Let The Eagle Soar

[poliphilo]

I didn't have American comix when I was a kid. A couple came my way and I was baffled. The cultural differences were so great that they might have been in a foreign language. One of the ones I aquired was a cowboy comic. It was so much more brutal than anything I was used to. The final image of two cowpokes riding away from Boot Hill with a grave-marker in the foreground disturbed me so much that I hid it away under other books and magazines in my book-case. I didn't want to look at it for fear of nightmares.

So the whole culture of the super hero leaves me cold. All I see in it is that infantile obsession with musculature which I renounced around the time I started noticing girls.

What I had in place of real comix was a thing called the Eagle.
It was published by a dodgy former clergyman called the Rev Marcus Morris- who later went on the publish soft porn. Morris's Eagle was a quasi-educational magazine- high-toned and reassuringly expensive, intended to stouten the hearts of young sons of the Empire. Its star strip- printed on the front page and drawn by the great Frank Bellamy- featured Dan Dare, pilot of the Future- a Battle of Britain type in an RAF cap (I believe he may even have smoked a pipe) who flew space-ships and battled against a huge-headed, green, inter-Galactic super-genius called the Mekon.

If you'd said "Batman" to me- I'd have pictured Digby- Dan Dare's personal body servant- a comical little cockney chap- who was amusing and plucky in the best traditions of the London Blitz.

But Dan Dare didn't particularly ring my chimes. I was a swot (an amusing mid-century word for nerd) and what I liked best were the strips celebrating great heroes from British history. King Harold, for instance. O the flowing Saxon locks, the jutting chin, the piercing blue eyes, the sheer, unadulterated nobility!

And then there was Robert Clive- the guy who stole India for the British- and General Gordon- who got sheesh-kebabed on a jihadi's spear at Khartoum (they didn't tell us about the religious mania and the alcoholism) and Bernard Law Mongomery (whom I saw in the flesh once) the funny, little lisping gnome who "twounced Wommel" at el Alamein and later spatted with Eisenhower and committed us to a Bridge Too Far.

It amazes me. Only fifty years ago- less than that- and the self-conceit of the British was still intact. We were a martial, imperial nation- and a strip showing Clive (in reality a thief and psychopath) displaying noble disdain for cringing oriental types- dashing them and their proffered bribes to the floor with a manly Saxon swipe- could be published in a kiddies' mag and not a voice be raised in protest.

Yesterday's high-toned kiddy-fare is today's guilty secret. Forget about it. Hide it away. To the modern mind Morris took a step up the moral ladder when he jacked in the Eagle for porn.

I'd have done better with Batman. Or would I? Oh I don't know.
The Eagle was pretty much the last gasp of Empire. We'd already given India away and made asses of ourselves at Suez. Next thing down the line was Monty Python- with all those jokes about chaps in pith helmets. One thing leads to another. The lion's carcass shelters bees and the bees make honey.

Comments

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

I never got on with comics that ran long ongoing serials, as I couldn't afford to buy one every week and I often didn't understand what was going on; I liked the standalone adventures and jokes in Whizzer & Chips and the Beano. But later in life I read Dan Dare's first adventure collected in one volume and loved it.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I haven't gone back to Dan Dare. I expect he looks like a classic these days. So far as I remember- apart from some class condescension- he was largely free of the nasty attitudes that flourished elsewhere in the Eagle.

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

I like to think he was. Like Tintin, another hero of mine, he would support the underdog regardless of race, colour or, in his case, planet of origin.

[cybersofa.livejournal.com]

I read Eagle too, more for the stories and the cutaway drawings of aircraft and locomotives than the history. Also my parents subbed me it, which they wouldn't for Beano or Dandy, because of its perceived wholesomeness. Keeping Morris on board as publisher was a smart move by Hultons. I don't think you can blame him for Cosmo, though - Hearst made him do it. He must have been pretty doddery by then.

Compared to American comics, the use of rotogravure made Eagle & Co a much higher quality product, nicer to look at and feel, supporting more elaborate and subtle artwork and half-tone effects. So the editors looked for content that would look good in colour and be cheap, and came up with the same old stuff about Clive et al. By my theory, the Americans missed out on having their version of history fed to them via comics, not through virtue, but because their presses weren't up to it.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I didn't understand the cutaways- and me the son of an engineer- sad really. Did I have a favourite story strip?- yes, there was one called Heros the Spartan- drawn by Frank Bellamy (I think) and all about Lost Legions and Celtic spookiness. Grand!

[ibid.livejournal.com]

I have always been a sucker for comics, but not the adventure ones. I like the Beano et al (and still get the annual for xmas!) and the embarrasing girls ones like Bunty.

It is interesting, the girls mags from my mum's era, while they show girls being a bit swotty and wimpy, depending on the men- school friend was the worst!- at least showed women as being independent. this carried on into the 80's, the 4 Marys solved mysteries. I bought a 2003 Bunty to see what it was like, and all the stories involved girls fancying boys. They were even less feminist that in the 50s!