Dan Dare revived from suspended animation after two hundred years to find himself in a different world. The Mekon had also survived but otherwise the cast was different, as was the tone of the strip (heavily influenced by the punk movement, as was much of "2000 AD") and the personality of the title character. Written by Kelvin Gosnell and then Steve Moore, the strip was initially illustrated by Massimo Bellardinelli, whose Dare owed nothing to the original apart from the wavy eyebrows. After 23 issues in this format the strip took a break for a month and then returned in a revamped
Dan Dare sworn enemy returned from space to find Earth under Treen rule and set out to free the planet. His new cast included Lt Helen Scott, leader of the Earth Resistance, and Valdon, a renegade Treen similar to the earlier Sondar. One controversial aspect of the strip was a lengthy flashback which retconned the original Dan to be a veteran of the Second World War and to have travelled through time to the era in which his adventures in the original "Eagle" took place—an attempt to explain why a hero in the age of space travel had a 1950s outlook on