblik]

The Pete Milligan Dare was fine not the best but readable. For me get a good writer and just imagine what a guy like Patrick Goddard can do to the art department. I think it might be the same case about America's take on Dredd the writers just do not understand the character and what he is about.

[The Amstor Computer]

I mean what are the actors really going to sue for? A few hundred pounds?

Probably, yes.  The scenario you describe is literally the kind of opportunistic exploitation that industry standard contracts are there to prevent.  The actors' union would pursue a case on principle, not how much profit was involved.

Probably worth pointing out here that for many of the photo stories in Eagle, models would include people the photographer knew and could rope in (for example, I believe the photographer on "Thunderbolt and Smokey" knew a teacher at a school and got the OK to shoot there and to have the kids from the school as extras for the strip), IPC staff (Sid Bicknell appears in Doomlord, along with security guards and other staffers) as well as jobbing actors on the books of agencies like Ugly and Photopix (Michael Segal appears briefly in Doomlord, with Mike Mungarvan starring etc.). There's even a Thames TV reporter in one Doomlord segment, along with some random passers-by wrangled in by Gary Compton, the photographer.

There likely won't be contracts for any of the dozens and dozens of people involved, and the jobbing actors probably would have been found and paid through the agencies they were signed up with, and I'd be surprised if there were any kind of reprint/future usage rights set out. I'm not sure whether that simplifies or complicates the situation for reprints, but that's roughly where I understand things are with how the photo strips were produced.   

Worth noting though that there have been several collections of girls' photo-strips (My Guy etc.) reprinted in recent years, with strips featuring far more famous actors and celebs, and I don't believe they've fallen foul of anyone.

[broodblik]

DDC does not look like they care anyway for any of their "properties". I believe must likely we will never see any of these properties in the future either as a reprint or as something new.