Dan Dare is first seen on 14th April, 1950, on the covers of the first issue of Eagle. A “Strip Cartoon Weekly” that proved immensely popular with the British public, the first issue selling nearly one million copies.
“Dan Dare” and his subtitle “Pilot of the Future” are seen on the cover in Cartoon (Bauer, 1936), an informal and extremely mid-20th-century brush script. Cartoon is also used on a yellow band on the header, introducing “Eagle — the new national strip cartoon weekly”.
Dan Dare was the undoubted star of Eagle and was “the UK’s first science-fiction comic strip of any significance” (from Wikipedia).
Also crucial in the development of Eagle was the eminent typographer Ruari McLean, who became a close friend and worked intensively with me on the design and layout. The title Eagle came in the end from Frank Hampson’s wife, and the lettering for it from Berthold Wolpe of Faber & Faber. The model for the Eagle symbol was the top of a large brass inkwell I bought at the White Elephant stall at the vicarage garden party.
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From Marcus Morris (1915–1989), founding editor of Eagle (via Alistair Hall):
Berthold Wolpe’s lettering has a few traits in common with his typeface Tempest, designed in 1935 for the exclusive use at Fanfare Press. Coincidentally, Tempest and Cartoon appear next to each other in a typeface sampler from 1937.