Algy drew my attention to the history of a comic called Eagle (for boys), back in the 1950s and 1960s. It made me understand the way in which your culture has changed. An Anglican minister was trying to instill some basic understanding of the old virtues, such as courage,valour, honesty and good manners, into the young men and women, of that era. I don’t see any such ethic being instilled by the current crop of mindless computer games that mesmerise your offspring these days. More is the pity.

Gibber! Gibber!

Chugley

A Crusty Old Chimp

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, gained a second in theology in 1939. He became a Reverend 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felt that the Anglican church was not publicising its message effectively enough; four years earlier he had written an unpublished article, intended for the Yarmouth Mercury and entitled Christian Hypocrisy, in which he questioned the difference that the Christian church had made to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 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”, exposing some of the bad material children were reading, 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 Biblical 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”. He then approached numerous other publishers until Hulton Press contacted him 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-mache 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 threepence, 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 Lick 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. “I wanted to give hope for the future, to show that rockets, and science in general, could reveal new worlds, new opportunities. I was sure that space travel would be a reality,” said the inspired Morris.

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, Cheshire, England. 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. Clark (then an aspiring young science fiction writer).Scriptwriters included Anglican minister Chad Varah (founder of Samaritan’s). Varah also accompanied Morris on tours of Cathedrals often filled with Eagle readers keen to meet the comic’s creators.

Children were encouraged to submit their good deeds to the comic; those that had their stories printed were called MUGs, a not-so-subtle dig at the “spivs” who made fun of them. The best of these stories were awarded the title of “MUG of the Month”, or “MUG of the Year”. Readers were also invited to join an Eagle club. Upon payment of a subscription, members would be given a gilt Eagle badge, a rule book, and a list of privileges. The club proved extremely popular, attracting within months a membership of about 100,000, but it also served as a research tool for Hulton; questionnaires were sent to a random selection of members, asking each to rate certain aspects of the comic. Eagle‘s production costs were funded partly by advertising revenue, although advertisers were required to integrate their designs so as to match the comic’s high standards.^[25] 

Eagle became immensely popular with people of all ages and walks of life. Copies brought into school regularly found their way into the hands of staff, who enjoyed them almost as much as the children they taught. The Lancet reported on one doctor who read Eagle on his rounds. It was sent to soldiers in Korea, to refugee camps, and was praised by  the BBC Home Service. Wolf Mankowitz proclaimed Dan Dare a “Hero of Our Time”, and the Earl of Jellicoe was reported to have read the comic in the library of Westminster Palace. Lord Mountbatten supposedly placed a subscription order for his nephew, Prince Charles, and, on one occasion, rang Hulton to complain that the comic had not arrived; a replacement was quickly dispatched. Years later Morris sent the prince a copy of The Best of Eagle (1977); Charles replied and thanked him for the “fond memories”.

Eagle ran until 1969, but ran into some administrative problems and fierce competition. But it pioneered some wonderful content that impacted a generation of children in a wholesome way.