Xena and Buffy are truly iconic characters. Though its now 20 years since they both first burst onto our screens they still remain popular to this day.

Both still have very active and devoted fandoms, whilst there have been more essays written about Buffy than any other tv series. Xena meanwhile at one point even had a planet named after her. It was also recently announced that Xena would be remade by NBC, which will hopefully bring a whole new generation of fans to the warrior princess.

In spite of the two characters popularity however one thing I have noticed but which never really seems to get commented on that much is the fact that in many ways Xena and Buffy are actually somewhat comparable to two previous heroes Batman and Spider-Man.

There is a definite comic book vibe to Buffy and Xena which is hardly surprising considering that the people who worked on them later went on to produce multi million dollar comic book movies such as Joss Whedon and Sam Raimi.

There were undoubtedly many comic book and non comic book influences on the Warrior Princess and the Vampire Slayer, but personally looking back on them I think you can compare them to Batman and Spider-Man more than any other individual hero and in this article I am going to explore the similarities between all 4 characters.

Xena and Batman

Xena is comparable to the caped crusader in quite a number of ways. I am certainly not saying that she is derivative of Batman in any way as a character, but when you look at her closely you can see how she is a similar character.

Xena and Batman are both heroes without any super powers. They have “many skills” but ultimately no actual powers. Despite this the two are anything but vulnerable. In fact they are almost the definition of the hero who can do everything and who has a terrifying, imposing image to their enemies.

No one ever underestimates the Batman or Xena. They’re known in both cases despite being basically a normal human for being someone that you wouldn’t want to mess with in a world of gods, monsters and super beings.

Both also have similar darker, brooding personalities too and are quite quiet, stoic heroes overall.

They also at the same time have similar foils to one another. Hercules is in many ways Superman to Xena’s Batman. He is the super powered hero who in contrast to the dark, mysterious more human hero is beloved by everyone and is a straight down the middle, completely decent guy. He also battles more supernatural, all powerful foes whilst Xena and Batman tend to fight evil human beings instead.

Xena and Hercules like Batman and Superman despite having very different methods to each other have immense respect for each other and even occasionally  work together. Generally speaking however they steer clear of other.

Gabrielle meanwhile is very much a Robin to her Batman. She is young, more talky, upbeat, eager for adventure protege of Xena. She and Xena have a gay subtext like Batman and Robin, though its more pronounced in Xena and Gabrielle’s case.

Also Xena’s nemesis Callisto is essentially a female Joker. She is a twisted psychopath that derives a sick, perverse pleasure from killing people.

She is in contrast to Xena who is a very quiet, cold, dour, even humourless hero, a loud, flamboyant, giggling, over the top, crazy, hysterical, child like, grinning maniac.

Callisto is also obsessed with Xena too. Unlike other villains who merely view the hero as an irritation in their plans, Callisto’s entire existence revolves around Xena to the point where when she believes that she has made her pay she no longer cares about anything any more. It is also hinted that Callisto’s obsession with her archenemy may run so deep that she has a sick twisted, sexual obsession with her too.

Finally Callisto was also created by Xena. When she was a warlord she burned Callisto’s village to the ground. It actually was an accident as one of her men created a forest fire by mistake that spread to the village. Still it as because of her army that Callisto’s village was burned to the ground and Callisto’s family died in agony in the fire. Callisto naturally was driven completely insane by this and thus became a monster.

All of these things are of course applicable to Batman and the Joker. The Joker is a psychotic, sadistic monster that enjoys torturing and killing people and in contrast to the more reserved Batman has a cackling, man child personality. The Joker it has also been hinted by certain writers over the years has a sexual obsession with Batman. And finally the Joker was also created by Batman. Originally the Joker was just a run of the mill crook who during a robbery was knocked into a vat of chemicals which bleached his skin chalk white, dyed his hair bright green, and twisted his mouth into a hideous grin. This of course drove the crook completely insane resulting in the birth of the Joker.

Finally Xena’s other big enemy Ares is in many ways like a male Catwoman. Like Catwoman he is more of an anti hero. There are stories where he is an enemy to Xena like Catwoman, but neither of them ever go as far as the Joker or Callisto and in many stories the two are actually allies to Xena and Batman. Both Ares and Catwoman are in love with the main heroes and also regularly try and seduce them and even lure them to their side. Its obvious that Batman and Xena are in some ways in love with them too, but they ultimately never completely give in.

As you can see whilst Xena was her own character the basic template of her and many of her supporting characters is comparable to Batman.

I think that really Xena was just a reversal of Batman. In Batman you have the male hero with no powers who has a boomerang weapon that he throws with a cackling, psychotic male archenemy and a seductive female anti hero enemy that wants to lure him to her side.

In Xena you have a female hero with no powers and a boomerang weapon with a cackling psychotic female archenemy and a seductive male anti hero enemy that wants to lure her to his side.

Its a total reversal of gender roles.

Buffy and Spider-Man

Over the years Buffy has been compared to many other heroes, but surprisingly Spider-Man has never really been among them at least not that often.

The main influence on Buffy as a character according to Joss Whedon was Kitty Pryde a member of the X-Men who like Buffy Summers was an ordinary teenage girl thrust into an unbelievable situation.

Whilst I am not doubting that Kitty was a big influence on Buffy I actually think that Joss may have been unconciously inspired by Spider-Man more. Also whether he was inspired intentionally by Kitty then I think that Buffy bares more of a resemblance to Spider-Man as a hero than to Kitty.

Buffy and Spider-Man in contrast to Xena and Batman actually have super powers yet ironically they are much more vulnerable.

The image we have of Batman, and Xena even just in our heads is probably one of a big intimidating character with a fierce expression on their face literally towering over their enemies who are terrified of them.

Spider-Man and Buffy in contrast we tend to imagine as more slight heroes, whose enemies are towering over them. We also I think tend to see images of them in more vulnerable positions like Buffy curled up in a ball in the corner crying after Angel goes bad or Spider-Man wailing after any number of tragedies in his life.

That was what made both Buffy and Spider-Man stand out however from their contemporaries. In the early 60’s there were no comic book heroes like Spider-Man. He was a teenager, normally only sidekicks like Robin were teenagers. He was someone who didn’t always win. He watched the love of his life get tossed off a bridge, he got the shit kicked him of him by his enemies. And his personal life was a mess. He had girl troubles like anyone else, he struggled to pay rent and he made huge mistakes all the time.

He was a hero that people could relate to unlike the larger than life Batman and Superman. He was flawed, dealt with everyday problems and indeed many stories would feature more of a soap opera element which was unheard of back then.

Buffy similarly I feel did the same thing for female heroes. Its wrong when people act as though Buffy was the first major female hero. There are leading roles for women in 60’s productions such as The Avengers with Emma Peel. But again where Buffy was different to say Xena, Ripley or Charlie’s Angel’s as that she was the first leading female hero to deal with everyday problems, to have a strong soap opera element to her stories. Like Spider-Man she was someone who fucked up lots of times, who lost people like Jenny Calender, who even led her oldest friend Xander into a place where he got his eye torn out and yes got the absolute shit kicked out of her by some of her more powerful enemies. She was even killed by one of them on one occasion. She was someone who also despite being a superhero dealt with problems like fitting in at school, paying rent, looking after her little sister Dawn Summers, her mother being ill of a brain tumor etc.

I think that pre Buffy most female heroes were made out to be seemingly indestructable much like male heroes had been in the 50’s and 60’s. I think the reason for this was obviously because as female heroes were so much rarer any time we saw one the writers wanted to get them as far away from being a vulnerable character dependant on a man as much as they possibly could.

Its understandable of course, but ultimately much like Spidey did for male heroes I think Buffy brought a real sense of vulnerabality and indeed humanity to female heroes. Both Buffy and Spider-Man were heroes who were vulnerable yet incredibly strong at the same time. Ironically they seemed more heroic at times than the likes of Xena or Batman due to their failures as they had to cope with things we could never imagine these other heroes dealing with.

Both Buffy and Spider-Man also I feel reversed images that had previously been more negative. In Spider-Man’s case teenagers were often seen as just the sidekicks, whilst at the same Peter Parker was a total nerd, yet still a hero. Buffy meanwhile was obviously a reversal of the little blonde girl in monster movies who is killed by a monster or a villain. Ironically Sarah Michelle Gellar would go on to play two such roles in I Know What You Did Last Summer and Scream 2.

Many stories in Buffy also I think are somewhat similar to old Spider-Man stories. Angel becoming Angelus is somewhat similar to Harry Osborne Peter Parker’s best friend becoming the new Green Goblin. Both see someone who has an incredibly close relationship to the hero become their greatest enemy and employ sadistic mind games against them such as Angelus murdering Jenny, her mentor Giles’s lover and then placing her corpse in his bed, or Harry making Parker believe that his parents survived their plane crash by sending two robotic duplicates of them to him.

Its so disturbing when we see Angelus laugh as Buffy breaks down after hearing that Jenny has died or when we see Harry taunt Parker after he discovers that his parents are dead after all.

At the same time I also feel that Faith Buffy’s archenemy is somewhat comparable to Venom.

Both Venom and Faith are more classical enemies to Buffy and Spider-Man. They can do anything they can, Venom can stick to walls, shoot webbing, whilst Faith is a slayer like Buffy.

However unlike most other classical archenemies like say Moriarty or The Master or even Callisto Faith and Venom don’t entirely abuse their power. Indeed they waver between not only good and evil but between being a sworn enemy and a close ally of Buffy and Spider-Man. Both Faith and Venom are people who can’t own up to their own mistakes and blame it all on Buffy and Spider-Man which is why they hate them, but eventually they both own up and end up becoming anti heroes, teaming up with their former enemies against bigger threats.

There is also a story where Spider-Man loses his powers and abilities and has to rescue his Aunt May from his enemies that have captured which is similar to an episode of Buffy called helpless where Buffy also loses her powers and has to rescue her mother from a Vampire that has captured her.

Finally the iconic episode where Buffy’s mother dies of a brain tumor is similar to an old Spider-Man comic where Aunt May dies of an illness (though this was later retconned)

Both are the type of problem we couldn’t really imagine Batman and Xena going through. Losing a loved one to a natural cause. Both are complete soap opera stories with the only supernatural/science fiction elements really being Buffy and Spider-Man themselves.

Overall I think its fair to say that if there is any real precursor to the Buffster in Marvel comics then its Spider-Man. Again this is not to say that Buffy was derivative of Spider-Man as a character, but I think that you can see definite similiarities in the characters and ultimately I think that they both serve a similar role in the impact they had on other heroes.

Conclusion

I think if this comparison can teach us anything its that its better to come up with original female characters. Buffy and Xena were two excellent characters who did serve a similar role to two previous male heroes. Ultimately however as they were their own characters they had their own identities.

If Xena had literally just been a female Batman, a remake of the character but with Bruce Wayne as a woman and Buffy had just similarly been a version of Spider-Man with Petra Parker then I don’t think it would have been as good.

As it was women got a chance to play those types of characters, but at the same time got characters who are now every bit as iconic as any male hero to represent them.

I think people should bare this in mind when it comes to the whole gender  blind casting debate. For instance those of you who want a female Doctor Who because you think it will give women better representation what would you rather have? A new female hero like the Doctor the same way that Xena was like Batman and Buffy was like Spider-Man, but who was her own character and thus an icon in her own right? Or a feminine version of a male hero like Shirley Holmes, a female version of Sherlock Holmes from a forgotten 80’s series.

You could easily create a female character that was like the Doctor. Indeed I think such a hero would stand out the way Buffy did from Xena. She would be non sexualized, use her brains instead of violence, and be somewhat more eccentric. But again she wouldn’t actually be the Doctor. And if she were a good enough character in her own right then she would be like Xena and Buffy.

Its something to think about in the whole gender blind casting debate I think.

The Reptilians as they have become known are a staple of both science fiction and conspiracy theories.

They are generally portrayed in popular culture as a race of humanoid creatures that evolved from reptiles rather than mammals. Either they will be aliens from another world or they will have left this world many years ago and now be returning to our world, or perhaps they will be living underground somewhere waiting for their chance to take over.

The Reptilians are also generally portrayed as thinking of humans as vermin at best and a food source at worst. They are also often shown to have a group of humans that they have enslaved and generally mistreat torture, eat, experiment on too.

They will also often be shown to be able to infiltrate our society through shape shifting or some clever form of disguise, which is probably why they have become such a favourite of conspiracy theorists as there is often a real sense of “they walk among us” in stories about the Reptilians.

Some stories about the reptilians however may portray them as more sympathetic creatures with a culture different to ours, but no more evil or good.

In this article I will look at how the Reptilians have evolved over the years across many different mediums as well as the real life conspiracy theories about such creatures.

In The Beginning: The Treens

The Treens are possibly the first ever example of the reptilians from a science fiction perspective in popular culture.

Prior to the Treens the only known examples of reptilian humanoids were in the works of fantasy authors like HP Lovecraft. It is believed that the first ever story to feature the Reptilians was the story “The Shadow Kingdom” published in 1929. It was written by Conan the Barbarian creator Robert E Howard. The villains in this story are said to be serpent men who have the ability to take on human form through magic.

This classic adventure obviously laid down the template for many other stories that utilized the idea of lizard men living among us in secret, but where it was different to later works like V and modern conspiracy theories was that it was more of a fantasy story, with the serpent men using magic to look like us and being more comparable to creatures like Dragons.

The Treens mark the first time such creatures were really brought into a sci fi environment and depicted as a race that could theoritcally evolve rather than a total fantasy beast like a Dragon or a Vampire.

The Treens were the main antagonists of the British sci fi comic Dan Dare.

They originally came from Venus and had evolved on the other side of planet away from their human like neighbours the Therons. The Treens evolved from Reptiles and lived among gigantic Dinosaur like creatures.

They were shown to be highly aggressive and vicious and primitive compared to the Therons. When their neighbours first came to them in peace, the Treens attacked the Therons and slaughtered them, taking the Therons technology for themselves, they cannibalised it and became highly advanced creatures. They later tried to conquer earth but the Therons intervened, though Atlantis was destroyed as a result.

The Treens would later create a leader called the Mekon who was all brain to lead them and would try and conquer earth and other worlds many times.

History of the Treens.

The Treens embody many of the tropes that the reptilians would have in subsequent works.

They are depicted as being evil, vicious monsters in contrast to the perfect human society that Dan came from, and also the more benevolent race of human like aliens the Therons who aided mankind against the Treens.

The Treens were also shown to have a race of human slaves. The Atlantines. These were humans that they abducted during their first visit to earth. They generally mistreat the Atlantines and use them for experiments or as an expendable workforce.

Their appearance even is something of a template for subsequent Reptilian races. They look like us except they have scaly skin and no hair and somewhat longer faces.

As you can see the classic reptillian look really comes from them.

The Treens not only brought the idea of the reptilian into a science fiction environment, but also really cemented the idea of them as total monsters too and thus for a long while after the Treens, the Reptilians would generally be go to guys for a villain in sci fi.

We’re not so different you and I: The Gorn

This episode of Star Trek the Original Series called Arena depicted Captain Kirk in battle with a giant lizard man named a Gorn.

The Gorn slaughtered an entire Federation colony and a highly advanced almost god like alien decides to pit the captain of the Gorn’s ship against Kirk in order to sort out their differences.

This marked the first time that we had the Reptilians being presented as a race that deserved to exist just as much as we did.

Though the Gorn are the villains of the piece they are not just evil, warlike creatures like the Treens.

They attack the Federation only because the Federation had unknowingly taken one of their colonies from them and at the end the alien does have some sympathy for the Gorn telling Kirk that one day the two races may be able to live in peace.

Who says the Reptilians would be our enemies?

They come from here/ The Silurians

In the 1970 Doctor Who adventure “Doctor Who and the Silurians” we are introduced to the titular monsters that are a race of reptilian humanoids who lived on the earth millions of years before man during the time of the Dinosaurs. When a disaster threatened to wipe out all life on the planet the Silurians hid underground in suspended animation for millions of years. When they awaken they are horrified to see that mankind has taken over and plan to exterminate the apes and reclaim their planet.

Much like the Gorn the Silurians were presented in a more sympathetic light. They had a more advanced culture than ours, and they simply wanted to reclaim their own planet. There are also shown to be many Silurians who wish to help humanity and even live in peace with us, with one Silurian in the revival Madame Vastra actually marrying a human female.

However again much like the Gorn the Silurians are generally portrayed as villains when they appear.

What really helped them to stand out from previous Reptilians was the way that they along with their aquatic cousins the Sea Devils were here first. Thus in a nice twist the reptilians had more of a genuine claim to this planet than we did. Once again this would become a theme in subsequent stories involving the reptilians.

This also marked the first time the Reptilians were actually linked to prehistoric earth reptiles.

They Walk Among Us: The Zygons

The Zygons were alien reptiles that managed to infiltrate our society through shapeshifting. They were extremely hostile and sought to exterminate humanity.

Though they only appeared in one story they nevertheless became among the most iconic monsters in the shows history. They are even the favourite monsters of Tenth Doctor actor David Tennant. The Zygons mark possibly the first Reptilians who change shape and actually disguise themselves as humans and even politicians and figures of authority. This would obviously be reflected not only in later stories about the Reptilians but also in actual conspiracy theories about them too.

The Zygons would return in the revival a few times, including in the 50th anniversary story.

Their latest appearance in the the two parter The Zygon Invasion/The Zygon Inversion established that there were several million Zygons living among us disguised as humans.  However in quite a nice inversion (no pun intended) of this old trope these Zygons are peaceful creatures who genuinely wish to live in harmony with us, with one of their number Bonnie now working at UNIT to help protect mankind from other threats.

Cutest Reptilian (whichever one it is) ever!

To Serve Man: Visitors

Without doubt the most iconic Reptilians. Though many of the tropes and characteristics associated with the Visitors in this series had appeared in previous works, this really brought them to the fore like nothing before it.

I think part of that was down to the fact that this was the first series to actually focus on the idea of reptillian aliens. Before they had only been guest stars. Even in Dan Dare whilst the Treens were the most recurring enemies of the Pilot of the Future, he still faced plenty of other monsters and villains. With V however the focus was entirely on the Visitors and their plans for us.

The Visitors came from a far away galaxy and came disguised as human beings. They were not shape shifters like the Zygons, instead they wore fake human skins. They claimed to want to help us, but secretly they wished to harvest mankind and all other mammal species on earth as a food source. They enjoy eating little furry mammals alive and guzzle human blood down by the barrel.

The Visitors would go on to inspire dozens of other similar creatures in genre series.

The Slitheen in Doctor Who were inspired by the Visitors. They too are large reptile men who hide under human skins, taken from people that they flay alive!

They also inspired the Leviathans from Supernatural. Though the Leviathans are a non science fiction example. They are still basically the same idea. A race of reptile creatures that disguise themselves as humans and seek to eat us.

A Visitor from the remake of V top, and a Leviathan from Supernatural.

The Visitors also inspired the Martians in the television sequel to the 1950’s War of the Worlds adaptation who similarly hid in human bodies and tore their victims apart.

In addition to inspiring other works of fiction about similar Reptilian beasts, V’s popularity also helped to give way to many conspiracy creatures that there were reptile men living among us in secret and planning to eat us! Its certainly after V that these conspiracy theories become much more numerous and well publicised.

The Victims: The Narn

Babylon 5, one of the greatest and most accomplished science fiction series ever made managed to come up with a really fresh and interesting take on the Reptilian idea.

Here the more Reptilian race, the Narn were the victims. Throughout Babylon 5 they are persecuted by the human like Centauri.

Prior to the start of the series the Centauri had conquered and ruled the Narn for many years. The Narn had finally managed to drive them off, but now seek revenge by exterminating the Centauri completely and utterly.

At the start of the series we are led to believe that the Narn are going to be the villains. The Centauri seem like old washed up has been’s whilst the Narn are in comparison the upstarts hungry for vengeance. As time goes on however the Narn end up biting off more than they can chew and the Centauri launch an attack against them with the aid of the Shadows and conquer them once again.

Though this second conquest of Narn by the Centauri was not as long, it was far more brutal. Their invasion of the planet alone is utterly horrific.

They conquered Narn using Mass Drivers, illegal weapons that actually managed to bring down asteroids onto the surface of the planet and shattered its cities and entire infrastructure to pieces. Billions of Narns were killed in this attack alone and N’Toth a Narn who witnessed the attack later described it as being as though the entire universe had turned against them!

The state of the Narn’s home planet after the Centauri’s attack. It was once a beautiful paradise and is now a desolate, ruined wasteland.

After the Centauri subjugate them they install laws that state that every time 1 Narn kills a Centauri, 500 Narn will be executed. They also round them up into ghetto’s and death camps and experiment on them to try and remove aggression from the Narn race. 100’s of Millions more Narn die in these experiments and whole communities are completely wiped out.

Its just such a wonderful inversion of the usual humans vs Reptilians idea. We had of course seen more sympathetic Reptilian characters like the Silurians and the Gorn, but even they were not like the Narn.

The Gorn, the Silurians and even the Zygons from the latest series 9 two parter were all still the aggressors. They were also the ones in a position of power. We saw the Silurians capture and experiment on people, the Zygons vaporize them, the Gorn destroy a whole federation colony. Thus whilst we do get to see more complex characters like Bonnie the Zygon or Vastra ultimately these Reptilians are still shown to victimize humans.

With the Narn however we have Reptilians getting victimized by human like aliens and it just looks so odd.  To cheer on the reptilian character helping to free his people from the oppressive human aliens was a great new take on what was by this point a fairly well worn cliche.

In many ways I view the Narn/Centauri conflict as being a reversal of the Treen/Theron conflict from Dan Dare decades earlier. I am not saying it was intentional. It could have been for all I know, but regardless that’s how I view it.

The Treen/Theron conflict sees two races one called the Therons who greatly resemble us and even view us as their kin. The Treens meanwhile are reptiles who are naturally violent and aggressive. The Therons try to help the Treens using their advanced technology. The Treens seeing how peaceful they were took advantage of them and managed to steal their technology and drove them out. They then became a space faring race and conquered other planets, an subjecting their people to brutal treatment. The Treens later conquer both the earth and the Therons who both eventually manage to drive them off.

The Narn/Centauri conflict sees two races the Centauri who resemble us greatly and feel a certain kinship with us. Indeed when the Centauri first met humanity they believed that they were an offshoot of their race. The Narn meanwhile are reptile like creatures who are actually quite peaceful. The Centauri occupy them and enslave them and treat them brutally for decades. The Narn eventually banish them and steal their technology and use it to conquer other worlds. Eventually however the Centauri manage to conquer the Narn once again and treat them with the utmost brutality.

You can see how the two stories have very strong similarities yet are polar opposites to each other. Both have a race that is like us and feels a kinship with us meet a less advanced race that is reptilian. The reptilians then steal technology from the human aliens and use it to not only fight them, but conquer other races. The big difference is that the reptilians in Dan’s case were always a brutal and war like race, also the human race in Dan’s case were peaceful and only wished to help the Treens who took advantage of them. In Babylon 5’s case the reptilians were peaceful, whilst the human like race of aliens were aggressive and war like and they took advantage of the reptilians. Whilst both the Narns and the Treens do go on to become warlike races, the Treens manage to conquer the human like race that made them whilst the Narn’s are once again conquered themselves.

Thus in the Treen storyline we see the reptilians enslaving humans and human like aliens and rounding them up into death camps and treating them no better than animals and the humans like Dan make big rousing speeches about never giving up, whilst in Babylon 5 we have images of human like aliens rounding up aliens who look like orange Treens into death camps, treating them no better than animals and Reptilians like G’Kar going into big rousing speeches about how they will never give up.

The opposite of V, Dan Dare, the Silurians and the Zygon Invasion.

Also what’s interesting is how the humans themselves are portrayed in both cases. In Dan Dare the humans are the heroes who beat the evil, cowardly reptilians whilst in Babylon 5 though there are humans who help the Narn, most of them keep out of the conflict and allow the Narn to be butchered.

Thus to me whether its intentional or not the Narn/Centauri conflict is an excellent reversal of a classic sci fi story.

Of course even if it were intentional I am not saying that would make Babylon 5 derivative of Dan Dare. At the end of the day nothing is original, but whatever the case I think Babylon 5 gave us a great new twist on what was again by that point certainly a very old, well worn story.

The Narn I think led to more reptilian creatures being presented in a sympathetic way as it showed that they didn’t always have to be villains like the Treens or even misguided villains like the Silurians. They could be the out and out victims too that we root for over human looking aliens.

Its worth noting that the Narn are said to have some characteristics in common with mammals such as marsupials and feline’s too, but by and large they are shown to be reptilian in origin.

Babylon 5 also had another more sympathetic reptilian race of aliens called the Drazi who in contrast to say the Treens and the Silurians are shown to be particularly sympathetic towards human beings, being one of the few races brave enough to help them during the Earth/Mimbari war.

Babylon 5 with both the Narn and the Drazi completely reinvented the reptillian cliche and brought something new to the old staple.

Figures of Fun: Omicronians

Futurama gave us quite a funny send up of the Reptillian creature in sci fi with the Omicronians.

The Omicronians are large reptilian monsters who seem to have a love hate relationship with humanity. They adore human television and other forms of entertainment, yet they also have been shown to be willing to exterminate the entire human race over not being able to see the last episode of an earth show.

Like the Visitors in V, they are shown to enjoy eating human beings and drinking their blood, and they are also far more advanced than we are too like many reptilian races in science fiction.

At the same time one episode The Problem with Popplers actually casts them in a sympathetic role like the Narn or the Silurians. Here the humans unknowingly consume billions of their children which they believe to be a tasty snack. I felt this was quite a good parody of both V and Babylon 5.

Here we had the reptiles being eaten by the humans which was a nice little reversal of V, yet at the same time we have something that was actually horrific happen to the reptilians like in Babylon 5. However whilst Babylon 5 made us feel sympathy for the lizard men, here its presented in such a flippant humorous way you can’t help but laugh, such as when Zapp Brannigan is eating the Omicronians young whilst negotiating with them!

Overall the Omicronians were quite a nice affectionate send up of an old sci fi character that first begun with the Treens over 60 years ago.

Conspiracy Theories

Incredibly enough there are people who actually believe that the Reptilians exist.

There are stories from those who have been abducted by aliens who claim that their kidnappers were reptilian in nature.

By far and away the most famous Reptilian conspiracy theory however is that proposed by David Icke which states that there are several Reptilians between 5 and 12 feet tall from the Alpha Draconis system. He says they drink human blood and can shape shift and that most of our world leaders are actually Reptillians in disguise, including Queen Elizabeth the 1st and George W Bush! He also believes they have a secret base underground.

As you can see Icke’s Reptilians tend to bare a resmbelance to many famous Reptilians from popular culture such as the Zygons and the Visitors.

Icke’s theory for such a wild idea actually has a lot of support. It has supporters in up to 47 countries and a 2013 poll showed as many as 4 percent of registered voters in America believed it to be true!

I obviously don’t think its true, but I do find it an interesting theory in a crazy kind of a way anyway, but no I don’t watch V as a documentary I must admit.

Thank you for reading and here is an extensive list of Reptilians in popular culture from the website TV Tropes and Idioms

The Reptilians Tv Tropes

Marooned on Mercury is the first Dan Dare story I ever read. I had a very mild interest in Dare after reading about its influence on Doctor Who, but I had never bothered to track it down. My father however had heard me talk about it and so he decided to buy me this story for Christmas last year and I was instantly hooked and have been collecting as many Dare stories as I can since then.

I wouldn’t say this is one of the best Dan Dare adventures. Its a great solid little story, but its not quite the classic that say Voyage to Venus is. Still it will always have a special place in my heart for introducing me to the world of the pilot of the future.

Synopsis

After a successful attack on the Red Moon, Dan Dare and his friends are presumed dead by Earth officials, but they have actually instead crashed landed on Mercury.

Now trapped on the planet, little does Dan know his archenemy the Mekon is also hiding there along with his army of Treens and is aware of his presence having monitored Dan’s ship crash from his base. 

Dan and his team, Digby, Professor Peabody, Sondar, and an Atlantean named Urb are captured by strange creatures who take them to their base. Dan and his team naturally are unable to communicate with the bizarre Mercurians.

The Mercurians toss Dan and his team into a massive pit one by one where they are attacked by a massive creature below. The creature forces them to follow the Mercurians whom it serves. Professor Peabody deduces that the creatures are in fact friendly and simply want to help them survive on this planet. She says that their best chance is to try and communicate with them somehow. Dan reluctantly agrees though he is still worried about Digby who was taken somewhere else by them.

The team are taken into a massive city where they are reunited with Digby. Digby explains to them that the Mercurians are friendly and have found a way for them to breath in their base without helmets on but not on the surface of the planet. Digby also warns them that the Treens are on the planet. He hasn’t found a way to communicate with them, but one of them has found a Treen badge.

Meanwhile the Mekon who has been monitoring Dan says that he must be captured at once before he can find a way to communicate with the Mercurians. He also demands they be captured alive as they are somehow vital for his plans to bring about the destruction of earth.

The Mercurians soon seal Dan and his friends in a room as the Treens approach. Dan realizes to his horror that the Mercurians for some reason are working with the Treens. The Treens enter but are overpowered by Dan and his team. Professor Peabody uses one of the Treens gas masks for Digby whilst Dan manages to escape in the Treens own spaceship along with Sondar.

Unfortunately in his haste to leave Professor Peabody is left behind whilst Digby and Urb are captured and taken to the Mekon. On top of that Dan discovers that he has walked right into the Mekons trap. The ship is programmed to take him back to his base. Fortunately however Dan almost forces the forces the ship to crash. This shows the Mekon that he would he would rather die than be his prisoner and as the Mekon wants Dan alive he is forced to hand control of the ship over to Dan. 

Professor Peabody manages to escape from the Treens meanwhile but soon comes into contact with the Mercurians again. Fortunately she not only manages to reason with them but also manages to find a way to communicate with them too being able to learn their language which is musical in nature.

She soon contacts Dan and he returns to see her and the Mercurians. Peabody tells Dan that the Mercurians are not in league with the Treens after all and that they have tied up the Treens who came to capture Dan and his team.

Peabody says that the Mercurians don’t have a high opinion of either the Mekon who has been on their planet for a while or of the human race and had hoped that they would both finish each other off explaining why they betrayed the humans earlier. She also says that the Mekon has enslaved a good deal of their population and is forcing them to ship much of their resources to his army as part of a master plan.

Whilst Dan and Peabody are talking the captured Treens manage to slip away. Dan wishes to go after them to prevent the Treens from reclaiming the rocket, but Peabody warns him it would be suicide as the Treens would be waiting for him at the exit with their paralyser rays.

She says that they instead should try and convince the Mercurians to help them. Dan reluctantly agrees. Peabody is able to convince the Mercurians to take them to the Mekons base using the back door where they will be safe from the Treens.

Unfortunately the Mekon who has been monitoring them knows they are coming and plans to lay a trap to capture all of them. Digby and Urb however manage to catch the Mekon off guard and pull him off his chair and then smash his monitor. Though the Treens quickly overpower them their actions buy time for Dare and his team.

The Mekon orders that Digby and Urb be put to death, but secretly tells his Treen guards not to harm them as he needs them both alive for his plan. He simply wants them experience fear.

Dan, Peabody and Sondar with the aid of the Mercurians manage to overpower several Treens but unfortunately Peabody becomes separated from Dan and Sondar. Dan and Sondar meanwhile discover the survivor of the Kingfisher a ship that was believed to have been destroyed during man’s first exploration of Venus.

The survivor is in fact the captain of the ship himself D’Arcy. Though D’Arcy is seemingly in the employ of the Mekon he denies working for the monster. He claims that the Treens he and others are working for here are refugees from the Mekon who are planning to overthrow him and save both Venus and earth.

The Treens soon capture Sondar and Dan and D’Arcy does nothing to help them believing that they are working for the Mekon instead. Meanwhile Peabody along with a Mercurian is able to sneak her way into the base. 

The Mekon attempts to trick Dan. He wants for some reason Dan and the rest of the earth men he has tricked into working here such as D’Arcy to return to earth. He tries to convince Digby and Urb to return to Dan and tell him that the Mekon is not on this planet and that they should leave. He tells them that he simply wants them to leave so as not to disrupt his plan here. Digby refuses to suspecting there is some reason he wants them to leave and so the Mekon decides to kill them by ejecting them to the planets surface. He will then have the Treen, Mistag that the men that D’Arcy  is a part of believe is in charge tell Dan that Digby and Urm were killed by fleeing onto the planets surface when they tried to escape before the Treens could explain to them that they meant them no harm.

Dan demands to see their remains as proof and Mistag agrees to take him to them as proof. Just as he is doing this the Mekon’s men prepare to push both Digby and Urb out of an air lock to their deaths. Fortunately Peabody and a Mercurian find and rescue them and alert both Dan and the other men there including D’Arcy that they are being tricked by the Mekon.

The team then escape into space using one of the Mekon’s own ships. The Mekon manages to trap them in space, though he is unable to bring the ship down without killing them. The Mekon orders that they surrender but Dan naturally refuses. The Mekon attempts to starve Dare into surrender as there is no food on board the ship.

Dan still doesn’t cave and whilst on the ship he is able to monitor what is happening below on Mercury. Peabody works out that the Treens have enslaved most of the Mercurians and are forcing them to harvest their own food source for the Treens. She tells Dare that this food source is a poison to everyone else. Dare realizes that this is why the Mekon wants him to fly this back to earth. Somehow he has found a way to weaponize the poison in this fruit. A Treen ship would never get to earth without being spotted and captured, so the Mekon wanted earthmen to fly it back to earth in an earth ship. He knew that no member of space fleet could be forced to take it back to earth or be willing to either. Thus he was trying to trick D’Arcy and later Dare into flying his weapon to the planet. 

Later the Mekon sends a squad of Treens to Dare and his team with food only giving them it if Dare swears to serve him. Urb however is able to defeat the Treens with the aid of a Mercurian named Samson and capture their ship. Dan then connects the Treen ship to his own and uses it to break free from the Mekons trap and lands on the planet below. 

On the ground Dan, Digby and Samson go alone to infiltrate the Mekons base believing they stand a better chance if there is only a few of them. Unfortunately they are soon captured. They are taken to a Treen named Garlok one of their leading scientists who has found a way to harness the poison as a gas. The Mekon plans to release it on earth where it will be so lethal it will destroy all life on the planet to the smallest insect. He also intends to use it to exterminate the Therons and reclaim Venus.

The Mekon manages to capture the rest of Dan’s team and threatens to use his virus on them unless Dare agrees to fly the virus over earth. Fortunately Dan manages to outsmart the Mekon by grabbing a sample of the virus which he threatens to break unless the Mekon lets his friends go. With no other choice the Mekon reluctantly agrees for now.

Dan attempts to contact earth to get reinforcements to Mercury as well as warn them that the Mekon is here. The people of earth are surprised to see that Dan is still alive. Unfortunately whilst they are talking the Mekon manages to teleport himself to safety. With the threat no longer applying, as the Mekon isn’t there and the Treen guards are happy to die for their cause.

Dan and Sondar still escape, though they are forced to surrender the virus. Dan along with Samson, Peabody, Digby, Urb and the rest manage to escape to the Mercurians main city where they try and convince them to fight against the Treens. Dan manages to sway the peaceful, placid creatures to fight just as the Treens are preparing to massacre them. The Mercurians fight back and manage to catch the Treens off guard holding them off long enough for Dan to create an explosion which destroys most of the Treen ships and cripples their army. With their main invasion force destroyed by Dare, the Treens are utterly defeated.

The Mekon manages to escape however with several of his Treens and destroys his base before Dan can apprehend him before Dan can apprehend him, vowing to return.

With the Mekon defeated and the Mercurians saved, Dan and his team are returned home and hailed as heroes for having saved humanity again.

Review

Marooned on Mercury suffers from having a somewhat similar premise to Voyage to Venus the first Dan Dare story. Like Voyage to Venus this adventure revolves around Dan trying to convince a group of peaceful but ultimately useless aliens to fight against the Treens.

Having said that though I think its handled much better here. In Voyage to Venus Dan has a few words with Volstar leader of the Therons and then that’s it. Dan manages to convince him to change the way his people have lived for thousands of years in a matter of seconds. Here however even after a big rousing speech Dan fails to really convince the Mercurians and its only when the Treens attack that they realize the reality of the situation, that the Treens are not simply going to enslave them but slaughter them.

The story has many other strong points too that I think help it rise to the level of a minor classic. Its may be not quite on the level of Voyage to Venus, and it may in some ways be derivative of it, but there is a lot to enjoy here.

To start with Professor Peabody is excellent in this story. Its quite incredible really how progressive this character is for a 1952 comic.

She at no point is presented as being the most vulnerable member of the crew because she is a woman. She is cunning, resourceful and throughout this story she is arguably the most vital member of the crew above even Dare himself. Without her the crew would never have been able to communicate with the Mercurians and also without her Digby and Urb would have been killed and Dan most likely would have fallen for the Mekon’s scheme. There are so many moments where she has to survive on her own without any other characters and throughout pretty much all of the story her solutions are presented as being the correct ones above even Dare’s. Really whilst Dare might be the charismatic leader, Peabody is the brains behind the operation.

Of course at the same time Dan is not undermined as he is still the main character and is ultimately the one who brings down the Treens. I don’t think it’s ever a good idea to undermine the main character whether they are male or female simply because well if the focus is on the side character then its their story not the main hero’s.

Fortunately here they are able to give Peabody enough to do whilst still making Dan the hero.

I was very surprised the first time I read this story to see a female character like Peabody. I expected given when it was written almost the 40’s for  any women in it to be damsels in distress with massive breasts, fawning over the male hero and getting captured every two minutes by the villain.

To see Peabody, a non sexualized female character who was a scientist that the male hero respected as an equal, who the other characters came to for advice and who came up with the solutions to many of the problems in the story was very surprising. Even today sadly I think there are few female characters like that never mind in 1952.

The Treens are also used brilliantly here. They are shown to be manipulative, amoral and vicious. There are some very disturbing moments when we see them experimenting on the Mercurians. Garlok is a great Josef Mengele type of villain.

The Mekon however I don’t think is given quite as much to do here, but he still gets some wonderfully vicious lines of dialogue. I think the Mekon is shown to be more sadistic in this story as seen in his torture of Digby.

The Mercurians are brilliant creations. They are interesting idea, particularly in the odd way they communicate, but their design is really quite special. Sadly though none of their characters are really that well developed. Again in terms of characterisation they are something of a retread of the Therons.

The story is pretty straight forward though there are some nice twists along the way, such as finding out the members of the Kingfisher have survived. It also moves a long at a nice pace too. There’s never a dull moment.

Overall whilst I wouldn’t say this is one of the all time best Dan Dare stories, its still a great solid adventure overall. It was my first Dan Dare story and managed to captivate me despite some heavy continuity references to Voyage to Venus and the preceding story. Ultimately it was exciting enough to not only still keep my interest but draw me into the world of Dan Dare and make me want to find out more.

Notes/Trivia

• This strip ran from the 27th June in 1952 to the 20th February in 1953.
• This is the second appearance of the Mekon in Dan Dare.
• This is the third Dan Dare story.
• It is never explained how the Mekon survived his apparent death at the end of Voyage to Venus.

One of the classic Dan Dare strips, this marked the final part of the Man From Nowhere Trilogy and featured the Mekon finally conquering the earth. Widely considered to be one of the best Dan Dare stories, this adventure would go on to have an influence on many subsequent invasion earth stories.

Synopsis

Dan, Digby, Lex and Flamer return to earth after a 10 year absence. The space pilots had travelled half way across the universe to battle the evil Phants. After foiling the Phants invasion, Dan and the others are forced to go back into suspended animation for the long journey home. They take along a small alien animal named stripey who flamer had grown fond of back as a pet

When the travellers awake back in London 10 years later however, they discover that it is deserted. Dan and his friends explore the abandoned city, and are soon ambushed by robots who take them to their master, the evil Mekon. The Mekon reveals that in the years his enemies were away the Venusian tyrant managed to conquer the earth with the aid of his new robotic servants, which he has called his Elektrobots who can also fly.

The Mekon ruthlessly orders Stripey whom he views as useless put to death much to the horror of Dan and the others.

The Mekon then shows Dan that he has shipped many people off to work in labour camps on other planets in order to expand his empire beyond the solar system.

The conditions in these camps  are horrifying and many people are dying from being worked to death, starvation and the brutal treatment at the hands of the Treen guards. The Mekon is also carrying out experiments to see if his human slaves can survive the conditions on other planets many of which have resulted in the humans deaths.

Finally he is also using human beings to learn about their past. The Mekon feels that there are too many gaps in human history due to early myths and legends, and so he wants to find out how human’s survived in prehistoric times and how they did things like build ancient cities. The Mekon therefore forces a group of enslaved humans to rebuild the entire city of nineveh under the same conditions as years ago and drugs several humans in a way that causes them to lose all of their memories, and regress to the level of cavemen and then places them in jungles that resemble prehistoric earth, complete with cloned specimens of ancient animals to see how they would survived.

The Mekon then takes Dan to one of main labour camps where Dan sees several of his friends from Spacefleet HQ. Dan manages to briefly escape the Mekon and discovers that there is a small resistance group hiding in the camp made up of ex Spacefleet men. Unfortunately Dan is forced to return to the Mekon who threatens to kill his captive friends unless he comes back. 

The Mekon takes Dan and his friends back to Venus where he reveals that he has kept his old friends, Sir Hubert, Hank, Pierre, and Professor Peabody in suspended animation for 10 years.

The Mekon reveals that he has captured them in an effort to force Dan to obey his will. The Mekon wants Dan and his friends to serve him. He believes that if he kills them they will be martyrs, but if the great heroes are shown to serve him, then it will crush the last bit of hope and resistance left in humanity.

Digby, Lex and Flamer meanwhile are soon visited by the benevolent Treen Sondar who aided them in previous battles against the Mekon. It is revealed Sondar managed to infiltrate the Mekon’s army and that he was the Treen the Mekon ordered to murder Stripey. Sondar of course hid Stripey instead and now returns him unharmed to Flamer, Digby and Lex inside an old food cannister.

Dan refuses to help the Mekon, and all of his friends saying they would rather die than help a monster. The Mekon then attempts to torture Sir Hubert in order to break Dan by experimenting on him to remove his positive qualities from his brain.  Dan and the others manage to attack the Mekon however, catching him off guard and rescue Sir Hubert before the Mekon can experiment on his brain.

Dan comes close to capturing the Mekon but unfortunately the tyrant is able to summon his special guard the Selektrobots, larger, more powerful yellow robots. Dan is still able to make a deal with the Mekon to take him back to earth and though the Mekon agrees, he promises Dan he will rue the day he ever asked to return home.

Digby meanwhile seemingly driven mad by hunger agrees to serve the Mekon. Digby however is in fact lying and secretly plans to turn on the Mekon as soon as possible. Only Dan however is aware that Digby is acting and the others think he has turned traitor.

The Mekon subjects Digby to a mind test to see if he is being genuine. Digby manages to pass the test by focusing his thoughts entirely on food. The Mekon thus believes he is easy to control as he cares about nothing but food.

Digby later reveals to the others when they are alone that he is tricking the Mekon and is still loyal to humanity.

Flamer figures out that the Mekon is controlling the robots through a single speaker on his flying chair and plans to gain control of the speaker so he can turn the Mekons own robotic servants against him. Flame also sends Stripey to the resistance movement for his own safety.

Meanwhile Digby finds it difficult to keep pretending that he is working for the Mekon as he is forced to work his friends including Dan in the labour camp mercillesly.

Flamer later manages to sneak out to the resistance movement where he reveals to them his plan to overthrow the Mekon. With their aid he manages to escape back to the camp with equipment. Unfortunately Stripey follows him and in order to prevent him being noticed by the Mekon, Digby (who had earlier tricked the Mekon into taking the prisoners back to Venus) is forced to drop his ruse and attack the Mekon. The Mekon decides to take Digby back to Venus in order to find out why he tricked him.

On the way there Dan uses Rockets given to Flamer by the resistance movement to escape from the Mekon in one of his own ships. He along with Stripey who stows away on board his vessel, stumble upon The Sargasso Sea of Space, an area of space where every lost space ship eventually drifts to.  

Dan discovers two castaways on board one of the ships, Bob King and Angus McFarlane. Their ship was damaged during the Treen invasion of earth and though they managed to escape from the monsters, their ship eventually drifted to the Sargasso sea where they have been forced to survive on food from all the other derelicts. The two men help Dan repair his original space craft, the Anastasia, which drifted here before the invasion. Once she is repaired the three men set off for Venus to bring down the Mekon.

The Mekon contacts Dan and tells him to to surrender or else he will execute all of his friends. Whilst Dan tries to trick the Mekon, Stripey jumps in front of the camera. As soon as the Mekon sees the dog, he realizes that the Treen he ordered to kill Stripey betrayed him. Fortunately Sondar is able to rescue, Peapody, Hank, and Sir Hubert from being executed and together they escape to the Southern Hemisphere of Venus, the former land of the Therons. Though the Mekon has conquered the Therons just like on earth there are still resistance movements and Sondar plans to find one of them.

Dan meanwhile manages to trick the Mekon with Bob and Angus’s help. Bob and Angus fly the ship Dan stole from the Mekon and the Mekon being unaware of the Anastasia captures it thinking it is Dan,, whilst Dan really flies into the southern Hemisphere where he reunites with his friends. Later when the Mekon attempts to interrogate Digby, Angus, Bob, Flamer and Lex they manage to overpower him and Flamer takes control of the Mekon’s mike in his chair and uses it to give the Elektrobots orders that cannot be countermanded to turn on and destroy each other. 

On earth the Elektrobots begin to massacre each other. Without the aid of their robotic servants the Treens are overpowered by their human servants and many of them are captured whilst others flee.

Whist the Elektrobots are finished the Mekon summons his back up army the Selektrobots who are able to capture Digby, Flamer, Lex, Bob and Angus. The Mekon then sends an army of them to earth, planning to reconquer the planet.

Dan meanwhile has made contact with a group of Theron rebels, led by his old friend Volstar who have located the second communicator that the Mekon uses to control the Selektrobots.

Unfortunately the rocket they have built is not capable of releasing the war head from a safe distance and returning to land, as they lack the resources. Therefore it is a suicide mission. Dan nevertheless accepts and goes to destroy the Mekon’s second control device. Dare is successful in destroying it just as the Selektrobots arrive on the earth. The Mekon’s army is completely defeated and he is captured once again. Dan meanwhile is rescued from certain death by Sir Hubert in the Anastasia. Unfortunately the ship is almost destroyed by the Treens who on the last order of the Mekon try and kill Dan.

Dan is able to land the Anastasia in the lava belt of Venus where a gigantic monster known as the Silicon Mass dwells. Dan is able to escape with the aid of his friends and the Therons. He is also able to rescue his ship from being devoured by the Silicon mass using technology gleaned from the Treens. 

The Mekon however quickly manages to escape, though in his attempt he is seemingly consumed by the Silicon Mass. Dan believes he has seen the last of the monster, but Digby has a feeling he has escaped.

Following this earth begins to rebuild, with the Selektrobots now being reprogrammed to serve humanity. Dan and his friends are hailed as heroes and Spacefleet is re established.

Review

To modern readers The Reign of the Robots probably seems like just a straight forward, albeit extremely fun action adventure story. In truth its actually a very bold and ground breaking story.

The Treens in this story are clearly meant to represent the Nazi’s. Much like Terry Nation would later do with the Daleks, Frank Hampson is not subtle in the comparison’s he draws between the villains and the Third Reich.

We see the villains round people up into concentration camps and perform horrific experiments on them. There is also a disturbing scene where a Treen tells Dan that all of the weak and infirm of their own species were not allowed to live.

The Mekon and the Treens were always used as a metaphor for the Nazi regime but never quite as strongly as in this story.

The idea of basing a villain so heavily on the Nazi’s probably seems quite mundane and unoriginal nowadays, but back in the 1950’s barely a decade after the war had ended this would have seemed quite daring, especially in a comic aimed at children.

Much like The Dalek Invasion of Earth would do almost ten years later, this story plays on the paranoia people had during the war of a German invasion of England with the Treens much like the later Daleks even marching by familiar London landmarks.

However what’s great about the story is whilst it does present us with a horrifying what if the Nazi’s had won scenario, it also manages to be upbeat at the same time by showing us all the people of earth remain united against the Mekon. There are no Quizlings or backstabbers here. In contrast to other end of the world stories like say Day of the Dead that show us the last humans fighting amongst themselves, this is very much an optimistic story that shows us how the spirit of man will never be broken.

Whilst some of the World War 2 imagery may be lost on contemporary readers the story still holds up almost 6 decades later as it is still above else a gripping page turner.

It’s just wall to wall action and there really isn’t a dull moment. It also moves through so many different exciting locations and set pieces, from a deserted London to the Treens concentration camp, to the Mekons base on Venus to the Sargasso sea of space to the jungles of the Therons. These different and exotic set pieces give Hampson a chance to really spread his wings as an artist, more so than many other early other Dan Dare stories such as Marooned on Mercury, or the preceding story Rogue Planet which were set on the one planet.

The villains even without the Nazi parallels are still effective. The Mekon is a fascinating character the way he claims to have removed all of his emotions, yet paradoxically is still shown to be consumed with hatred for Dare. His reasons for keeping Dan alive, that he wants his help to rule the universe are lame, and I love the way we later find out that its actually just so he can prolong his agony and break his spirit.

My favourite moment though is when the Mekon is being held prisoner and they tell him to call off the last of his Treens and he instantly orders them to kill Dare no matter what. Its a brilliant twist that the Mekon who views himself as entirely logical is just so spiteful and petty.

Of all of the supporting characters Digby gets the best moments such as when we see him trick the Mekon. I love the way that he is able to trick the Mekon the greatest mind in the galaxy simply because he is such a simpleton, as he doesn’t have any deep thoughts for the Mekon to scan.

The Mekon and Digby’s interactions are lots of fun because you couldn’t get two more different characters. Digby is so sweet and lovable whilst the Mekon is just so vile, cowardly and sadistic. The Mekon probably calls Digby fat fool about 17 times in this story.

The only character who really doesn’t get anything to do in this adventure sadly is Professor Peabody. Its not so surprising that a female character wouldn’t be given much to do in something from the 50’s but still its a bit of a shame as normally Peabody was a more progressive character who was often given an important role in the story such as in Marooned on Mercury. In fact in just about every Dan Dare story I have read so far Peabody plays a crucial role in the story, but here she really just stands at the side which is a bit of a shame.

Still overall this is an excellent adventure that really is impossible to put down. I cant imagine how hard it would have been to have gone a week between strips back in the 50’s.

The Treen Invasion of Earth vs The Dalek Invasion of Earth

This story was a big influence on the Doctor Who serial the Dalek Invasion of Earth.

The Dalek Invasion of Earth sees the four main characters, the Doctor, Susan, Ian and Barbara arrive back on earth after a long absence only to discover London deserted. They later find out that in their absence the Daleks have invaded and conquered the earth and are ruling it with the aid of robotized human servants called the Robomen. The Daleks also have set up massive work camps across the world too.

Our heroes are able to defeat the Daleks by taking control of the speaker that they use to control the robomen and give them new orders to turn on the Daleks.

The story also uses the Daleks as a metaphor for the Nazi’s in very strong ways

As you can see there are quite a lot of strong similarities between the two stories. It could also be argued that the Selektrobots look somewhat similar to the Daleks too.

Rise of the Pepperpots!

Again I am not accusing the Dalek Invasion of Earth of being a rip off of The Reign of the Robots, I just personally find it interesting seeing how stories can influence others. It was reading about Dan Dare’s influence on Doctor Who that got me interested in Dan Dare in the first place.

I think where the Dalek Invasion of Earth differs from Reign of the Robots is that it is much darker and less epic. The limited budget of Doctor Who meant that it couldn’t possibly span the many exotic locations across the entire solar system like The Reign of the Robots does.

However it does present us with a somewhat grimmer picture of life under an alien invasion. We see the full extent of the Daleks horrific experiments with the Robomen. The Robomen are people whose brains the Daleks have experimented on, and turned into living dead men. They are still awake underneath but they can’t control their own bodies. Eventually after a few weeks the Robomen have a complete breakdown and kill themselves.

The Robomen are a much more frightening concept than the Selektrobots and there are many disturbing moments with them, such as when we see a Roboman kill himself after he breaks down, or when one Roboman murders his own brother.

The human characters in the Dalek Invasion of Earth are also somewhat more morally grey. Many of them give up on the resistance and others even betray their fellow humans and work for the Daleks. There are plenty of Quislings and back stabbers in the Dalek Invasion of Earth, in contrast to the Reign of the Robots which features all of humanity remaining united against their oppressors.

I think its interesting to see the differences between Frank Hampson and Terry Nation’s style of writing. Terry Nation was a far darker writer who was more willing to push the boundaries in terms of what was acceptable.

It was this aspect of his writing that arguably made him one of television’s most celebrated writers as he did things that shocked audiences such as the Daleks themselves, who were seen by many people as too terrifying to be allowed on television. Then of course there was his later series Blake’s 7, which featured unsympathetic, even villainous lead characters, main characters being framed for being pedophile’s and main characters regularly dying too.

Hampson on the other hand was obviously a much more optimistic writer. His work generally tended to have a happier ending and tended to show us characters who were above all decent, kind hearted people. Whilst some might say this made his work less adult than Nation’s, personally I think it allowed it to be just as groundbreaking. After all it was Hampsons optimism and hope for the future that made him do things like give strong and prominent roles to women and ethnic minorities in a time when virtually no one else was.

I feel that Reign of the Robots and the Dalek Invasion of Earth two fairly similar stories, both in many ways sum up all that was great about both Hampson and Nation, two pioneering science fiction writers as well as what was ultimately different in their approach even when exploring similar ideas and concepts.

Notes/Trivia

• This story ran from 22 February 1957 to 18 April 1958. That’s also including the mini story “The Ship that Lived” which followed on directly from it. The Ship that Lived has often simply been reprinted as a part of The Reign of the Robots.
• This is the Mekon’s 4th appearance in Dan Dare.
• The 3rd and final part of The Man From Nowhere Trilogy.

Scream and Fright Night are two of my favourite ever horror movies. They are actually fairly similar films overall. Both are set in then modern day, both feature teenagers who are fans of horror movies as the main characters who have to deal with a threat exactly like something in the movies they watch, both mix comedy with scenes of genuine horror and both also satirize the tropes and cliches of classic horror movies albeit in affectionate ways.

The key difference between them is that they satirize different types of horror movies. With Fright Night its obviously Vampire movies, specifically the old Hammer classics whilst with Scream its obviously slasher films.

In this article I am going to compare the films side by side to see which I find to be superior. I think that this is an interesting comparison only because I feel that you can explore a lot of the key differences between the two sub genres of horror that both Scream and Fright Night satirize. In many ways this article will be exploring what I prefer Vampire and monster films or Slasher movies as much as what I prefer between Scream and Fright Night.

As always all opinions are my own and let me know what you think in the comments below.

Overview of Both Films

Before we compare both films to one another I am first of all going to give a brief overview of both films just in case any of you reading are maybe unfamiliar with one of them.

Fright Night was released in 1985. It was both written and directed by Tom Holland.

Its plot sees a Vampire named Jerry Dandridge (Chris Sarandon) move next door to young horror movie fan Charley Brewster. (William Ragsdale) Brewster comes to suspect he is a Vampire and later tries to expose him unsuccessfully to the police. After this Jerry knowing Charley is on to him attacks Charley. He offers Charley a chance to forget about him, but Charley refuses knowing that Jerry would keep going on killing more young women.

After barely escaping Jerry one night Charley soon goes to Peter Vincent for help. Peter Vincent (Roddy McDowall) is an actor famous for having appeared in horror movies as a Vampire killer though he is now washed up and hosts a horror themed show called Fright Night.

Peter dismisses Charley as a lunatic and ignores him. Charley now without any options decides to face Jerry himself and begins to fashion stakes and crosses. His girlfriend Amy and friend “Evil” Ed begin to worry about him and bring in Peter Vincent (who only comes in after Amy pays him) to conduct a Vampire test on Jerry. Here Peter actually discovers that Jerry is a Vampire when he sees he has no reflection. Jerry knowing his cover is blown tracks down and makes Ed into a Vampire. He also captures Amy whom he falls in love with as she is seemingly the reincarnation of his long lost love. Peter though scared agrees to help Charley face the Vampire at his house. There they not only face Charley but also Ed and Amy both of whom he has turned into Vampires. Ultimately Peter and Charley manage to slay Jerry and Ed. Following Jerry’s death Amy returns to normal, though the ending hints that “Evil” Ed has survived.

Fright Night proved to be a surprise hit and it led to a small resurgence in Vampire movies. Near Dark and The Lost Boys followed in its wake and all three films would prove to be a big influence on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Fright Night has also been cited as an influence on My Name Is Bruce, with My Name Is Bruce also revolving around a washed up horror actor, a fictionalized version of Bruce Campbell helping a fan battle a real monster. Like Peter Vincent, Bruce chickens out at first before battling the monster in the end to help his fan.

Scream was a 1996 slasher film directed by the late great Wes Craven. It revolved around a serial killer who assumes the costumed identity of Ghostface. Ghostface after carrying out two gruesome murders targets a teenager named Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell). Ghostface reveals that he has knowledge of her mothers murder from many years ago which was blamed on her boyfriend Cotton.

Many people are suspected of being Ghostface including Sidney’s own father as well as her boyfriend Billy (Skeet Ulrich). Eventually after more killings it is discovered that there are in fact two killers who are working together. One of them is Billy Loomis and the other is his friend Stu. Billy has been planning to kill Sidney because Billy’s father had had an affair with Sidney’s mother causing Billy’s mother to abandon him. It was Billy and Stu (Matthew Lilliard) that murdered Sidney’s mother and now plan to complete their revenge by murdering her. Ultimately however Sidney with the aid of reporter Gail Weathers (Courtney Cox) is able to turn the tables on and murder the two killers.

Scream proved to be a massive success and it would lead to a revival in the popularity of slasher films with the likes of I Know What You Did Last Summer following in its wake.

Both movies led to franchises. There were three sequels to Scream and a tv series whilst Fright Night had one sequel and two remakes.

Both movies maintain a loyal cult following and are highly respected to this day by fans of the genre. But which do I like better? Well lets find out by looking at the pro’s and cons of both movies and again by extension the horror subgenre’s they were meant to satirize

Scream is far more frightening

I think most women would rather be seduced by a young Chris Sarandon.

One thing I will say right away is that Scream is far more terrifying than Fright Night.

Again I think this can be seen as a result of the subgenre of horror movies that they represent.

Slasher movies or indeed movies about evil human beings have always terrified me more than movies about monsters. Obviously when its a Vampire or a Demon or an Alien that does something horrible its completely divorced from reality. It almost feels safe in a way in that you know nothing like that could ever happen to anyone, being eaten by Zombies, abducted by aliens etc.

However when its a human being killing someone, its far more disturbing not only because the idea that an ordinary person could do something so evil is in itself disturbing, but also there is a certain real terror to it. People have actually died like Drew Barrymore’s character Casey.

Also I feel that the scenes of people being killed in Scream are more drawn out and protracted than in Fright Night. Really not counting the Vampires themselves only one main character is killed on screen in Fright Night, “Evil” Ed whose death is over in a second. Jerry’s other victims in the night club similarly are quickly dispatched. He just slashes their throats with his long nails and tosses them across the room and that’s that.

The only death that is drawn out in Fright Night is Amy’s when Jerry turns her into a Vampire, but that’s not exactly a horrific death.

Like a lot of classic monsters Jerry just wanted to be loved.

Ghostface on the other hand he’s just an asshole.

In Scream meanwhile we see people get tortured, struggle to get free, be brought to the very limit of their terror and get killed in some very creatively gruesome ways.

The opening scene of course features the most famous killing in the movie.

So much has been written about this scene over the years. Its arguably the most sensational opening to any horror film. Again what makes it so effective is how real it seems. We get to know Drew Barrymore’s character somewhat before she is slaughtered, she’s not just slasher victim 1. Also whilst her death is drawn out, its not just simply for the sake of it. There are so many moments where it looks as though she might escape right until the very end. The most effective moment for me is when she is a mere 6 feet away from her parents and tries to call for help, but can’t because she is so weak after having been stabbed and strangled.

Also this scene shows us the effect her death has on her parents which again makes it seem more than just a scene designed to shock. In some ways the parents reaction is actually the most horrifying moment for me. Imagine being in their position. You come home from a night out, see your daughter isn’t home, hear her scream for mercy and then see her hung from a tree. Losing a child is the most horrible thing that can happen to anyone but to lose them like that doesn’t even bare thinking about. Seeing some one go through that even in a film is just absolutely heart breaking.

Nothing in Fright Night even approaches this sequence alone in terms of sheer horror and again the fact that it is a Vampire that carries out the killings in Fright Night means that it never could for me even if its killings were more explicit like this. If it were a Vampire that bit Drew Barrymore just to feed then it would automatically be taken a level of fantasy that would make it seem somewhat more safe, more like a fairy tale for me. However the fact that it is just an ordinary human telling her that he wants “to see what your insides look like” just makes it immeasurably more disturbing for me personally.

Fright Night Has A Better Villain

On the flip side of things whilst Ghostface may be more terrifying in the way he or rather they butcher their victims ultimately I found Jerry to be the more compelling villain and character overall.

The thing about Jerry was we got to see more sides to his personality. At certain moments he seemed vicious and sadistic such as when he locks Charley in a room with a Vampirized Amy and even smiles when Charley cries at what has happened to her.

Still at the same time there are moments that portray him as a more conflicted character too. When he first confronts Charley he doesn’t kill him he actually offers to let him go provided he keeps quiet about what he is. He also expresses regret and even guilt over what he is telling Charley that he doesn’t have a choice but to kill.

Added to that he does genuinely love Amy too. The last thing he cries out before he perishes is her name.

All of these different sides to Jerry’s personality leave the viewer guessing what his true nature is. Is he a reluctant Vampire crying on the inside? Possibly. After all throughout the film most of the time he never kills unless he has too. He only kills those women so that he can survive and he gives Charley a choice to go and even later tells him that he was the one who started their fight. Also unlike the main villains in Scream Jerry only targets the main characters in this film to protect himself. Even then he decides to turn them into Vampires which is in his mind is a good thing. He tells Ed that he knows how he is a reject and picked on and he will finally give him somewhere he belongs and give him power so he’ll never have to suffer or feel lonely again.

Many fans see Jerry as a result of all this as a very sympathetic character, despite his status as a villain and again like in many great monster movies his death is even seen as a tear jerker by some viewers.

I personally however have a different interpretation of Jerry. I actually see him as a very unsympathetic character. I think that Jerry probably does feel some small measure of guilt over what he does but ultimately I don’t think he cares that much. Whilst its true that he may say he doesn’t have a choice at the end of the day he does. He could end his life if he really didn’t want to hurt anyone yet he has gone on killing people for 1000’s of years. Also its not like we see him constantly conflicted over his killings. Other than one line to Charley he seems quite chipper. He’s not skulking in the dark never meeting anyone feeling angsty. He lives in a big nice house, cracking jokes, laughing at people’s attempts to threaten him. Doesn’t seem like a guy who hates being a Vampire. He strikes me as the kind of guy that LOVES all the perks of being a Vampire, staying young and sexy forever, super powers, killing anyone that pisses you off etc.

I think the fact that he demonstrates some self awareness makes him worse as it shows that he is aware of how evil he is and how wrong it is, but simply doesn’t care. He ultimately places his own life above those of his victims. Yes he may not go out of his way to torture and kill people but he has no quams about doing it either.

Of course that’s just my interpretation and I am sure plenty of people will disagree, but that’s further proof of what a great character Jerry is that people can have all of these different interpretations of what his true motives are.

For instance when he hunts Ed is he in his mind freeing a young, lonely, bullied boy from his life of torment and giving the gift of eternal life? Or is he just simply manipulating him, turning him into a Vampire so that he can use him to track down Peter and Charley and will discard him after he is done with him?

Sadly the main villains in Scream Billy Loomis and Stu Macher are simply not as interesting to me.

They’re not bad characters. Obviously they are terrifying and the actors who play them do a great job as you can see just from the picture above in really capturing the bitter, twisted almost childlike lunacy of the characters.

Still the thing about Billy and Stu that makes them less interesting than Jerry is that they are just psychopath’s. That’s it. There is really very little else about their characters. Billy’s motive “mommy issues” I always felt was a bit weak whilst Stu has no motive whatsoever. Thus where as with Jerry we have a character who can seem genuinely conflicted and openly sadistic and menacing, with these two villains we just have two psychopath’s and I don’t think anyone feels bad when either one of them suffers their violent and painful deaths.

In Vampire and monster movies the villains ironically tend to be more fleshed out and even more sympathetic. Look at the classic monster movies like the Karloff Frankenstein, the Karloff Mummy and The Wolf Man. The monsters in all of those films is someone we sympathize with even though they kill people. The Frankenstein monster murders an entire family yet audiences still cry when he dies or when he is with the blind old man the only person that could be his friend because he can’t see him.

Even monsters who aren’t sympathetic at all I still find often have a better motivation than the villains in slasher movies.

Take a look at Deacon Frost in the Blade film series. Frost is a vicious, sadistic monster who wants to destroy humanity, but you can still understand why he is doing what he is doing. He wants Vampires to rule the earth as he believes it is their right as they are higher up the food chain.

He thinks that if the Vampires continue to just simply blend in with humanity then eventually they will be found out and exterminated as they are predators of humans and thus the humans wouldn’t ever accept them. In a way you can understand where he is coming from.

The villains in slasher movies however like Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers, Jason Vorhee’s, Leatherface and the Fishermen are often just psychopath’s who kill people for seemingly no reason.

Nobody cries when the villain in a slasher movie dies. At the same time no one knows why these guys even do what they do. I suppose its ironic in a way as a lot of the time the villains in slashers movies are human. Some of them do have supernatural powers like Freddy and Jason and Michael, but most like the Fisherman, Ghostface and Leatherface are just ordinary people, whilst even Myers, Vorhees, and Kruger all start out as human beings too when they begin their murders.

In horror movies that if a villain is a monster then chances are they will be more three dimensional and perhaps sympathetic than if they are just an insane human being. I guess that old cliche of human beings are the greatest monsters is true after all.

With this in mind it makes sense that Jerry would be more fleshed out than either Billy or Stu. I will say that Ghostface is more iconic than Jerry. Pretty much everyone knows that iconic mask.

The mask is an absolute tour de force, but in all fairness I think this is more a case of the design being iconic than the character. Whilst everyone may recognize the mask I doubt anyone other than horror movie fans would remember the people underneath the mask. Jerry meanwhile I’d say is far more famous among horror movie fans than either Billy or Stu.

Overall I’d say that Jerry is stronger than any of the villains in any of the Scream films.

Scream Has Stronger Roles For Woman

Scream’s main protagonist is Sidney Prescott played by Neve Campbell. She is a strong, resourceful, brave intelligent character. Her backstory is fully fleshed out involving the death of her mother and as time goes on we see her develop into a very different character in both Scream and its sequels.

Sadly the main female character Amy in Fright Night is really nothing more than just a bland damsel. She really has no function except to get seduced and bitten by Jerry. Though she does get some good scenes when she becomes a Vampire later, by large she is really just the stereotypical wimpy girl that is helpless in the throes of the Vampire. She can’t possibly compare to Sidney.

I actually really like the actress who plays Amy, Amanda Bearse. You should check her out in Married With Children as Marcy, a character who couldn’t be more different to Amy!

Still I think its safe to say that Sidney is just a better character and Neve Campbell was absolutely spectacular in the role.

Once again I think that this can be seen as reflective of the subgenres they parody.

In monster and Vampire films before Fright Night the female characters were often not quite as strong apart from a few exceptions such as the Alien film series. Look at the old Universal and Hammer movies are there any strong roles for women in them? I’m not knocking them. They’re of their time and also not having strong roles for women does NOT make something sexist by any stretch of the imagination. Still in Slasher movies not only were women giving much stronger roles, but in fact the main hero was often a woman.

In fact I honestly can’t think of a single classic slasher movie where a woman isn’t the main hero. Halloween, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th and I Know What you Did Last Summer, the last survivor who ultimately outwits and even dispatches the killer is a woman every time.

Many people criticise the slasher movie genre for being misogynistic because we often see women being killed, but I think that’s unfair as men get killed just as often women in these films. Drew Barrymore’s boyfriend for instance gets gutted just like she does.

Ultimately however a woman is always the last survivor and indeed as a boy when I used to watch slasher movies they were among the first places I ever got to see a female character save the day. It certainly wasn’t in the old Hammer movies or Universal flicks where women would cower at the sight of the monster and be victimized.

You can see the huge difference there.

Fright Night is More Fun

One thing that can be said for Fright Night is that it is much easier viewing than Scream.

As much as I like Scream I must admit I’d probably only watch it very occassionally because its pretty heavy viewing. The opening scene alone is pretty harrowing and intense.

Fright Night on the other hand I feel is more feel good escapism. If its been a long day at work and or  I’m just in the mood for a fun, enjoyable horror flick well then its always going to be Fright Night I pop on before Scream. I really have to be in the mood for Scream.

Again I think this is reflective somewhat of the differences between monster and Slasher movies.  Slasher movies like the Texas Chainsaw massacre are obviously much more brutal when compared to an old Hammer or Universal movie. Of course you might just say that’s because they are more tame, but I think its more than that. I think monster movies create their own unique world. A world where the most impossible creatures exist that’s completely divorced from reality. Slashers movies like Scream however that are just about psycho humans obviously don’t do that. If anything they just remind us of how crappy human beings and the world can be.

Thus once again I think that by the simple fact of being a monster movie Fright Night for me at least is more rewatchable.

Conclusion

In many ways Randy and Evil Ed are similar characters. Both horror movie fans who comment on the cliche’s of horror movies within the film. Both are not surprisingly very popular with fans as in many ways they represent us horror movie geeks. Too bad they both get horrribly killed. Though Randy at least survives the first film, whilst Evil at least becomes a Vampire. 

In conclusion I can’t really say which I prefer. In some ways Scream is better, in some Fright Night is better. I think that both movies do a good job of summing up the sub genres of horror movies that they satirize. I will say one final thing I think Scream has over Fright Night is that Scream’s first sequel was better than Fright Night 2.

I do like Fright Night 2 and in yet a further similarity between the two franchises both of their sequels revolve around a relative of the villain from the first movie trying to kill the heroes to avenge their loved one.

In Jerry’s case it is Regina his sister, in Scream’s case it is Mrs Loomis, Billy’s mother. I will say Regina is much better than Mrs Loomis.

Also at least Fright Night 2 doesn’t kill off one of the first movies best characters. It sucks in Scream 2 when Randy who was arguably the most iconic character in the series gets killed. Ask anyone to name a quote from Scream and it will be one of Randy’s. He’s the one who helped make it a movie that could satirise horror flicks.

Fortunately Fright Night 2 didn’t do anything stupid like that and kill off say Peter Vincent.

Still Scream 2 I think is a better move overall. I also prefer Mickey the supporting antagonist in Scream 2 to either Regina or Ms Loomis. Even though he is her sidekick Mickey kills far more people than Mrs Loomis.

My favourite kill of his is when he murders Derek Sidney’s boyfriend. Derek is the cheesiest guy in any horror movie. To say he and Sidney are a schmoopie couple is an understatement.

What makes his death at Mickey’s hands all the more glorious is that Mickey dupes Sidney into thinking that Derek is his accomplice first. So Derek dies knowing that Sidney didn’t truly trust him after all.

Seriously Mickey could very well be my favourite killer for this scene alone. And he killed Buffy lets not forget that either!

Still looking at just the original films then I’d say it is a tie between Scream and Fright Night. Both not only satirized but in many ways helped to change the horror genre, paving the way for other classics that were to follow and I am in no doubt that they will always remain cult classics.

The subject of this weeks cult actors Clancy Brown is the definition of a villain actor. Though he has played a few high profile hero roles, I think its safe to say that he has been somewhat typecast as badguys.

Not that that has prevented him from having a truly excellent career of course or from playing many different types of characters ranging from the thuggish Kurgen in Highlander, to the urbane and intellectual Lex Luthor in the DCAU.

Indeed unlike with some other actors we wont be able to look at every genre role he has ever played as it would take too long, so instead I will simply be looking at his most famous as well as my own personal favourites.

Like many noteworthy villain actors such as the late great Sir Christopher Lee, Brown has been described as being the sweetest guy you could ever hope to meet by all of those who have worked with him from Mark Hamill to Eliza Dushku.

Still despite this its not hard to see why he has been typecast as the badguy. With his 6 foot 3 imposing frame and his deep booming scary voice, he almost doesn’t need to act in order to be scary!

The Kurgan/Highlander

My favourite performance of Brown’s and one of my favourite villains in all of cinema history.

The Kurgan is the main villain in Highlander. He is an immortal who came from a tribe of people called the Kurgan’s who used to toss children into pits of wild dogs as a game!

The Kurgan apparently slaughtered the rest of his tribe simply so that he could become known as THE Kurgan rather than just a Kurgan.

He would spend many thousands of years raping women, pillaging villages, and taking other immortals heads. In the Highlander universe for those of you are unfamiliar with its rules an immortal can only be killed by decapitation. The goal of the Immortals is to fight and kill each other until the last one standing gains a supernatural power called the “The Prize” which will allow them to decide the fate of mankind itself.

Naturally many other immortals start to worry about what will happen if someone as evil as the Kurgan should win the prize and this leads to Juan Sanchez Villa-Lobos Ramirez an immortal, played by Sean Connery training other immortals around the world to make sure that no matter what the Kurgan will never win the prize.

The Kurgan is described by Ramirez as being the most powerful and evil Immortal of all time. The more heads an immortal takes the stronger he or she gets and the Kurgan has taken thousands.

The Kurgan later whist looking for his latest protege a Scots man Connor Macleod, kills Ramirez. He also goes on to rape Connors wife Heather too having believed she was with Ramirez. He later reveals this to Connor several hundred years later.

By 1985 Connor and The Kurgan are the only two immortals left. With both having arrived in New York, Connor is finally able to defeat his ancient enemy and win the prize which he intends to use to help mankind usher in a golden age. This however is later retconned by the numerous sequels which state that Connor and the Kurgan were not the last Immortals.

The thing I like the most about the Kurgan is the fact that he is really just a complete asshole. There’s no deep motivation for what he does, he certainly isn’t a I’ve had a hard life, crying on the inside type of villain like say the DCAU Mr Freeze or John Simm’s version of the Master. At the same time he isn’t like say the Joker from The Dark Knight who is depicted almost as evil incarnate, or a chaotic force of nature.

The Kurgan is really just a little hoodlum with super powers. He does the most petty and stupid things like sticking his tongue out at nuns, putting out the candles someone has lit in a church and best of all frightening old ladies just for a laugh.

Brown is able like a lot of truly great villain actors to actually get us to laugh some of the Kurgan’s more vile deeds such as when he starts randomly running people down whilst holding Brenda hostage and begins mimicking her cries and pleas.

Apparently it was Brown himself who injected a lot of the characters humour into the script. According to Brown the Kurgan was originally written as nothing more than just a boring, bland thug, so he decided to give him more of a twisted almost child like quality that ultimately allowed the character in some moments to actually be quite funny.

At the same time however whilst there are a lot of moments of black comedy involving the Kurgan he is still a very menacing character overall. Fortunately the comedy Brown injected into the character did not undermine his menace at all.

The moment where he attacks Heather is truly disturbing. Later when he taunts Connor and tells him that Heather loved being raped and longed for him to come back and do it to her again, we are taken deep into just how vile, brutal and savage the Kurgan truly is. The Kurgan isn’t merely saying this to taunt Connor. He actually thinks its true! “Perhaps she yearned for my return“.

In many ways I’d argue that Brown steals the show. All of the cast give good performances, but for me certainly the one I remembered the most was definitely Brown’s. The Kurgan would go on to be the character that Brown to this day is the most associated with. It has led to him getting other similar barbarian roles in both live action and animation.

The Kurgan never appeared in any of the sequels, though there were plans for him to appear in Highlander 2 in brief flashback scene, Brown ultimately declined which was definitely for the best considering Highlander 2 is often regarded as one of the worst films ever made.

One of the reasons Highlander 2 is so badly thought of is because it reveals that the Immortals are in fact aliens sent down from the planet Zeist to do battle with one another until only one remains with the winner gaining the ability to either return to Zeist or rule the earth. In the planned scene involving the Kurgan it would have been revealed that he was sent down by Connors enemy on Zeist General Katanna played by Michael Ironside to prevent Connor from winning the Prize.

None of the later villains would have as much of an impact as The Kurgan who remains the most recognizable villain in the entire franchise. The villain from Highlander 3 Kane was seen by many as an attempt to imitate the Kurgan. Like the Kurgan, Kane murders Connors mentor who also describes Kane as the most powerful and evil immortal of all time. Also there is even a scene where Kane captures Connor’s adopted son and goes on a joyride through the city much like the Kurgan does with Brenda in the first Highlander. Even the way Kane talks in a big deep growling voice is similar to the Kurgan.

I love the way even in the film itself they seem to go out of their way to say “yeah we know the bad guy in this is just a cheapo version of the Kurgan” by actually having a flashback to the Kurgan stabbing Connor when Kane is stabbing him.

One of the reasons the first Highlander is unquestionably the best entry in the series is because of Brown’s performance. With the Kurgan he truly creates what I feel to be one of cinema’s greatest villains. He simply dominates any scene he is in (even if he is sharing the screen with Sean Connery) and gives us a character who is both terrifying and at certain points hilarious.

Finally as if that wasn’t enough the Kurgen’s theme is even provided by Queen.

For some reason Queen (especially Freddie Mercury) hated this track. Personally I love it I think it goes brilliantly with the Kurgan. I always loved the way Clancy Brown said there can be only one! To me he delivers that line the best, which is no mean feat in the Highlander series where almost every character says that line at some point.

Lex Luthor/ DC Animated Universe

Brown’s interpretation of Superman’s archenemy Lex Luthor is arguably the most beloved version of the character outside of the comic book medium.

Much like Mark Hamil as the Joker, Brown for an entire generation of fans is Lex more so than any live action actor. Whenever I read a comic book with Lex again much like with Hamill as the Joker, or Kevin Conroy as Batman the voice I hear is always Brown’s.

The DCAU version of Lex was the most well realized overall I think. It wasn’t just Brown’s performance, but also his characterisation. This version not only managed to flesh Lex’s character out somewhat when compared with other adaptations, but also I feel managed to incorporate the two main interpretations of the character from the comic books.

Generally speaking Lex is either portrayed as a mad scientist who creates gigantic clone monsters, huge robots, space ships that can destroy a planet, power suits that give him special powers, and seeks to control the entire universe, or he is a more down to earth villain. A crooked business man who uses his wealth and power to cover up his illegal activities and generally humiliate Superman.

The DCAU managed to incorporate these two different versions by showing Lex start out as just a crime lord and gradually progress to a higher league villain. In later Justice League episodes they were even able to incorporate elements of the whole President Luthor aspect too.

Brown first played Lex Luthor in Superman the animated series. Lex was by far and away the most recurring enemy in this series and he was also shown to be behind the creation of other Superman villains such as Metallo and Bizarro.

Lex was depicted as a master manipulator. On the surface he was smooth talking, charming, witty and affable, but underneath there was an unbelievable arrogance and vicious streak. Throughout the series Superman never comes close to exposing his true nature, though at the same time there are moments where Lex greatly underestimates his allies such as the Joker, Metallo and Brainiac and it ends badly for him.

In many ways I think Brown as Lex Luthor is comparable as a villain to Roger Delgado as the Master in Doctor Who. Both are the same charming, witty, manipulative villain who often makes alliances with enemies much more powerful than they are and often get betrayed by them at the last minute too.

Visually Brown’s Luthor was apparently inspired by Telly Savalas as Blofeld.

One of Brown’s more notable performances was in Worlds Finest a three part episode that saw the Joker travel to Metropolis with a Kryptonite statue to kill Superman. This story was really in a way what marked the beginning of the DCAU. Prior to this there had only been Batman the animated series and Superman the animated series, but there was nothing to suggest that they inhabited the same universe other than the odd comment.

This however firmly established them existing within the same canon.

Brown manages to hold his own against Hamill’s Joker which is no mean feat. Overall I don’t think that Lex Luthor is quite as engaging a character as the Joker. Its not that I dislike the Luthor character but the Joker is literally a more colourful and a much more flamboyant and charismatic character. You only have to look at the two characters screen history. Lex has had far more live action appearances on both film and television and has been played by some brilliant actors, but none of them are as iconic as either Nicholson, Ledger or even Romero’s performances as the Joker.

Thus it was a difficult task appearing alongside Hamill one of the most celebrated versions of the Joker, but Brown manages to hold his own and make us not forget about Lex. The scenes of the Joker and Lex together are brilliant. Its fascinating watching these two such radically different characters appear together. Its true that in many ways Lex and the Joker are as good foils for each other as the two villains are for Superman and Batman themselves.

Apparently according to Brown he and Hamill worked very closely together and even became friends. The two would work together many more times not only as the Joker and Lex but as other characters too, such as in The Night of the Headless Horseman animated movie.

Sadly whilst Brown is able to hold his own against Hamill, Lex isn’t against the Joker. At the end of this story the Joker manages to outwit Lex and capture him. Lex has to be rescued by Batman and Superman in the end.

I think its a shame when this happens that one villain ends up getting completely undermined in favour of another one.

Obviously the most notorious example is in Doctor Who when the Daleks thrashed and trash talked the Cybermen in the episode Doomsday. Lex doesn’t fair much better here as we see the Joker completely outsmart him, capture him, taunt him and try and use his own Lexwing to destroy everything he ever built (which is all of Metropolis). Its a shame that people normally take such care not to undermine the heroes but when its a the villain the writers tend to just go for whoever is their favourite. Bruce Timm who produced this series was a much bigger Batman fan and thus obviously favoured the Joker so there was no question he was going win. Still even though I vastly prefer the Joker I wish they hadn’t done Lex down so badly.

I think that Lex’s status as Superman’s archenemy is undermined somewhat by the amount of times he is betrayed by his allies. I suppose in this respect he is once again comparable to Roger Delgado’s Master in that in both cases we have two very strong and interesting villains who sadly at times not only get undermined by being constantly overpowered, and captured by other villains and have to get rescued by the hero (the ultimate humiliation for any villain) but are also made to look flat out stupid for constantly forging alliances with people who are obviously going to stab them in the back.

Moments like these turn them from credible threats to characters that the audience laughs for being so thick as to get betrayed yet again.

Whilst I did like Lex in Superman and obviously Brown’s performance cannot be faulted I think both Brown and Luthor really got a chance to shine more in Justice League and Justice League Unlimited.

Lex’s first appearance in Justice League sees him fall rather spectacularly. Not only are the Justice League able to expose his criminal activities, but he also contracts Kryptonite poisoning. Apparently Kryptonite can affect human beings provided they are exposed to it long enough, well it is a big chunk of radiation after all! Lex kept a piece of it in his pocket for years in case he ever had to deal with Superman face to face and it has slowly been poisoning him to the point where he now only has a few months left to live.

Its a beautiful irony that Kryptonite of all things is what brings Lex down and I just love the moment when Lex finds out he has Kryptonite poisoning he blames a sympathetic Superman who is at his bedside. Typical Luthor arrogance.

Lex soon escapes from prison and attempts to make Superman and the Justice League pay. This begins Lex’s descent into being more of a mad professor who creates giant robots and all manner of over the top gadgets type of a villain, as opposed to the slimy, corrupt business man.

I am not sure which interpretation I prefer overall. On the one hand Lex is more threatening as the mad scientist whilst at the same time I feel that you can flesh him out more when he is less of an OTT villain.

Still in the DCAU I definitely prefer the mad outlaw scientist version. Here they are able to make Lex seem much more threatening, though the trend of being betrayed by his allies does continue a bit,  with Ultra Humanite and Amazo both stabbing him in the back (literally in Humanite’s case). Still Lex definitely seems more formidable and Brown I feel is able to show us more sides to Luthor as we see Lex become more desperate and bitter during these episodes.

At the same time the makers of the series are able to incorporate elements of the President Luthor storyline in quite a clever way. We see an alternate reality where Lex becomes the president and provokes an all out war against meta humans that kills millions of people including that realities version of the Flash. Eventually Lex goes so far that Superman has to kill him. Ironically even though this isn’t the real Superman and Lex this is possibly my favourite ever moment between them.

Brown is superb here as once again we see how Luthors overwhelming arrogance causes his ultimate downfall.

I love the way that even Batman admitted it had to be done. It makes you wonder what atrocities Lex must have carried out when the Batman in the DCAU has never come close to killing the Joker! I think its good that we never find out what it was exactly Lex did in the alternate world, we are just given little hints that paint a gruesome picture.

After killing Lex, Superman and the rest of the League go on to take over the world and even find a way to cross over into our reality where the Justice League are forced to team up with Lex in order to take him down. Only Lex has the weaponry that can stop them (which he originally had wished to use against the league themselves.) Lex’s conditions for being allowed to use it are that he is pardoned for all his past crimes.

Following this Lex runs for president which terrifies the League. The Question even tries to kill Luthor to prevent this from happening, but unfortunately by this point Lex has in fact merged with Brainiac into a super being and effortlessly thrashes the Question and tosses him around. Its also revealed that he was never intending to run for president. Basically Luthor is a massive troll who wasted millions of pounds on pissing Superman off.

Lex’s plan’s with Brainiac go far beyond just pissing off a few superheroes. He plans to rebuild the entire universe itself!

I think that Lex and Brainiac’s alliance was better handled than his alliance with other villains as here we saw Lex do what he does best and actually manage to manipulate Brainiac. Brainiac at first is happy just to disregard Lex as soon as he has what he needs from him, but Lex is actually able to convince Brainiac to merge with him forever. Unlike other villain team ups this does not undermine either and really plays up to both villains strengths. Brainiac is the one with the power, whilst Lex is cunning enough to play anyone even the greatest super computer in the universe in order to get what he wants.

Lex/Brainiac proves to be one of the most powerful and dangerous enemies and thrashes Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman. Ironically it is the Flash who the alternate Lex killed that finally manages to defeat Lex/Brainiac by literally knocking the pieces of Brainiac out of Lex using his speed.

Following this Lex would return the following year initially as a member of Gorilla Grodd’s Legion of Doom which he eventually takes over.

I think it was quite interesting the way that we saw Lex change so much over the course of the DCAU. He was arguably the most well developed character in the DCAU in fact, more so than other major villains like the Joker or even heroes like Batman and Superman.

When we first see Lex he is really a small time villain. He is a crooked millionaire with dodgy deals. A lot of the time he does get himself involved with villains who are more than a match for him like the Joker. His hatred of Superman meanwhile is really based more on jealousy. Had it not been for the appearance of Superman then Lex likes to think that he would probably be remembered as the greatest man from his generation, a genius whose scientific and philanthropic achievements would be second to none. However Superman completely eclipsed him. Nothing he could ever do could match the Man of Steel and thus its his jealousy just as much as his crooked nature that drives him down a dark path.

By the time we get to Justice League however a more embittered and resentful Luthor ups his game now that he has nothing to lose, and also now that the threat is much greater from the Justice League, we see Lex become a much higher class villain. You can tell this in his dealings with the Joker alone. When he and the Joker work together a second time though the Joker is still his senior in terms of being a wanted man, you can tell that this time Lex is in more control. Before Lex always seemed scared of the Joker. Even when he was arrogantly threatening him you got the impression that underneath his arrogance he was somewhat intimidated by the Clown Prince of Crime. In Justice League however when the Joker annoys him, Lex just elbows him in the stomach.

By the time we get to the Brainiac arc Lex now sees himself as a god. He has achieved power beyond the likes of even Darkseid and he believes that it is his right to mould all of creation itself in his twisted image.

After he loses Brainiac its interesting seeing how Lex no longer cares about working with common supervillains. He almost reshaped creation itself in his very image. He possessed a power beyond even earth’s greatest heroes like Superman and Wonder Woman so to go back to just robbing banks and blood feuds with costumed vigilante’s seems like such a come down.

Lex nevertheless agrees to work for Gorilla Grodd’s Legion of Doom because Grodd has the last piece of Brainiac with him. Grodd believes he can control Lex, but ultimately he underestimates him and Lex manages to overthrow and imprison Grodd.

I like the way we see a really petty side to Lex the way he demeans Grodd this great genius by keeping him locked in a cage and feeding him banana’s which Grodd despises.

Lex soon pours all of the Legion’s efforts into trying to find a way to revive Brainiac and resume his quest to take over the entire universe. You can see how far Lex has come when he is leading the Legion of Doom. One of my favourite moments is when a Legion member refuses to help Lex find Brainiac because he says that he doesn’t want him to be more powerful than all of them combined to which Lex responds “I’m already more powerful than all of you combined”  and effortlessly disposes of him. Its hard to imagine this Lex ever being at the mercy of the likes of Metallo or even the Joker like the Lex from Superman the animated series.

A real highlight is when Grodd breaks free from his cage and challenges Lex only for Lex to outwit him, humiliate him and torture him before killing him brutally.

Lex uses Grodd’s own mind control device against him and forces him to bow down before him whilst admitting he is superior. This final little exchange between them just before Lex blasts Grodd into space is my favourite moment however

Lex Luthor/ Don’t feel bad Grodd it could have gone the other way.

Grodd/ It really could..

Lex Luthor/ No it couldn’t but why speak ill of the dead. (blasts him into space)

Again its sad to see one villain in this case Grodd to so badly undermined, but I still can’t help but love how badass Lex is here.

Lex Luthor also sacrifices his lover Talia in order to bring Brainiac back, though it was said by one of the shows creators that as a final screw you to Luthor she brings Darkseid, who perished alongside Brainiac back to life instead.

Lex and his army of supervillains are thus forced into an alliance with the Justice League in order to stop Darkseid and his army from destroying the earth completely.

The final episode of Justice League Unlimited Destroyer sees Lex fight side by side with his two greatest enemies, Superman and Batman against Darkseid. Having become obsessed with bringing Brainiac back Lex is now equally consumed with getting revenge on Darkseid who he believes ruined his chance at becoming a god. Lex even tells Superman that he is not here to save the world but simply to help him get revenge on Darkseid.

This of course makes it all the more hilarious when right in the middle of the fight after Batman and Superman have taken quite a beating Lex literally chickens out. I loved the way this scene cut Luthor down to size. After how powerful he has become Darkseid can still reduce him to the small time crook he once was.

Ultimately however in a wonderful irony it is Lex who finally defeats Darkseid not the Justice League. I love the way Lex performs the most heroic act in arguably the whole series for the wrong reasons. Darkseid is the most evil and twisted and certainly the most powerful and dangerous villain in the entire series. Before Lex vanquishes him (at seemingly the cost of his own life) he has most certainly won. The League all over the entire world are struggling to hold off his Parademons and he has beaten Superman. He has Superman on the floor at the mercy of his agony matrix, a torture device which stimulates every pain receptor in a persons body to the maximum amount of pain they can feel all at once, and he is ready to cut out his heart to keep it as a trophy with a knife made of Kryptonite.

Thus Lex actually saves Superman and the entire world and indeed the universe, but he only does it because he wants to make Darkseid pay for stopping him from killing the Justice League and taking over the universe!

In a way its fitting however as all the DCAU Lex has ever cared about is his legacy. In Superman the animated series he actually did many great things. He donated massive amounts to charities, built hospitals and shelters all over Metropilis. None of it was motivated by generosity or altruism, but purely by his own ego. Thus in one final attempt to be remembered and prove his superiority Lex once again does some great and ironically ensures that he despite his villainous nature, he will always be remembered for being the one to vanquish the greatest evil the universe has ever known.

The ending does hint that both Darkseid and Lex who are last shown to vanish in a flash may have survived. Ultimately as this was the last episode of Justice League and there is no mention of Lex and Darkseid having survived or resurfaced in the DCAU series set in the future it seems most likely that Superman’s archenemies both perished and really this is the best ending for both of those characters.

Brown has continued to play Lex Luthor in numerous other animated movies and video games too since the end of the DCAU in 2006. These projects are of course not related to the DCAU continuity, despite reuniting Brown with many of his DCAU co-stars such as Kevin Conroy.

Brown has played Lex over a longer period of time than any other actor, though he has not played the character more times than anybody else. That honour belongs to Michael Rosenbaum who played him in Smallville. Rosenbaum also played Lex in one episode of Justice League Unlimited, The Great Brain Robbery where Lex and the Flash (voiced by Rosenbaum) switch bodies. Apparently the producers had hoped to use this episode to show off Rosenbaum’s talents for playing the villain, but ultimately they felt that Brown stole the show with his comedic performance as the Flash in Luthors body.

Brown is definitely my favourite Luthor and I hope he continues to play the role for many more years to come.

Kelvin Joe Inman/ Lost

Brown played this supporting character in a few episodes of Lost. Though not Brown’s most interesting role this character had his moments. My favourite was when he not only teaches the character of Sayid how to torture but forces him to torture his former boss. We don’t know what Sayid did to him but he simply says that what he did, no one should have ever have to do to another human being. Inman then coldly states to him that now no one will be able to keep secrets from him after what he has taught Sayid.

Zorbal/Star Trek Enterprise

A rare heroic role, Zorbran attempts to recruit the Enterprise to help him free his people. Though they obviously refuse stating that getting involved in the affairs of other life forms is not why they began exploring the universe, they nevertheless do still say that his cause is worth fighting for.

Whilst it isn’t the best episode of Enterprise, Brown certainly makes the most of the character. You can tell he enjoys a rare opportunity not to play an out and out monster and brings a lot of personality to the character.

Byron Hadley/ The Shawshank Redemption

Browns most famous on screen role after the Kurgan. This character is not so far removed from the Kurgan in that like him he is more of a brutish, thuggish character, though Hadley is arguably a much darker as there is no black comedy with Hadley unlike the Kurgan.

In the novel Hadley is a more minor character but his role was greatly expanded for the films. He is a vicious, prison warden who regularly beats and even tortures his inmates for his own sadistic amusement. Arguably his worst crime however is when he tortures an inmate he nick names “Fat Ass” to death.

Whilst not as interesting a character as the Kurgen this is still nevertheless without a doubt one of Brown’s most accomplished roles. As Hadley he is evil personified.

Mr Krabs/ Spongebob Squarepants

A lighter role. Krabs though technically a villain is obviously more of a comical character. I must confess I am not the biggest Sponge Bob fan. I watched a few episodes in preperation for this article, but there is’t much I can comment on with this character. I will say that it was good that Brown got a chance to showcase his more comedic side as sadly his roles don’t tend to allow him to do that as often, the Kurgan being an obvious rare example.

Sergeant Zim/ Starship Troopers/ Roughneck: Starship Troopers Chronicles

Another good guy role. Zim aids humanity in their war against the bugs. I have noticed that Brown whenever he plays good guys still tends to play authoritative, angry, even somewhat violent characters.

Brown played this character in both the original film and the subsequent animated series. There were plans for him to reprise his role in the sequel, but sadly he was unavailable. Michael Ironside appears in this film too. He and Brown would later reunite as the characters of Lex Luthor and Darkseid in the DC Animated universe.

General Wade Eiling/ The Flash

Brown recently began playing this villainous character in the latest tv adaptation of the Flash. Its the type of role Brown by this point could play in his sleep, the big growly, ruthless amoral villain. At one point he even mistreats Gorilla Grodd something that he has had plenty of experience in.

Brother Justin Crowe/ Carnivale

The main villain from Carnivale this could very well be Brown’s best performance. Crowe was unlike a lot of Brown’s usual villains. A demonic Preacher, Brown is able to bring so many different dimensions to this character, though perhaps most disturbing of all is the perverted incestuous relationship he has with his sister Iris.

Crowe was arguably somewhat more nuanced than many of Brown’s other thuggish characters. He is someone who genuinely believes he is doing gods work yet is possessed by the most unearthly, unnatural evil. At times Brown makes it appear that Justin is aware of how twisted he truly is underneath it all yet can’t help being what he is, which almost makes the character seem tragic.

Meacham/ Cowboys and Aliens

Another preacher, but this time much more sympathetic. Though Meacham is only really a minor character this is still quite an unusual part for Brown to play as a totally sympathetic character who ends up getting a heroes death when he sacrifices himself to save the character of Emmett from a savage alien monster.

Doctor Neo Cortex/ Crash Bandicoot Series

Another more comical villain, Doctor Cortex is the main antagonist in the Crash Bandicoot series and probably one of the most iconic video game characters of all time.

Brown voiced this character in a number of entries in the series beginning with Crash Bandicoot 2 Cortex Strikes Back.

Whilst obviously not Brown’s most nuanced performance Brown nevertheless gives the character a lot of personality. Radiating between being quite menacing at times and ridiculously camp and over the top at others, Brown’s performance as the character was lots of fun, and I think probably matched the character the best out of all the voice artists who have played him.

Other Roles

Among Brown’s other roles include the voice of both the villain Rhino and Captain George Stacey in the Spectacular Spider-Man animated series, the Frankenstein’s Monster in The Bride at the start of his career in 1985, the X-Men villain Mr Sinister in Wolverine and The X-Men animated series, Agent Silas in Transformers Prime, Destro in Gi Joe Renegades and he can currently be heard as the voice of Red Hulk on Hulk and the Agents of Smash. Apparently during the making of this series he and Eliza Dushku became close friends.

As I said before it would take too long trying to run through cult role of Brown’s. He has had a truly exceptional career on film, television and animation and its likely he will continue to for decades to come.

Thanks for reading.

By far and away my favourite ever adaptation of the Caped crusaders exploits across any medium. Steven Moffat’s version of Batman breathed new life into the Bat franchise and also led to a whole shared universe based upon characters from DC comics.

In this article I will be giving an over view of the series, its cast and ultimately why I feel it was the best version of Batman seen to date despite some of the huge deviations it took from the source material.

Overview

In the early 00’s the Bat franchise was well and truly dead on the big screen. The latest entry in the series Batman and Robin had been a massive flop both critically and commercially at the box office. Though there were plans for a supposed Batman/Superman film, ultimately the rise of Marvel heroes on the silver screen meant that competition for a new Batman movie was much fiercer and thus scuppered these plans.

Indeed in the general public’s eyes at that point following the ever increasingly campier Schumacher movies, Batman was seen as old hat and past its sell by date. Even more so when compared to the seemingly more serious and complex Marvel heroes who were being given a greater exposure than ever before.

The Dark Knight’s resurrection in popular culture would come from the most unlikely of sources, the BBC in the United Kingdom and in a medium in which the Caped crusader hadn’t ventured into since the 1960’s, television.

The BBC had expressed interest in a television series based on a superhero from DC comics since the late 90’s following the success of Lois and Clark. Not wanting to compete with Smallville however a new series about the adventures of an early Superman as well as a new Superman movie that was in production that would eventually become Superman Returns. The BBC instead decided to produce a series based on Batman.

With all attempts to launch a new Batman film series having ended in a dismal failure there would be no competition for this new Batman series. The resulting project would be a BBC/Warner Bros co-production.

Steven Moffat at that point having been best known for his comedies Coupling and Press Gang was appointed producer and head writer of the series. There were some complaints from fans about a comedy writer being assigned the job of running the series. Many felt that this was an attempt to emulate the campy tone of the Schumacher films, but Moffat assured fans that he would take it very seriously being a life long fan of Batman himself. There were also some complaints about Batman being made British too, though once again Moffat ensured people that it would still be set in Gotham even if the actors would be British.

The series was simply titled Batman though it has often been referred to as Steven Moffat’s Batman by fans.

Peter Serafinowicz was cast as Batman which again caused some concern as he had been known primarily for his comedy roles whilst a then unknown David Tennant was cast his archenemy the Joker. Whilst there were some doubts about the show ultimately its first series broadcast in 2007 which consisted of just 13 episodes was a massive ratings success in its native UK and in America too. 4 more series would be produced in total.

The series adapted many of the most famous storylines from the comics including the Killing Joke, No Man’s Land, Arkham Asylum a Serious House on Serious Earth and it even incorporated elements The Dark Knight Returns too.

Throughout the series run Serafinowicz was highly praised for his performance as Batman but ultimately it was Tennant’s gloriously over the top, energetic and manic performance as the Clown Prince of Crime that predictably stole the show, with many considering Tennant to be the definitive Joker.

Its first series told the origin of Batman and saw him develop into the hero he would become whilst battling the crime boss Rupert Thorne. The second series meanwhile focused on the Joker. The Joker had been introduced in the first series where he had attempted to gas Gotham itself. After being defeated/upstaged by Batman the Joker decides to kill all of those closest to Batman and begins a campaign of revenge against him which lasts throughout the series and ultimately results in the crippling of Barbara Gordon and Robins’s violent death. The third series sees an adaptation of the No Man’s Land storyline which is caused by the Joker in this version. Series 4 meanwhile followed Ra’s Al Ghul who it is revealed managed to save Robin using the Lazarus pits and and brings him back as a homicidal killer who sets off after the Joker for revenge. The fifth and final series sees Batman take on his most dangerous enemy Bane and even briefly see’s Batman put out of action when Bane cripples him before he manages to recover and defeat him once and for all.

The show remained consistently popular throughout its run regularly pulling in audiences of 7 million. Though its viewers had declined somewhat by its final series according to Moffat this was not the reason the show ended. He said that it had simply come to the end of its run and both he and the cast felt it was time to move on.

The show proved to be so successful that the BBC would produce a number of other series based on characters from DC comics which were set within the same canon as one another, creating the DCTVU.

Despite the series vast success in resurrecting the Bat Franchise there were still a number of strong criticisms of the series.

There were many complaints from hard core fans over a few strong deviations from the source material. Though the series did adapt many of the most celebrated Batman comics it also did make many big changes too. For instance Barbara Gordon become crippled without ever becoming Batgirl, whilst Dick Grayson was murdered by the Joker instead of Jason Todd, also this series established a definite identity for the Joker instead of leaving it open like the comic books.

There were also some complaints over the levels of violence in Batman as it was aimed mostly at a family audience. The scenes of the Joker murdering and crippling Commisioner Gordon’s family in particular drew heavy criticism from parents.

There were also many complaints of sexism levelled at Moffat. Many accused him of over sexualizing female characters like Catwoman and Poison Ivy, though those in defence of Moffat argued that his versions of Catwoman and Poison Ivy ere no more sexualized than those from the comic books.

Despite some of the controversy surrounding the series it is generally regarded as a classic and is arguably the most successful version of the Dark Knights exploits having been seen in over 200 countries around the world.

Personally I found this to be the best version of Batman in spite of some of its faults as ultimately I feel it was able to incorporated a wide range of stories from different era’s even if it did make some strong deviations from the. I think this was because it tended not to stick to one era or even style and thus was able to incorporate more than other adaptations of the dark knight.

Cast

Peter Serafinowicz/ Bruce Wayne/ Batman

Serafinowicz would have probably seemed like an unlikely choice for the caped crusader. He had been known for playing primarily comedic and villainous roles, but he ended up being the perfect choice for the Dark Knight.

With his imposing 6 foot 3 height and dark looks he looked every inch the perfect Bruce Wayne and his natural talents as a voice artist allowed him to create a distinctive voice for both Bruce Wayne and Batman which helped keep up the illusion of no one recognizing Batman in his civilian identity.

Serafinowicz managed to capture the quite and understated age of Batman’s character. I think that’s the key to Batman’s success. He certainly can’t be a jokey, light hearted character unless you are of course going for an out and out comedy like the Adam West series, but I don’t think you can make him a character who loses his cool all of the time and shouts and screams everywhere. He has to be a calm, restrained menacing character.

Sadly in later series Moffat somewhat limited Serafinowicz’s performance by having Batman constantly go on about what a psychopath he is and often give big speech’s to the criminals he fought about all of the things he had done which would be enough to drive them away. To me and many others this was when the series started to go wrong. It is true that Batman is possibly mentally unbalanced due to the fact he you know dresses up as a bat and beats people up in the middle of the night.

Still though Batman’s lunacy again works best when its understated. Crazy people don’t know they are crazy so its best to have Batman if he is somewhat unbalanced not mention it. Having him go around saying “I’m crazy but I’m on the side of justice” just completely destroys that idea. Also it is true that Batman was somewhat undermined in the later years of his own series for Barbara Gordon/Oracle who would often think up the solutions instead of him.

Still despite these problems I think Serafinowic always gave a good performance and I’d rank him as the best Batman overall.

David Tennant/ The Joker

David Tennant was really the perfect Joker. He captured all of the characters main qualities superbly, his unpredictability, his dark, twisted sense of humour, his bitter, petty hatred of Batman and most incredibly of all he was even able to inject some sympathy into the character too. His scenes as the pre accident Joker who is given the same origin as in The Killing Joke are among the most powerful in the whole series, but by far and away his crowning moment is the scene where he is driven insane and becomes the Joker we all know.

Tennant’s Joker was the most recurring villain in the series. He first appears in the Episode “One Bad Day” which features his transformation after which he then returns towards the end of the first series in an attempt to gas Gotham. After being foiled by Batman he then returns as the main villain of the second series which follows his attempts to try and get revenge on Batman for upstaging him. He also serves as the main villain of the third series when he brings anarchy to Gotham and is a major recurring enemy throughout series 4 and 5.

Tennant’s Joker was arguably the most popular character in the series though despite this he was often also at the centre of much controversy due to the fact that many episodes he was featured in were often more violent. Also many fans felt he suffered from overuse too.

Naomie Harris/ Catwoman

Arguably the most polarizing character in the entire series. Catwoman riled many fans up the wrong way for many reasons. To start with many fans felt that she undermined Batman by constantly upstaging him and outsmarting him, others meanwhile felt that she was a sexist portrayal of the character. Catwoman’s origin in this series was that she was always a somewhat timid and weak willed person who became inspired to be Catwoman after she saw Batman. In her mind Batman was someone who took the law into his own hands and had managed to get away with it.

Many felt this demeaned an otherwise strong character by essentially making her existence all revolve around Batman as had it not been for him then she would never have become Catwoman.

Others also felt that Catwoman was far too overly sexualized too, with her making quips about enjoying S and M with Batman and also at one point suggesting she and Harley Quinn had a threesome.

Others meanwhile found the character empowering as she was given a considerably more heroic role here than in many other adaptations and even helped Batman defeat many other villains such as the Joker in the season 2 finale.

Others also argued that Catwoman having been created by Batman was not sexist as that had been a long running theme in Batman that he created villains such as the Joker.

As for what I think about Catwoman, well I have never been that big a fan of the character to be honest. I always found her rather weak as a villain and we all know I find femme fatale’s who use their womanly wiles to bedazzle male heroes to be something of a poor and dated cliche. Still I do like Naomie Harris as an actress a lot and I think Moffat actually did a good job of fleshing Catwoman out a bit more than other version by making her more of a lovable anti hero. I do agree though that her dialogue got a little bit cringey the way she was always flirting with everybody. I am pretty sure there wasn’t one line of dialogue she had in season 2 that wasn’t a flirtation of some kind.

Charles Dance/ Ra’s Al Ghul

One of the series best villains, Dance was the perfect choice for the role of Batman’s most dangerous enemy. In contrast to Tennant’s scenery chewing, hyperactive psychopath, Dance’s Ghul was restrained, calm, icey manipulative villain. He also looked the part too. Unlike the Joker as well Ghul also did not suffer from over use. Though the ending of his story did hint that he had survived thankfully he never appeared in the series again, though he did make appearances in other series with the DCTVU fortunately he was always used sparingly.

Steve Pemberton/ The Penguin

Steve Pemberton’s version of the Penguin took its cues more from the Tim Burton version than the original comic book incarnation. This version of the Penguin was portrayed as a grotesque, violent, sadistic psychopath. Pemberton apparently based his performances on characters from old horror movies such as Bela Lugosi’s performance as Iygor. Though some fans felt that this was not true to the character from the source material, but I found Pembeton’s performance lots of fun none the less. I liked the way he made the Penguin into a truly disgusting character. There was nothing even remotely charming or likable or even charismatic about his version of the character, he was loathsome right to his very core.

Karen Gillan/ Poison Ivy

The perfect Poison Ivy, except her accent. For some reason Moff let her keep her Scots accent so we got a Scottish Poison Ivy. Still that aside Gillan feels like she was almost born to play the role as she is such a good fit for it in terms of personality and appearance. Of course again some people accused Moffat of sexualizing the character, but I think its fair to say that Poison Ivy has always been somewhat sexualized.

Paloma Faith/ Harley Quinn

Harley Quinn in my opinion was the best female villain in the series. Steven Moffat got her characterisation down perfectly and Paloma was just superb in the role. She gave her an eerie, childlike persona that brought a real sinister edge to the character. I liked the way they didn’t try and soften Harley up. This version of Harley was every bit as dangerous and unhinged as the Joker himself was and had several episodes on her own against Batman.

Matt Berry/ Basil Karlo

One of my absolute favourite villains and one of my favourite performances in the series too. This series used the original version of Clayface who lacked superpowers and merely used tricks to commit crimes, though later episodes would give Karlo powers anyway.

There was a touch of Vincent Price in Theatre of Blood to Matt’s versionn of Karlo I always thought as he much like Price’s character in that film is depicted as an awful, hammy over the top actor who gets revenge on his critics in the most vicious ways possible. You can tell that Berry had lots of fun with the part.

Brian Blessed/Bane

A somewhat odd choice for the character, Brian nevertheless with his distinctive voice really helped to give the character a lot of personality and menace. This was a more restrained performance from Brian who tended to underplay Bane in a lot of scenes portraying him as a more cold, calculating menace, though at other moments when the character was enraged he did a fair bit of shouting.

Julian Barratt/ The Riddler

One of my fave villains in the series. Normally the Riddler is a villain that leaves me quite cold. He’s often present as just another version of the Joker, another cackling, insane villain, except he is not quite as effective. This version of the character was more presented as a neurotic, petty, insecure little man who was desperate to prove he was smarter than Batman. I felt this really allowed the Riddler to become his own unique villain more than in other adaptations and Barrat was the perfect choice for what was essentially Howard Moon gone bad. A petty, frustrated little man who thinks he is smarter than everyone else but isn’t nearly as clever as he thinks he is.

Colin Baker/ Rupert Thorne

The main villain of the first series, Colin was a natural for this choice. He’s always good as a villain or an anti hero and then there is of course his rather obvious presence too. Rupert Thorne is often overlooked because he is less colourful than some of Batmans other rogues but I have always found him to be a very interesting character who takes Batman back to his roots as a predator of criminals and Colin really captured his blustering arrogance. It was great watching Thorne get taken down by Batman in the end when he thought no one could touch him.

Mark Gatiss/ Mr Freeze

In contrast to many of the previous adaptations of the character this version of Mr Freeze was portrayed as a much more villainous character. Many fans think this was Moffat wanting to disassociate the series from Batman and Robin as much as possible.

Gatiss’s Mr Freeze was portrayed more like Peter Cushing as Victor Frankenstein a ruthless scientist who would stop at nothing to see his experiments succeed. In his final appearance which many fans including this blogger consider to be his greatest he is shown to slowly rot away and desperately tries to find a way to save his own life which ultimately fails making him one of the few villains to actually die in the series.

The Mad Hatter/ Sylvester McCoy

The Mad Hatter has always been a fairly dull villain in my opinion. With a fairly one note gimmick, and no motivation I think this series did a fairly neat job of making almost like Batman’s version Mxlypitlik a trickster who more enjoys causing mischief but is not absolute evil like say the Joker. The casting of McCoy was a total master stroke too.

Two Face/ Reece Shearsmith

One of my favourite villains Two Face was arguably the most faithful to his comic book incarnation of all the shows main villains. They even managed to stick in his intense hatred of the Joker too. Reece Shearsmith though again primarily known for his comedic roles was superb at capturing the characters psychotic rage and split personality.

Michelle Gomez/ Red Claw

A relatively obscure Batman villain, Red Claw was nevertheless a welcome addition to the show as she gave us a villain who didn’t have any romantic interest in Batman of any kind and was also a much larger threat too. It was really Gomez’s delightfully over the top, deliciously evil performance however that made what had previously been such a minor villain a firm fan favourite.

Robert Carlyle/ The Scarecrow

Fittingly one of the shows most frightening villains Carlyle’s Scarecrow was actually a more sympathetic figure who initially murders a man who sexually assaulted his young lab assistant using his fear gas. Though his initial victim is the lowest of the low its still quite a chilling scene as we watch the Scarecrow brutally torture him to death using his fear gas which he uses to make him believe that he is being eaten alive by rats. The rest of the episode sees Batman try and figure out who the killer is whilst the Scarecrow tries to cover his tracks and even frame an innocent man for the crime. Eventually he is caught and vows revenge on Batman for ruining his life and later escapes to try and get revenge on him. I liked the way this version showed us what a miserable coward the Scarecrow was. That was the great thing about the Scarecrow the huge irony of this weak, pathetic little man who obsessed with fear, and scaring other people.

Bernard Cribbins/ Alfred Pennyworth

Good old reliable Bernard Cribbins was superb as Alfred. He and Serafinocwiz had brilliant chemistry together though sadly Alfred was never really given that much to do in the series apart from one episode which focused on his character.

Peter Capaldi/ Commissioner Gordon

Definitely the best realized version of this iconic character outside of the comics. In most other versions Gordon is portrayed as a bumbling idiot who is entirely dependent on Batman such as in the Burton movies. Here however thanks to both Moff’s characterisation and Capaldi’s deep and nuanced performance they were able to make one of the shows most well developed and interesting characters in the series run.

Tommy Knight/ Robin/Dick Grayson

Robin has never been that popular a character among general fandom. The annoying teen that knows everything and is always ready for a fight. Its like Scrappy Doo and Wesley Crusher combined! Still I think this show did a not bad job with the character. Unlike a lot of other fans I actually liked it that they changed it so that Dick Grayson was the one who was killed by the Joker instead as I felt that made it more unexpected as had it been Jason then you would have known what way it was going, but with Dick I personally did find it shocking when Batman pulled his corpse out of the fire. I also think that Tommy did a good job of showing how dark and brutal he had become after he came back from the grave.

Michelle Keegan/ Barbara Gordon

Probably the least popular character in the series, I must confess to not being that big a fan of this version of Barbara Gordon either. It wasn’t to do with Michelle Keegan who is a fine actress it was to do with how she was written.

This version of Barbara never became Batgirl. Instead she discovered Batman’s secret identity by herself and later became Oracle after being crippled by the Joker. Oracle following the death of Robin would become Batman’s main sidekick throughout the rest of the series. Now I had no problems with Oracle being made his sidekick instead of Robin. I felt it offered up a fresh take on the Bat story.

Sadly however this was where a lot of there problems with her began. It very soon became the Oracle show with her funny sidekick Batman. She often was the one who came up with the solutions to all of their problems and she was often written in an unbearably smug way, plus like Catwoman a lot of her dialogue was often just her flirting with people. I think the problem was that Moffat let the sexist criticisms get to him and tried to overcompensate by making Batgirl the centre of attention and the one who solved all of the problems of the series.

Still at the same time it was good to see Oracle get some exposure as it is often her alter ego Batgirl who gets all the attention and personally I find Oracle to be a much more interesting character anyway, but sadly this version of her did end up overshadowing the main character far too much.

Top 10 Episodes

10/ The Fury of Victor Freeze

The final episode to feature Mr Freeze is also arguably the best. I felt that this episode channelled the Doctor Who story Talons of Weng Chiang in that we had a deformed menace working from an underground lair trying to find a way for his final experiment to succeed. Once again there are shades of Peter Cushing as Victor Frankenstein as well as we see Gatiss’s Freeze near the end of his life comment on how if he can just get it right once then every sacrifice will have been worthwhile including his own life. Gatiss is on top form here as he manages to make us pity Freeze in spite of everything he has done when he finally decays into nothing.

9/ Batman’s Greatest Fear

The second appearance of the Scarecrow in the series this episode has a fairly straight forward story of the Scarecrow just simply trying to get back at Batman, but its elevated greatly by Robert Carlyle’s performance I liked the way that the Scarecrow takes no responsibility for his own actions. He blames Batman arguing that all he did was kill an evil man but Batman put him in prison anyway and ruined his career and research. There are some really creepy moments like when the Scarecrow’s fear gas causes Batman to see some gargoyles come to life in the large church they are fighting in the end.

8/ This One’ll Kill You

One of the better Joker episodes this is the first episode where he is a villain and it doesn’t disappoint. There is a wonderful recreation of the moment from the Dark Knight Returns where the Joker gasses a television audience. David Tennant steals every single scene he is in, though the best moments are definitely when Peter Serafinowicz and David Tennant share the screen together. Their chemistry and relationship is just fabulous to watch.

7/ The Demons Head

This two parter which introduces Ra’s Al Ghul is a fairly faithful adaptation of his original appearance in the comic books. Dance is just the perfect Ghul in every way. He brings so much, class, menace and charm to the villain. Even though we all know the story by now the first time you watch you still at times almost think you can trust Ra’s because of how Dance plays it.

6/ Down the Rabbit Hole

A fun episode that basically just involves The Mad Hatter fucking with Batman in weird and crazy ways using his mind control techniques. Its similar to the Scarecrow episode only its more whimsical and McCoys performance really makes it a classic.

5/ Karlo’s Revenge

This episode is essentially a remake of Theatre of Blood with Matt Berry in the Edward Lionheart role. Here Karlo tracks down all the people who he believes ruined his career and kills them using methods people died in his old horror movies. Its one of the more outrageous entries in the series and Matt Berry has tremendous fun hamming it up as Karlo. He is probably the most flamboyant, over the top villain in the series and that’s saying a lot.

4/ Best Served Cold

Freeze’s first appearance in the series. A lot of fans were annoyed that this series ditched the tragic back  story and made him a totally villainous character, but I preferred that to be honest. I think I had had enough of Freeze moping about his wife and I think there are only so many stories you can do about the tragic Freeze and Gatiss who is something of a horror buff really brings a Colin Cliver/ Peter Cushing/ Basil Rathbone quality to the character.

3/ Harley and Ivy

The classic double act makes its debut in this episode. There isn’t really much of a reason for Harley and Ivy to team up with each other, but it doesn’t matter as the chemistry between Faith and Gillan is great. Gillan serves as the straight man or woman rather in their double act with Paloma being delightfully bonkers, though at the same time I like the way they don’t tone down either Ivy or Harley. They are both still shown to be unhinged and dangerous sociopath’s.

2/ Joker’s Five Way Revenge

Based on the comic book of the same name, this episode drew huge complaints from fans when it first aired due to the levels of violence such as the scene where the Joker brutally tortures one of his former henchmen who betrayed him to death. This episode also introduces Harley Quinn who is shown to have helped him escape from Arkham at the start of the episode. Her origin is expanded on later in the series. Whilst this episode was controversial it was ultimately one of the most popular and even today I’d say that it is absolutely terrifying. In contrast to other episodes Tennant tends to underplay the Joker more as we see a more scheming side of the clown prince of crime though there are still plenty of classic moments of Joker insanity too.

1/ One Bad Day

The best episode in the series this episode adapts Frank Millers origin for the Joker. The episode is split between Batman trying to track the Red Hood gang, and a struggling comedian trying to support his family. At the end of the episode the two stories come together when the comedian named Jack ends up working for the red hood gang and just before he has to carry out the robbery which leads to him falling into the vat of chemicals his wife is killed in accident. David Tennant’s performance is absolutely superb in this story. He is able to switch between the vulnerable, loving and sweet Jack and the maniacal Joker at the end so superbly its terrifying. I found this birth of the Joker much more effective than Jack Nicholson’s. With Jack’s though it was of course well acted, his character was already a monster before he became the Joker. Really the only difference between after he becomes the Joker is that  he is more flamboyant. With Tennant however Jack is portrayed as the last person you could ever imagine playing the Joker and its probably the highlight for me when we see Jack emerge from the lake screaming in agony only to catch his own reflection in the lake and burst into a fit of maniacal laughter. Its Tennant’s best performance in the series by far.

Thank you for reading.

Dan Dare and Flash Gordon are two of the most iconic and influential comic book characters.

They have helped to shape science fiction itself across many different mediums for more than half a century. Everything from Doctor Who, to Star Wars, to Superman owes a lot to Dan Dare and Flash Gordon.

Flash Gordon originally began in 1934. It was created by Alex Raymond. The premise revolved around Flash Gordon, a yale University Graduate and Polo player, as well as a young woman named Dale Arden and a scientist named Dr Hans Zarkov and their adventures on the planet Mongo.

Their adventures begin when Mongo threatens to collide with the earth. Zarkov who is at that point half insane, captures Flash and Arden to help him use his rocket to travel to the planet to prevent the collision.

Once there though they manage to stop the collision, they soon come into conflict with the evil tyrant Ming the Merciless, who falls in love with Arden. The trio battle against the ruthless despot with the aid of several of the planets people, including Prince Vultan ruler of the Hawkmen, and Prince Thun leader of the Lion men.

Eventually Ming is overthrown and later issues would see Flash battle new enemies and travel to many other planets.

Dan Dare began in April in 1950. It was created by Frank Hampson. It was set in the then future of the 1990’s. It revolved around the space pilot Dan Dare and his team which consisted of his batman, the slow witted but well meaning Digby and the scientist Professor Joceyln Peapody.

In their first adventure they travelled to the planet Venus where they encountered the evil Treens, cold, logical, ruthless and xenophobic creatures who plan to invade and conquer humanity. Dare convinces the Therons, the blonde peaceful inhabitants of the planet to help him fight against the Treens, who are ruled by the monstrous Mekon. A creature with a vast intellect and an atrophied body.

After Dare and his men leave Venus they go on many more adventures, battling various threats and monsters until Dare is forced to travel to the planet Cryptos to help its people against the evil Phants. Dan is away for 10 years and when he finally returns to earth he discovers that the Mekon and the Treens have conquered the planet with the aid of their new robotic servants. Dare frees the earth from the Mekon who escapes back into space. The Mekon vows revenge and continues to battle Dare across many subsequent issues. Though Dare had many other enemies such as the evil Xel. The Mekon was by far his most recurring and iconic.

Both strips in their heyday were massive successes, though of the two of them Flash Gordon had a much bigger life outside of the comic book medium. There has sadly never been a live action version of Dan Dare, whilst there have been many serials, films and television series base on Flash Gordon.

Still both characters remain sci fi and cultural icons, and over the years they have often been compared to on another, with many seeing Dan Dare as being the British Flash Gordon. Such comparisons are valid to some extent, as Flash Gordon along with Buck Rodgers was the greatest influence on Dan Dare.

In this article I will be comparing them as well as their supporting characters and adversaries side by side to see which I find to be superior.

vs

Obviously I mean Dan Dare vs Flash Gordon rather than Elton John vs Queen.

Best Archenemy: The Mekon vs Ming the Merciless

The Mekon

Ming The Merciless

The Mekon is Dan Dare’s archenemy. He is a genius with a massive enlarged head and a body that has become so weak, he has to fly around on a levitating chair.

He is the tyrannical ruler of the Treens, a race of green skinned Venusians who rely solely on logic. Though the Mekon claims to be above petty human emotions, he is nevertheless shown to develop a personal hatred of Dare and eventually becomes obsessed with destroying him.

The Mekon was something of an intergalactic fuhrer figure as the Treens were based very heavily on the Nazi’s. The Mekon would go on to inspire other villains including most notably Davros, the evil creator of the Daleks in Doctor Who.

Not only was Davros’s character based on the Mekon but his design was too. Many fans over the years have said that Davros is essentially the closest thing to a live action Mekon there has been.

He should have shot Davros but that’s besides the point.

The Mekon also inspired other Doctor Who villains such as the Cyber Controller and Sil. Sil’s basic look, a repulsive little green monster with a big head and an atrophied body is obviously similar to the Mekon. The Cyber controller meanwhile was originally intended to be a small creature with an enlarged head, that flew around like the Mekon, but the budget would not allow it. He was still given a large brain like the Mekon however.

The Cyber controllers large brain was based on the Mekon’s look. Kit Pedler, the creator of the Cybermen was a massive Dan Dare fan and hoped that the Cyber controller would serve as a Mekon like figure to the Doctor, a figure head to the race of monsters he regularly fought who was a nemesis for the Doctor. Ironically whilst the Cyber Controller never really took off (he only appeared in one more story 2 decades later) the Daleks would gain a Mekon like figure in the form of Davros.

Ming the Merciless Flash Gordon’s archenemy was a much more human character than the Mekon. I think the differences between the Mekon and Ming sum up the differences between villains in American science fiction and British science fiction quite nicely.

In British Science fiction series like Doctor Who, the villains tend to be monsters like the Daleks, the Cybermen, and even Davros who though humanoid is still a monster too.

In American science fiction however they tend to be more human. Look at the aliens in Star Trek like the Klingons and the Romulans for instance, and then compare them to say the Daleks. Even in later Star Trek series, aliens like the Cardassians look and act completely human. They just basically have bumpy foreheads.

Naturally Ming therefore is more human, not only in terms of appearance but in terms of characterisation too. Ming is madly in love with Dale Arden and frequently attempts to marry her despite the fact that she finds him utterly abhorrent.

Ming rules over the planet Mongo with an iron fist and all of the early Flash Gordon strips involved Flash and his allies trying to overthrow him, or having to rescue Dale from his clutches. Eventually he was overthrown, but not only would he return as a recurring enemy in later stories, but his son the evil Kang would also go on to become a major foe of Flash Gordon too.

Ming has appeared in virtually all adaptations of Flash Gordon. Arguably his most famous portrayals however are Charles B Middelton’s performance in the original Flash Gordon serials, and Max Von Sydow’s performance in the 1980 film adaptation.

Max Von Sydow in the 1980 Flash Gordon film.

Much like the Mekon, Ming would go on to inspire other iconic villains in popular culture. Star Wars villains Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine were both, according George Lucas based very heavily on Ming the Merciless.

So which is better then? Well for me it has to be the Mekon. I must admit I have never been that keen on villains whose whole thing is that they are in love with the main hero or the heroes love interest.

To me they always come across as a bit more pathetic than villains like the Mekon who has much bigger plans than just to steal the heroes girlfriend.

With the Mekon and Dan Dare you had two characters with completely different ideals to one another, and so their rivalry for me had more scope, than fighting over a girl.

Of course that’s not to completely dismiss Ming, who is obviously a good foe in a number of other ways for Flash, but I think the Mekon overall is a much better character. I think the proof of that is the fact that the Mekon in some ways completely overshadowed Dan Dare himself in terms of popularity with readers.

Elton John even jokes about this in his song about Dan Dare “Dan Dare doesn’t know it, he doesn’t know it, but I like the Mekon”. It was also the Mekon who appeared in Empire’s list of greatest comic book characters not Dare.

I don’t think you can say that Ming was ever really more popular than Flash and many Flash Gordon strips even replaced Ming as the main villain. Obviously Ming is still an iconic villain, but ultimately I think that the Mekon made a bigger impact among readers.

Anyone who is my age, in their early 20’s, ask your parents about Dan Dare and I guarantee the thing they will remember the most, possibly the only thing they will remember is the Mekon.

So I am giving this to Dan Dare.

DD 1 FG 0

Best Iconic Alien Race. The Treens vs The Hawkmen

The Treens

The Hawkmen (obviously)

The Treens were the main villains in the Dan Dare strip. They were Venusians whose emotions had been repressed. They looked at things in a very cold and logical manner. At the same time they were also xenophobic and looked on all other races in the universe as inferior to them. They wished to conquer all other life forms and despite being emotionless, they gloried in crushing lesser races.

The Treens were a huge inspiration on Doctor Who’s 3 main villains The Daleks, The Cybermen and The Sontarans.

Like the Daleks they are xenophobic, ruthless monsters who seek to conquer other races.

The first two Dalek stories where greatly inspired by early Dare stories too. The first Dalek story saw the Doctor and his companions land on Skaro, the home planet of the Daleks where there are two races the Daleks, evil, cold, logical, yet xenophobic monsters who live in a city surrounded by a lake of monsters and the peaceful and blonde Thals, who the Doctor must convince to fight back against the Daleks, but who are reluctant to due to a previous conflict. This is a similar premise to the first Dan Dare strip Voyage to Venus where the Treens, evil, cold, logical, yet xenophobic monsters who live in a city surrounded by a lake of monsters, are planning to unleash their weapon on the earth, and Dan must convince the blonde and peaceful Therons to help him fight them, when they don’t want to due to a previous conflict.

The Dalek Invasion of Earth meanwhile was inspired by the Dan Dare strip The Reign of the Robots which sees the Mekon and the Treens conquer earth in Dare’s absence, and rule it with the aid of robots. The Mekon controls the robots through a speaker in his chair, which one of Dan’s friends manages to take control of and give new orders to turn on each other. In the Dalek Invasion of Earth the Doctor discovers that the Daleks have invaded the earth in his absence, and they rule it with the aid of robotized humans, whom the Dalek Supreme controls through a speaker. One of the Doctors companions then takes control of the speaker and gives the robomen new orders “turn on the Daleks” which leads to the end of their invasion.

Both stories also use the monsters as metaphors for the Nazi’s and almost use them to present a “What If” scenario where Germany won the Second World war. We see British citizens rounded up into concentration camps, talks of horrific experiments on them and stormtroopers (in the daleks case actually performing the Nazi salute!) marching down familiar London landmarks.

The Cybermen’s cold and logical nature meanwhile was based very closely on the Treens too. Dr Kit Pedler who created the Cybermen has said that the Cybermen “were very like the Treens”. Also the first Cyberman story The Tenth Planet is based very closely on another Dan Dare strip The Red Moon Mysteery, though this does not feature the Treens as the main villains.

Finally the Sontarans love for war as well as their appearance was also based on the Treens too.

It is also worth noting that a benevolent Treen that works alongside Dare is even called Sondar!

The Hawkmen meanwhile are residents of the planet Mongo. They live in a city called the Sky city that hovers in the air as a result of anti gravity beams. They are commanded by Vultan, a barrel cheasted viking with a fondness for the ladies and fine food. He also has several wives.

Initially the Hawkmen start out as enemies of Gordon, but after Dr Zarkov saves their city, they become his allies and play a major role in overthrowing Ming. They have appeared in most adaptations of Flash Gordon over the years, though arguably their most famous portrayal is in the 1980 Flash Gordon film where Vultan was played by Brian Blessed.

Whilst there have been many aliens and monsters in Flash Gordon and Dan Dare these two races are without doubt the most iconic.

But which is better? Its a tough choice, but I think I am going to go with the Treens.

The Hawkmen are a brilliant creation. They are also without doubt one of the most absurd alien races in anything, but Flash Gordon is something that always has to have a certain camp quality to it.

Definitely the greatest moment in the 80’s film adaptation of Flash Gordon is when the Hawkmen attack the Ajax spaceship.

They had a viking Brian Blessed leading them and Queen performing their battle music. Of course they were going to win!

Vultan has gone on to become arguably Brian Blessed’s most iconic role. Apparently the Queen herself is a fan of Flash Gordon and when she met Brian Blessed, she even asked him to perform Vultans most iconic line “Gordon’s alive”.

Still despite having the advantage of Brian Blessed, I am still going to go with the Treens as I feel they are more important in the history of science fiction.

Its not just simply because they inspired the likes of the Daleks, the Treens I think were really the first aliens who had a vast empire. They didn’t simply rule over one planet, and they weren’t simply invaders like the Martians in War of the Worlds whose life and society we knew nothing about.

They were a full fleshed out society of alien invaders and in this respect were really the forebears of not only the likes of the Daleks, but the Klingons too.

Therefore I am giving this one also to Dare.

DD 2 FG 0

Best Badguy Turned Goodguy: Sondar vs  Princes Aura

Sondar

Princess Aura

Sondar is definitely the type of alien that Tom Baker would fight, whilst Princess Aura is definitely the type of alien that William Shatner would “fight”.

Sondar and Auroa both initially work for the main villains of the strip, The Mekon and Ming the Merciless. Aura is in fact Ming’s daughter. However ultimately both end up becoming allies of the main hero. Dare helps Sondar to stop repressing his emotions like the rest of his kind, whilst Aura falls in love with Flash and ultimately ends up betraying her father.

Now this time I am going to go with Flash Gordon. I think Aura had more of a character than Sondar. In some ways she was a bit cliched, but still I think it was quite interesting watching how she went from an evil villain, to a benevolent ruler after her father was overthrown.

Sondar however whilst he was quite an interesting idea., that was in some ways ahead of its time (a logical alien among a crew of humans.) Ultimately I don’t think he ever really had much of a personality so I am giving this to Flash.

DD 2 FG 1

Best Female Companion: Professor Peabody vs Dale Arden

Peabody

Dale

This one I am definitely giving to Dan Dare.

Dale is a decent enough love interest, and is more than capable of taking care of herself.

Peabody on the other hand however is a super genius, and regularly plays a key role in helping to save Dare and the others. Though she is the only woman in the group at no point is she portrayed as weaker, or less capable than they are.

Whilst she may no be as iconic, I am definitely going to rate Peabody above Dale.

DD 3 FG 1

Best Older Companion: Digby vs Dr Hans Zarkov

Digby

Zarkov

To me there is not really any competition here. Flash Gordon easily takes this. I did like Digby, but again much like Sondar he never really had much of a character beyond being the idiot savant of the group. Zarkov once again I think not only went through some more development, starting out as a somewhat villainous character, but I also found him to be a much more interesting as a character anyway. He is that classic mad scientist as opposed to just simply being a bit of a lovable oaf like Digby. Flash takes this.

DD 3 FG 2

Best Main Hero: Dan Dare vs Flash Gordon

Dan

Flash

Final round which of the two main characters is better.

Well this is a hard one. On the one hand I found Dan to be a bit more likable at times. Dan is a hero much like the Doctor in the sense that he is not only the perfect gentleman, but he also prefers a non violent means to solving his problems.

However at the same time I think that Dan could perhaps be a bit more straightforward than Flash. At times he seemed like a bit too much of a stiff upper lip type of hero who never does anything wrong and always has the answers.

Ultimately I think I found Flash to be slightly more interesting as a hero as he was more human, in spite of how larger than life he was, so ultimately I am going to go with Flash here which makes our final score.

DD 3 FG 3

I guess it was just too hard for me to pick who was superior between these two sci fi icons. As you can see I prefer the monsters and villains in Dan Dare, but I find the main characters of Flash Gordon more interesting. I think that most people would agree with me on that as Dan Dare regularly changed its supporting characters unlike Flash, whilst at the same time Flash had many enemies aside from Ming, whilst the Mekon remained Dan’s sole recurring enemy for many years.

Overall both are classics and whilst I like certain things about one better than the other, ultimately I am for the first time ever unable to decide so I am calling this a draw.

Who I Would Cast In A Flash Gordon Movie

Flash Gordon/ Chris Pratt

Not the most imaginative casting as he played a similar role in Guardians of the Galaxy, but still dye his hair blonde and he’d be a great Flash.

Ming the Merciless/Charles Dance

I don’t think I need to explain this?

Dale Arden/ Jennifer Lawrence

Again I don’t think I have to explain this? You can increase the enjoyment of anything by 50 percent if you include Jennifer Lawrence in it.

Princess Aura/ Eliza Dushku

I don’t think she would struggle too much with this role as the exotically beautiful sympathetic villainous character who eventually turns good?

Prince Vultan/Matt Berry

Who else to play this big mighty, boisterous, woman obsessed character who shouts a lot?

Doctor Hans Zarkov/ Kelsey Grammer

I could definitely see him capturing the characters manic and pompous qualities no problem.

Who I Would Cast In A Dan Dare Film

Dan Dare/ Michael Fassbender

He’d be dashing and gentlemanly enough, plus he has that big massive chin.

Professor Peabody/ Katie McGrath

Yeah I know obvious choice isn’t it? It might be quite nice to see her get a chance to play a heroic character, and she’d get to keep her naturally blonde hair.

Digsby/ Nick Frost

Quite a good comedy actor and quite a good match for Digsby in my opinion. He’s maybe a bit too young for Digby, but still with some make up he could play the role.

Voice of the Treens, Sondar/ Nicholas Briggs

Nicholas Briggs performs the voices for the Daleks, the Cybermen, the Ice Warriors, the Nestene and the Zygons in the 2005 Doctor Who series. I am sure he could provide a suitably unique and sinister voice for the Treens too.

The Mekon/ Simon Templeman

Yeah I know again not a big surprise. Obviously I’d cast him in anything.  Imagine this voice.

Coming out of this face

It would be a perfect combo for a villain.