Eagle: 18 August 1984
The Eagle comic had various different formats, styles and content in across the years, but a lovely Dan Dare spaceship cover never seemed to be more than a few issues away. The artist this time round was Carlos Cruz.
Dan’s big adventure across the summer of ’84 was a battle to save Earth from an invasion of aliens led by an enormous brain in a vase called Renagol – a poundshop Mekon.
The front cover heralded the return of boxer Danny Pyke in a new story for the boxing champ, written by John Wagner and Alan Grant under the pseudonym D. Spence. There’s some lovely John Burns character artwork in this one (NB. all John Burns artwork is lovely).
Apart from Dan Dare, Eagle’s other lead strip of its eighties incarnation was Doomlord, who by this stage had changed from shapeshifting superbaddie to a sort of ecological Protector of Earth. In this adventure he was saving the planet from a plague of space ants. Art by Heinzl, script by Alan Grant.
The back page of this week’s Eagle featured these guys, who seem ubiquitous to my memories of the decade. Crunch, Dunk, Brains, Brian and Bixie, along with the various cardboard figure promotions of the seventies, give me a sense of loyal affection for this strange breakfast cereal that I don’t actually like that much.
