Dan Dare was distinguished by its long, complex storylines, snappy dialogue and meticulously illustrated comic-strip artwork by Hampson and other artists, including Harold Johns, Don Harley, Bruce Cornwell, Greta Tomlinson, Frank Bellamy, and Keith Watson.

It was written by Peter Milligan and is a completely new interpretation of Dan Dare, who is struggling to adapt to a peaceful life after the Mekon was defeated.

The stories were set mostly on planets of the Solar System presumed to have extraterrestrial life and alien inhabitants, common in science fiction before space probes of the 1960s proved the most likely worlds were lifeless.

Principal art was taken over by new chief assistant Don Harley, who completed the story and its successor, "Prisoners of Space" (the only series to feature extensive work by an artist outside the studio, finishes being provided by Desmond Walduck).

The conflict caused Hampson to leave the strip in 1959, in the middle of a long plot that saw Dan searching an alien planet for his long-lost father.

In 1963, Keith Watson and writer David Motton were allowed to introduce a new supporting cast, who remained with the series throughout the rest of its run: Spacecraft of various designs were presented as the product of inhabitants of various planets.

There were land and air vehicles – in the first stories, cars conform to styling of the time, while some flying machines were based on the design of helicopters of the mid-twentieth century.

Over the remaining years the strip varied in format and quality, eventually returning to the front page in colour, until it ended in 1967 with Dan retiring to become Space Fleet controller.

[8] The first installment, scripted by Ken Armstrong and Pat Mills, had the character revived from suspended animation after two hundred years to find himself in a different world.

Written by Kelvin Gosnell and then Steve Moore, the strip was initially illustrated by Massimo Belardinelli, whose Dare owed nothing to the original apart from the wavy eyebrows.

Now penned by Tom Tully but still drawn by Dave Gibbons, this re-imagining of Dare casts him almost as a superhero with a colourful tight-fitting uniform provided by the Mekon.

On his return to Earth, he and his Treen companion Sondar find themselves branded traitors and found guilty of helping the Mekon to steal the Crystal.

The initial artist was Gerry Embleton, who drew Dan to resemble the original exactly, but he was quickly replaced by Ian Kennedy, who gave the hero a younger look and blond hair.

It opened with a flashback to the unseen final defeat of the Mekon by the original Dan, after which he was sealed inside an artificial asteroid and exiled into space.

His new cast included Lt Helen Scott, leader of the Earth Resistance, and Valdon, a renegade Treen similar to the earlier Sondar.

It presented bleak and cynical characters and was a not-too-subtle satire of 1980s British politics, from the perspective of the defeated left wing of the Labour Party.

Spacefleet had been privatised, the Treens were subjected to racist abuse in urban ghettos, Digby was unemployed, Professor Peabody committed suicide, and Dare's mentor Sir Hubert Guest betrayed Dare to the Mekon and his quisling British Prime Minister, Gloria Monday (whose appearance and demeanour appear modelled on Margaret Thatcher).

Peabody is the Home Secretary to a prime minister modelled on Tony Blair, who has sold Earth's defence out to The Mekon out of fear of overwhelming odds.

Launched in October 2003, Spaceship Away magazine was originally created in order to get "The Phoenix Mission" (a 1950s style story by Rod Barzilay with art by Keith Watson and Don Harley) into publication, with the agreement of the Dan Dare Corporation.

Response was good enough to warrant the magazine's continuation following that strip's conclusion, initially with "Green Nemesis" (again by Barzilay and Don Harley, with later chapters drawn by David Pugh and Tim Booth).

Despite a fairly small circulation (it is available only via mail order, through its own website, or in a select few comic shops), Spaceship Away continues to appear three times a year as of 2022.

The cast included Mick Ford (Col. Dan Dare), Donald Gee (Digby), Richard Pearce (the Mekon), Terence Alexander (Sir Hubert Guest), Zelah Clarke (Prof. Peabody), William Roberts (Hank Hogan), Sean Barrett (Pierre Lafayette), John Moffatt (Kalon), Shirley Dixon (Mrs. Digby), Ben Onwukwe (Volstar), David Goudge (Sondar), Margaret Courtenay (Aunt Anastasia), Brian Miller (Urtag), David King (Dapon).

The lead writers were Richard Kurti and Bev Doyle, with Andrew Mark Sewell as director and Simon Moorhead as producer; John Freeman served as creative consultant.

In 2002, Dan Dare: Pilot of the Future became a computer-generated TV series produced first by Netter Digital then by Foundation Imaging, running to twenty-six 22-minute episodes.

In 2010, Variety announced that Warner Bros. was planning to produce a Dan Dare movie starring Sam Worthington in the title role.

All three were based on the 1950s strip rather than the contemporary comics: The protagonist human character from the Gaiares science fiction space shooter starfighter combat game released in Japan in 1990 was changed from an original character called Dan Diaz to the legendary sci-fi hero Dan Dare in the English translated western version.

One example is Wing Commander Leyton in British Summertime by Paul Cornell, which juxtaposes the utopian future portrayed in the original comics with the Britain of today.

A porcine pastiche, Ham Dare: Pig of the Future, written by Lew Stringer and with art by Malcolm Douglas, appeared in Oink!

In Jonathan Hickman's Avengers series, the character Smasher's secret identity is astronomer Isabel 'Izzy' Dare whose dying elderly grandfather alludes to Izzy as inheriting a destiny from him.

The script for the episode "The Empty Child" in which Captain Jack makes his first appearance describes him as having "the jawline of Dan Dare, the smile of a bastard".