Eaglecon 80 - part 10

It occurs to me that I've not covered anything to do with the very first Eagle comic convention - Eaglecon 80. A recent sale by ace ebay seller phil-comics (here) of one of the awards from Eaglecon 80 (see below) for £155 has inspired me to start looking images.

I looked at some initial images here

We had images about what was on display here

images of the original art that was on display here

the banquet dinner here

from the panels here

Frank Hampson here

Interviews being held here

Keith Watson here

More Keith here

All these images are from the late, great Eagle & Dan Dare historian Adrian Perkins.

And now we have

This photo is entitled 'at our first planning meeting' - the chap in the middle is artist Keith Page and I think it's Alan Vince on the left

Charles Evans-Gunther (left); Alan Whitehead (right). Both well-known Eagle fans back in the day.

Keith Watson & Frank Hampson

Greta Tomlinson - Dan Dare artist (and model for Professor Peabody)

Keith Page & Rod 'Spaceship Away' Barzilay

Keith Page again - showing artwork

Peter Hampson

Pip Warwick (left) showing one of his Mekon sculptures to ??

new Dan Dare reference material unearthed - part 2 (of 2)

Following on from yesterday's Dan Dare strip roughs, here are 3 more...

you can link to the precise page on the Frank Hampson website here

All images are (c) Peter Hampson

new Dan Dare reference material unearthed - part 1 (of 2)

Over on the Frank Hampson artwork website (here), dedicated to the work of his late father, Peter Hampson has just added some recently discovered reference material prepared by his father. As Peter says...
These concept sketches were given to Pip Warwick (the sculptor who created the ceramic Mekon heads) by my father in the 1970's, and came to light only recently. His wife, Catherine, has kindly agreed to allow me to reproduce them here on the website.

They refer to various bits of hardware for use in Reign of the Robots. The first three sheets were, I think, produced by Eric Eden. I'm not sure about the last three - they seem to be by a different hand.

The drawings demonstrate yet again the extraordinary level of thought and care that went into the production of the strip. None of these items were major parts of the story. As far as I'm aware, despite the time and trouble it must have taken to create Sondar's 'tent', it only made it into a couple of frames, and then only as background. (The cab on the sketch for the '20 tonner' in the third sheet bears a remarkable resemblance to the cab on a Class 44 diesel locomotive!)

Fascinating though the drawings are, some of the annotations are even more interesting. For example, Digby's menu, and the mention of the container beneath the 'couch' in the tent as the repository for Alan Stranks' unknown future requirements - evidence of something which rarely gets a mention in descriptions of life in the studio - the sense of fun which went side by side with all the hard work.

A note of interest - The author and photograper John Wade is currently putting together a book on 1950's Sci Fi, 'The Golden Age of Science Fiction', which is scheduled for publication in Autumn 2018. He will be including some of these images in his book, together with others relevant to the Dan Dare story.

All material is (c) Peter Hampson

the Mekon is for sale!

News from Peter Hampson's website (maintained in honour of his artist father, Frank Hampson) is that a number of Mekon sculptures created by the late (fine) artist Pip Warwick have been inherited by ceramicist Catherine Warwick, her website is here.

More details can be found on Peter's website (here), as well as the images there are notes on the extraordinary technical complexity of creating these sculptures (5,000 man-hours; 113 inter-locking parts; £10,000 of [mid-1970s] development money).

Here are some of the amazing images from the site

All images are (c) Peter Hampson are used purely for publicity purposes.

Peter Hampson talks Frank Hampson - Saturday 8th October 6-7pm

Peter Hampson talks Frank Hampson - Saturday 8th October 6-7pm

Just a quick reminder about this talk....


A quick shout-out for a talk in October at The Lightbox gallery in Woking who are hosting a fundraising chat between Frank Hampson's son, Peter Hampson, and Paul Gravett


Link to buy tickets is here:
http://www.thelightbox.org.uk/Event/fundraising-talk-by-gum-dan-dare-in-conversation-with-peter-hampson


I've just bought a ticket and it was pretty easy.


The talk is part of their current exhibition about the story of British comics so far (co-curated by Paul Gravett)
http://www.thelightbox.org.uk/the-story-of-british-comics-so-far-cor-by-gum-zarjaz-2016


The talk will be on the say day as the Comica Comikett
http://comiket.comica.london/
I've always been intrigued by this so will be hoping to go to this as well as the talk.


The comikett finishes at 5pm and the talk starts at 6pm, so plenty of time to pop into the exhibition as well!


There's a review of the exhibition here
http://downthetubes.net/?p=33175


And here's Peter's website devoted to his father's artwork
http://www.frankhampsonartwork.co.uk/