Well my Echo tells me that there's only 44 days to Christmas and as if to emphasise this, my first Xmas issue for this year has just come through the post:

The Autumn edition of Spaceship Away (Part 43).

I loved the cover.

bought this years Beano xmas special last week. spaceship away looks ok but not t £8.50 is it all conic strips inside besides dan dare or is it more of a magazine.i think its criminal 2000ad or someone doesn't publish a weekly dan dare strip.or maybe a weekly Dan Dare comic with other sci fi strips.

Spaceship Away is mostly comic strips, with a few features to break them up. It's expensive because of the slick production values and the low print run, which means the unit cost is higher than if it had a print run of tens of thousands.

2000AD don't publish Dan Dare as it's owned by the Dan Dare Corporation, not them, but Titan currently have the licence to publish a monthly Dan Dare comic. Issue 2 came out last week.

Dan Dare was Pilot of the Future in 1950. He must surely be dead by now.

But his stories were set around the turn of the century and later. Not forgetting the 10-year sleep he & the gang took going to Cryptos. So he definitely got plenty of fight left in him.

...On the other hand, in the revived Eagle Pat Mills revealed that the original Dan had actually been a WW2 spitfire pilot who'd been presumed dead when he was accidentally transported into the future. The Mekon even found his gravestone dated 1950!

I personally liked that origin story and thought it fitted well into the Dan Dare mythos. It also explains why he had the attitude & mannerisms of a 1940/50s pilot.

What it doesn't explain was why everyone else in Spacefleet had a similar outlook. Perhaps the time trip created a virus that affected people's behaviour?

Maybe they just couldn't resist putting on a silly 'I say old chaps' accent whenever Dan was around and the poor sap never realized that they were mocking him - even when Al Digby joined in with his famous working class 'Ee by gum' routine!

LOL! Brilliant explanation, Phil.

I pre-ordered this years Christmas issue of Beano from NewsStand . I should get that by Christmas (more likely by New Year)

I have also pre-ordered Faceache - the first 100 scrunges from Amazon. Also hope to get that by Christmas Eve.

I bought the Christmas copy of VIZ from my local WHSmiths yesterday.

Last weekend, the Christmas Beano came through the post.

The Christmas prog of 2000AD came through the post on Saturday. As Tharg would say: Zarjaz (especially the inside story about Starlord - the editor rather than the comic).

Got the following for my Christmas Comic Collection.

Good man!