Eagle (British comics) of a planned television series, persuaded IPC's comic arm Fleetway to relaunch "Eagle" in 1982, as a weekly comic edited by Dave Hunt. The original Dan Dare was no longer a feature of the comic, his eponymous great-great grandson taking on the mantle of space explorer instead. Drawn by Gerry Embleton, and later Ian Kennedy, and set 200 years after the original story, the first story-arc featured the return of Dan Dare's earliest nemesis, The Mekon. IPC were unable to recreate the popularity of the original strip, and in 1989 the original Dan Dare returned to the comic, in a
Dan Dare the story and its successor, "Prisoners of Space" (the only series to feature extensive work by an artist outside the studio, finishes being provided by Desmond Walduck. Hampson returned full-time in 1955, starting "The Man from Nowhere" trilogy, which took Dan and his companions outside the Solar System for the first time. The quality of the strip and its popularity remained high throughout the 1950s. In the late fifties "Eagle"'s new owners objected to the cost of the studio and the complexity of the stories. The conflict caused Hampson to leave the strip in 1959, in the middle of a