Children’s television legend who first set sail from Lancashire

In any discussion of Eagle it’s generally Dan Dare who makes the headlines but there were many more features which gripped the imaginations of the nation’s 10-year old boys.

It’s a little-known fact that Captain Pugwash first set sail in Southport aboard the Black Pig, taking on his arch enemy Cut-Throat Jake, the pirate captain of the Flying Dustman.

Pugwash was a short-lived feature in the Eagle, lasting only 18 episodes and then moving to the Radio Times, before being animated for broadcast on BBC television, in black and white from 1957-66, and in colour from 1973-75.

His creator, John Ryan, was an art teacher at Harrow whose life-long fascination with pirates began when his family moved to Morocco where, from his bedroom window, he caught glimpses of real pirate ships in the port of Rabat. Ryan replaced Pugwash with the bumbling special agent Harris Tweed, an Eagle favourite which ran for the next 12 years. Several Eagle strips began life in other formats before becoming weekly features in the comic.

PC49 was a popular radio series as well as featuring in a film in 1948, before being adapted as a comic strip in the first ever copy of the Eagle. The archetypal British bobby became a mainstay of the Eagle for its first seven years. The comic’s editor, the Reverend Marcus Morris, who also financed the publication of Eagle, had a good ear for a popular adventure story.

Like PC49 he commissioned another BBC radio series, the cowboy story Riders of the Range, as a comic strip for the Eagle. It was a natural step, therefore, to adapt the Eagle’s most successful story, Dan Dare – Pilot of the Future, for radio.

The Dan Dare Radio Show ran on Radio Luxembourg from 1951 to 1956. Like the Eagle itself, it had a range of merchandise and commercial tie-ins.

Both the comic and the radio show were translated into other languages and sold all around the world. The 1950s were certainly the heyday for the Eagle and it was loyal to its Lancashire home.

The editor worked in Birkdale, many of the artists were trained in Southport and it was designed in Churchtown.

When publisher Hultons was bought out by rival publishers in 1959, Frank Hampson’s studio-based production system was closed down. The highly detailed and beautifully crafted Dan

Dare stories were produced much more quickly and cheaply. Some very fine artists were employed but the high-quality production values Hampson had insisted on were gone.

Eagle struggled on into the late 1960s but was merged with its main rival in 1969 and published as Lion and Eagle. A new Eagle comic was launched in 1982 and ran right through to 1994.

To celebrate 70 years since the first edition of Eagle was published The Atkinson Gallery in Southport is hosting an exhibition looking back at the life of the comic.

The show also features a selection of later Eagle comics and artwork as well as some of the many tribute publications like the Eagle Times and Spaceship Away.

David Britton, of the Eagle Society, said: “This is a unique opportunity to explore 70 years in the evolution of the most successful and influential magazine for children ever produced in the United Kingdom.

“Selling almost 1m copies when it first appeared in 1950, it survived in several formats and Dan Dare, while appearing in many guises over succeeding years, is still one of the most popular science fiction characters. The exhibition brings together original artwork, documents, photographs and memorabilia that highlight the strips and content of a magazine that captured the imagination of a generation.”

Eagle: 1950 to 2020 runs at The Atkinson Gallery, Southport, until September 5. For more details visit www.theatkinson.co.uk