(Presumably as opposed to Virginia Dare, who is someone else entirely.)

No, what I’m talking about here is Virgin Comics’ re-launch of Dan Dare. I’ve finally managed to get hold of copies of issues #1 and #3. #2 is apparently sold out due to national newspaper attention (and I guess a lower print run than #1).

So far, so average, I think. I’m not hugely impressed with the script, though in fairness to Garth Ennis I should point out that I read his work immediately after having been dipping my nose in James Wood’s How Fiction Works – a book I’ll probably be writing a lot more about soon. In any case, Ennis shouldn’t be too unhappy at being guilty of a very similar literary sin to that for which Wood was castigating John Updike.

Anyway, there were two points I wanted to make. The first is with regard to evil Prime Ministers. As I recall, there was a Dan Dare story with an evil Prime Minister in Spaceship Away too. And he was drawn to look rather more like Tony Blair than Ennis’s villain. I’m not suggesting plagiarism here, because I note that Matter also has a character who might be described as an evil Prime Minister. This seems to be a meme that has worked its way into the British psyche. If something bad is threatening the nation, it must be because the Prime Minister is in league with the enemy. I wonder how my fellow Brits came up with that idea. (Hint: the people of Europe may want to bear this in mind if a certain well known British person decides to run for EU President.)

And the other thing I wanted to mention is that the back cover of the Dan Dare comics features an ad for Virgin Galactic. Of course very few buyers of comic books can afford a flight on Mr. Branson’s new spaceliner. However, as Holly reminded me, just about everyone in the UK who can afford a seat is likely to have been a Dan Dare fan in their youth.