Dan Dare Mekon. The initial artist was Gerry Embleton, who drew Dan to resemble the original exactly, but he was quickly replaced by Ian Kennedy, who gave the hero a younger look and blond hair. The opening "Dan Dare" story was an epic, lasting 18 months, written by Pat Mills and John Wagner. It opened with a flashback to the unseen final defeat of the Mekon by the original Dan, after which he was sealed inside an artificial asteroid and exiled into space. Centuries later he was accidentally freed and returned to conquer Earth. A few years later the descendant of his
Eagle (British comics) David Hockney were first published in "Eagle". X-Men comic scriptwriter Chris Claremont read and enjoyed "Eagle", and cites Hampson's work as influential on his career. Watchmen co-creator Dave Gibbons has also praised Hampson's work, and the author Tim Rice, in his foreword to "Living with Eagles" (1998), cites the stories printed in "Eagle" as helping "me in my story-telling efforts through musicals many years on." Professor Stephen Hawking, when asked about the influence Dan Dare had on him, replied: "Why am I in cosmology?", and the entertainer Kenny Everett chose an "Eagle Annual" as his book on "Desert Island Discs".