Eagle was a British children's comics periodical, first published from 1950 to 1969, and then in a relaunched format from 1982 to 1994. It was founded by Marcus Morris, an Anglican vicar from Lancashire. Morris edited a Southport parish magazine called The Anvil, but felt that the church was not communicating its message effectively. Simultaneously disillusioned with contemporary children's literature, he and Anvil artist Frank Hampson created a dummy comic based on Christian values. Morris proposed the idea to several Fleet Street publishers, with little success, until Hulton Press took it on.
Following a huge publicity campaign, the first issue of Eagle was released in April 1950. Revolutionary in its presentation and content, it was enormously successful; the first issue sold about 900,000 copies. Featured in colour on the front cover was its most recognisable story, Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future, created by Hampson with meticulous attention to detail. Other popular stories included Riders of the Range and P.C. 49. Eagle also contained news and sport sections, and educational cutaway diagrams of sophisticated machinery. A members club was created, and a range of related merchandise was licensed for sale.
Amidst a takeover of the periodical's publisher and a series of acrimonious disputes, Morris left in 1959; Hampson followed shortly thereafter. Although Eagle continued in various forms, a perceived lowering of editorial standards preceded plummeting sales, and it was eventually subsumed by its rival, Lion, in 1969. Eagle was relaunched in 1982 and ran for over 500 issues before being dropped by its publisher in 1994.
History Background Eagle was founded by John Marcus Harston Morris (1915–1989). Morris was born in the Lancashire town of Preston, and in 1918 moved to Southport. He graduated from Brasenose College, Oxford with a second-class degree in Literae Humaniores, and at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford gained a second in theology in 1939. He became a Church of England priest the following year, and served as a chaplain in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve from 1941 to 1943.
In 1945 he became vicar of St James' Church in Birkdale. Morris had long felt that the Anglican church was not publicising its message effectively enough; four years earlier he had written an unpublished article, intended for the Yarmouth Mercury and entitled Christian Hypocrisy, in which he questioned the difference that the Christian church had made to society in general. Morris also felt that the church was completely out of touch with the people whom it was supposed to represent. He gradually expanded the parish magazine—printed on four pages of cheap paper— into The Anvil, a widely circulated Christian magazine based on the humour and arts magazine Lilliput. Morris managed to employ several notable contributors on Anvil, such as C. S. Lewis and Harold Macmillan.
In 1948 he employed young artist Frank Hampson, a war veteran who had enrolled at the Southport School of Arts and Crafts, where he was described by his tutor as an "outstanding draughtsman 'prepared to go to endless trouble to get a thing right. He worked as the illustrator on Anvil, and later became the full-time artist for Interim, a Christian publicity society formed during a conference of diocesan editors, with ambitions to produce a strip cartoon magazine aimed at children.
Children's comics such as The Rover, The Hotspur, Schoolgirls' Own, The Magnet and Adventure usually contained a mixture of adventure stories, presented as text rather than strip cartoons, and some British boys were buying American horror comics produced for G.I.s. Morris was impressed by the high standard of artwork in the US magazines, but disgusted by their content, which he described as "deplorable, nastily over-violent and obscene, often with undue emphasis on the supernatural and magical as a way of solving problems". He realised that a market existed for a children's comics periodical which featured action stories in cartoon form, but which also would convey to children the standards and morals he advocated.
Morris was instrumental in launching the short-lived Society for Christian Publicity, formed to take control of The Anvil and to perhaps produce further Christian publications, and in January 1949 the Daily Mirror published an optimistic piece about the rumoured publication by the Society of a "new children's comic". This intrigued local journalist Norman Price, and the following month he met Morris, and helped him express his desire to see such a magazine by co-writing with him "comics that bring horror to the nursery", published in the Sunday Dispatch. Morris's article provoked a strong reaction from its readers; letters of support flooded into his home.
Morris envisioned a character called Lex Christian, "a tough, fighting parson in the slums of the East End of London", whose adventures would be told in strip cartoon form, illustrated by Hampson. The idea gained the support of Terence Horsley, editor of the Sunday Empire News, but Horsley was killed in a gliding accident shortly thereafter. Morris suggested to Hampson that they instead create an entirely new children's publication. Hampson was enthusiastic about the idea, and in May that year the two began work on a dummy of it. Lex Christian became Chaplain Dan Dare of the Inter-Planet Patrol, and featured on the cover. On the inside, two pages of Secret City featured a character named Jimmy Swift, and on the back page was a religious story about Saint Paul. Short strips included Joe from Strawberry Farm and Ernie, Always Unlucky. Other features included Morris's Editor's Letter and a range of news articles. Three photocopies of the dummy were made, each hand-coloured by Hampson.
By then deeply in debt from the publication of The Anvil and the production costs of the dummy, Morris formed Anvil Productions Ltd. Its prospectus declared: "The Company proposes to publish a new children's coloured 'comic' paper, which will be of a much higher and more mature quality than anything published in England and in appearance and format will be modelled more on the American comic papers which are so far in advance of our own". Initially he sought to keep the project under his control, but his escalating debts forced him to try to sell the idea. To that end, he made several trips to London, where—armed with the dummy—he pitched his idea to several Fleet Street publishers. He met John Myers at Hulton Press, who referred him to Montague Haydon at Amalgamated Press. He then met Neville Pearson at George Newnes, Ltd., whose executives claimed that the publication was "not an economic proposition". The US comics reprinter Boardmans was next, followed by Mike Wardell of the Sporting Record. Neither The Times nor The Daily Telegraph were interested, and at The Sunday Times the personal assistant to Gomer Berry, 1st Viscount Kemsley, presumed that Morris was asking for a charitable donation. In autumn 1949 however, Hulton Press contacted Morris with the instruction "definitely interested do not approach any other publisher".
1950–1969
In October that year Morris sold The Anvil—by then selling about 3,560 copies monthly—for £1,250, plus a £200 annual contract to continue as editor. Morris wanted to produce a comic the pages of which would be filled with role models whose behaviour and moral outlook he felt was socially desirable. Foreigners would not be depicted as either enemies or villains, and at least one child in any group of children would be from an ethnic minority. Religious values would not be imposed upon the reader, although their underlying moral tones would be made obvious on each page. These were innovative but somewhat risky ideas, as nothing similar existed in the market, and Hulton therefore commissioned extensive research into the new comic, which by then, inspired by the design of her church lectern, had been christened Eagle by Hampson's wife. Layout and typography were designed by Morris's friend, Ruari McLean, assisted by Charles Green, and faced with an initial print run of 1 million copies, Aintree printer Eric Bemrose designed and built a new ten-unit rotogravure machine in about twelve weeks.
The comic was heavily publicised before its release; copies were mailed direct to several hundred thousand people who worked with children, and a "Hunt the Eagle" scheme was launched, whereby large papier-mâché golden eagles were set on top of several Humber Hawk cars, and toured across the UK. Those who spotted an eagle were offered tokens worth 3d, which could be exchanged at newsagents for a free copy of Eagle.
Despite its relatively high price, the comic was an immediate success; released on 14 April 1950, and despite government paper quotas, the first issue sold about 900,000 copies. Eight of its twenty pages were presented in four-colour rotogravure. Eagle was designed to entertain and educate its readers; although a typical issue might contain such characters as Cavendish Brown, Harris Tweed, Jack O'Lantern, Storm Nelson and Luck of the Legion, it also included a special news section, a sports page, and school stories. Each issue also featured a centre-spread full-colour cutaway illustration of a piece of machinery—the first detailed the inner workings of the British Rail 18000 locomotive. Such high quality strips as Riders of the Range and P.C. 49 helped ensure a weekly circulation of almost a million copies, but it was the adventures of Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future, which most captivated readers. Created by Hampson—now a full-time staff artist with his own team—Dan Dare was the UK's first science-fiction comic strip of any significance. Readers were thrilled by the square-jawed British spaceman's weekly exploits, and his struggles with The Mekon.
While Morris (who by now had resigned from St James) edited the magazine from Hulton's premises at Shoe Lane in London, the comic was created in a converted bakery in the Churchtown district of Southport. The building was described by Eagle artist Greta Tomlinson as "very basic, a flagstone floor and a tin roof; there was cold running water in the corner. It was freezing cold in the winter and boiling hot in the summer". Working to a tight schedule, Hampson created each Dan Dare episode first in pencil, and then in ink and colour. He and his team of artists posed for photographs, in the positions drawn in his pencil sketches (Hampson usually posed for Dan Dare). These photographs were combined with the rough sketches, and his colleagues then worked on the strip while he tackled the opening frame of each week's story. His drawings of the technology Dan Dare employed were meticulous, and were based on a large body of research and reference material, as well as space ship models, plaster heads, mocked-up space suits, and a complete model of a space station. He also wrote the dialogue for several of the comic's pages. Hampson was assisted in his work by expert consultants, among them Arthur C. Clarke (then an aspiring young science fiction writer). Scriptwriters included Anglican priest Chad Varah (founder of Samaritans). Varah also accompanied Morris on tours of Cathedrals often filled with Eagle readers keen to meet the comic's creators. Peter Ling and Macdonald Hastings were contributors, as was Harris Tweed's creator John Ryan, who was also responsible for Captain Pugwash, printed in the first 19 issues.