INTRODUCTION

It wasn’t until Hampson’s death (1985) that the first rumours about ‘lost’ characters began to surface. They came from Hampson’s life-long assistant Joan Porter, who reported that Frank had created a number of strips which remained unpublished.

No-one knew where the strips were lodged, nor how to find them. After a long search it transpired that comic enthusiast Milton Finesilver, an ex-staffer of Longacre Press (publishers of Eagle) had made copies of them, when he worked there in the 1960’s.

1960’s photocopying meant making a negative from the original, then making a positive from the negative. Result, less than satisfactory. So by the time Milton’s copies of copies reached us, they were folded and faded.

In the late 1990’s artist Tony Evershed spent painful hours restoring them to what you see here. Milton told me he returned Frank’s portfolio containing the original art to Longacre’s art vaults. Not long afterwards it disappeared.

How did the strips arrive here? I sent them to friend and enthusiast Wakefield Carter who suggested he could post them on the Internet, and we agreed in 2005 to set up this site.

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A POLYPHOTO of FrankHampson
as he looked in 1950. Joan
Porter took several sheets of
these polyphotos which were
used as references (to capture
expressions and the source of
light) when drawing the Dan
Dare strip.

Studio Assistant Joan Porter as
she was in 1950 Porter stayed
with Hampson throughout Dan
Dare and (after the studio
system ended) did research
and colouring on The Road of
Courage.