Frank Hampson (21^st December to 8^th July 1985)

I pass this blue plaque more than any others as it’s near some flats I rent out in Audenshaw. As there’s always something to paint/file/fix I pass it regularly. He created the cartoon character Dan Dare and was a big contributor to Eagle comic.

Here I am outside the house where he was born at 488, Audenshaw Road, Audenshaw, Manchester, M34 5PT (my friend cleans the windows there.)

Frank was born in the house below just before Christmas in 1918 after the First World War ended. Three years later the family moved to Southport. He loved drawing and won a drawing competition run by Meccano magazine. The editor running the competition was so impressed he asked the young Frank for more drawings. Still in shorts (aged 13) he gained his first commission and for the next two years his work appeared regularly in the journal.

He left school and got a job delivering telegrams for the Post Office. The irregular hours left him with time to day dream and draw. He started contributing to the “The Post”, the official Post Office magazine.

At 19 he took a leap, left the safety of a normal job and became a full-time art student at the Victoria College of Arts and Science, Southport. Soon the Second World War beckoned and he signed up and served in France and Belgium. In 1946 he was demobbed got married and had a son.

Frank began working freelance and provided illustrations for Anvil, a Church of England magazine. Here he met Reverend Marcus Morris who hated the cheap and nasty American comics and had an idea to create a comic for boys. Instead of showing horror the comic promoted wholesome Christian values.

Frank was overflowing with ideas and produced many comic strips. Morris slogged up and down Fleet Street trying to find a publisher but to no avail. However in 1949 Hulton Press (who published Picture Post) were impressed and told the pair, “Do not approach any other publisher." So, early in 1950 the Eagle Comic started and Frank was the writer and illustrator of the comic’s signature strip Dan Dare. The Eagle, and the Dan Dare strip went on to be a phenomenal success.

Frank moved the family to a large white house set in a leafy road near Epsom Downs. They lived upstairs while downstairs became the Dan Dare studio. The contrast with life in the North was mildly shocking but everyone soon adapted. The studio made Frank’s work flourish drastically: detail became more thorough, creativity blossoms and weapons, rocket ships and cities were modelled. An entire ceiling was removed from one room so that one of the team could take photos from the required perspective angles. Frank would often work all night sustained by coffee and Rennie tablets.

Aged 52 Frank was diagnosed with throat cancer. He had smoked just about all his life and if he was awake it was likely he had a pipe clamped between his teeth. He thought he was going to die soon and drew out an insurance policy and fulfilled a long time ambition to travel to Russia. He didn’t die but wasn’t well enough to continue as before. He took a part-time job as a graphics technician at Ewell Technical College, embarked on an Open University degree, and for a period, taught life drawing at Epsom School of Art.

Aged 64 Frank, struggling with the ailments of throat cancer, suffered a stroke and lost his speech and the use of his right hand - his drawing hand. Slowly his speech returned but the use of his hand didn’t. Confined to a chair at home he continued with his Open University studies hoping to gain an MA but aged 66 he died of a heart attack. His widow moved from Bayford Lodge to a small flat nearby and the big house/studio sold off. Sadly piles of photographs were burned and mountains of studio materials piled into a skip and dumped.

Dan Dare still lives on. Professor Steven Hawking was a fervent Eagle reader as a child and when asked what influence Dan Dare had had on him he replied, "It’s why am I in cosmology"