The Mekon he doesn't know it, but I like the Mekon." British rock band The Mekons named themselves after the character in 1977. In May 2013, the BBC radio soap opera "The Archers" featured a storyline in which regular character Brian Aldridge was aggrieved by a local newspaper article that compared him to the Mekon. The Mekon The Mekon (of Mekonta) is the arch-enemy of the British comic book hero Dan Dare, first appearing in 1950 in the "Eagle" comic strip "Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future" and created by Frank Hampson. Apart from Dan Dare himself, he is the only character
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".