Dan Dare, Fascism and Punk
These are things that I think we've lost, Prime Minister. That Britain has lost. And ever since Space Fleet and the UN fell apart, and the very idea of international cooperation went under, that's exactly what our nation has done: lost.
I first encountered the British space comic icon Dan Dare briefly and late in its Eagle incarnation, the 1967 and 68 Eagle Annuals to be exact, when the stories were atypically short and both the writing and artwork poor quality (the 1968 Annual has one of the worst storylines ever committed to paper: space microbes destroy Earth's entire space fleet with invisible ships. They're invisible because they're so tiny! buttheyhavefullsizelaserbeamsohnevermind.) I never read either the 1950s Frank Hampton version, with the long storylines and the Mekon, or the 1977 2000AD version, or the 1980s Eagle version, or the 1990 Grant Morrison political spoof or ...
(Warning: spoilers for the Garth Ennis 2008 Dan Dare graphic novel)
But I was always fascinated with the character because of those brief glimpses, so when I saw the trade paperback for the 2008 Garth Ennis reboot of the series, I figured I had to get it just to see how they pulled off the update. I'm already reading the Dynamite Comics Buck Rogers and loving it; Dan Dare seemed like a logical companion.
And it turns out I'm glad I did. I'm not generally a fan of Ennis' other work - like most of the rest of the Gen-X comic writers now running the big studios, there's a bleakness and ultraviolence that I just can't get into. But it seems he does have a human side and shows it in this story.
The 1950s Dan Dare was a fairly generic British 'space hero', an Air Force-ish pilot (sort of Biggles in space), leading exploration teams for the 'Interplanet Space Fleet' answerable to the United Nations, and generally doing whatever needed done to save the day. The Ennis Dare is a retired war hero in a Navy story somewhere between Conrad, Kipling, and WW2. It's a very different genre of space opera, but for what it is, it works brilliantly.
Ennis has a brilliant touch for natural dialogue, and almost all of the supporting characters are human and likeable (he even gives Digby dignity, possibly a first ever for Dan Dare). It's complimented with Gary Erskine's wonderfully nuanced and emotive line drawings of characters usually showing multiple conflicted emotions: the beautiful Professor Jocelyn Peabody, now Home Secretary to a world-dominating Britain, but privately anguished and torn by the amoral Prime Minister she serves; the PM himself radiating an inner horror at the secrets and lies he conceals; a young ship's sub-lieutenant abruptly promoted to acting Captain, uncertain of herself and forced to make lightning ethical decisions that could doom a whole fleet unless she disobeys orders; the Mekon, by turns proud, emotionless and full of rage; and Dare himself, calm and focused in the heat of battle yet quietly grieving a lost age; only losing his composure when he suffers a terrible personal loss. It's all there on the page and works like a novel.
It's clear that to Ennis, Dan Dare represents the lost heroic spirit of Britain (coming reverently at the 1950s material by way of Morrison's bleak dystopian punk take) - almost an Arthur figure, the exiled warrior waiting to return when called upon. The whole book is a hymn to militaries everywhere. We cheer when the heroes stand firm against impossible odds, and boo at the sneering civilians who have no faith in their military and keep undercutting and betraying them in every way. Dare shrugs at the military hierarchy, jumps into the first place in combat, stares down Admirals and gives on-the-spot promotions to junior officers who he's seen 'at the sharp end' and trusts. These are not just people we like - these are people we want to be like.
And yet. Turn the picture sideways, and suddenly things get a bit scarier. Because what Ennis has written is also, if you look at it again, pretty much entirely a piece of propaganda in a rather nasty vein - and one that doesn't even actually make sense when you put it into today's political context, in which it's very clearly meant to be read.
The Prime Minister, as all high-ranking civilians must be in this kind of epic war-poem, is evil. Of course he's evil, he's a civilian who does not trust the military. He's sold out the world to the Mekon, out of sheer fear and cowardice (mixed with the reasonable logic that the world could be saved much bloodshed if we just went along with the invasion rather than uselessly fighting it.) He literally sends the fleet to their doom and plans to rule Earth as an alien subordinate. He's simultaneously a Quisling, a Chamberlain, and on the other side of the WW2 propaganda line, he embodies the German Dolchstoss legend - the civilian who 'stabs the military in the back' even as they are victorious. Three in one! Ticking all the boxes.
There are subtleties to this, of course; Britain is actually the sole world hyperpower (China and America having destroyed themselves) and the dream of a united world is long past. So the Prime Minister betrays from a position of strength, not weakness. But his treachery is still primarily against the military. It's the Navy - and Dare - who he has to destroy to pave the way for the Mekon. He's a pacifist at heart because he does not dare to fight, seeks a negotiated solution which is always and only weakness and failure of nerve - ultimately, negotiation in this type of story (unless you're using it as a trick to smuggle a weapon aboard the enemy's ship) is always a moral evil.
This is where I get that weird tingle of propaganda deja vu: the evil pacifist caricature, verging on blood libel (pacifists literally want to kill people - yes, it makes no sense, but that's how the meme goes) which surfaces again and again in right-wing literature. This is what Ennis is doing. Never trust anyone who talks peace, because they want to betray you to the enemy.
This is a hoary old rip-roaring war-propaganda-story cliche, and in a story which is about celebrating cliches from the past, perhaps it's not surprising. But Ennis is too good a writer for this to be accidental. So why is he doing this?
The weirder thing is, Ennis is a staunchly left wing writer, not shy about his political views, and he goes out of his way - in the script - to blame Dan Dare's absence in the world of future Britain on the rise of the modern political hard right - the National Front. By name.
Oh, they were appalling, nasty, piggy little men. They contacted him under false pretenses. It was at the decommissioning of the Anastasia, we were still together at this stage. They wanted Dan to be a figurehead for their movement into mainstream politics. Keeping Britain British, that sort of thing, although you knew immediately that what they meant was white.... But it wasn't that these thugs would think he'd want anything to do with them, that wasn't what was so awful for him. It was what the rise of such monsters meant. Because once they began identifying their cause with men like Dan, they'd taint the very notion of being British. They'd wrap themselves in the flag, and an entire generation of immigrant people would look at the Union Jack -- and see a swastika.
Two pages are devoted to this methinks-she-protests-too-much scene. It serves nicely to give a plausible reason for why a former war hero would choose to exile himself rather than save his country from moral disaster, yet jump at the chance to fight for it... but when you think about it a little closer, not only does it not make any sense at all, it's weird that a story notionally about the need to confront fascism would use the Dolchstoss - fascism's founding myth - as its own moral backbone.
We could have won. We did win, but politics - civilians - took our country away from us. Only the military has the true right to power. Only those who've served in battle should be promoted to rule. Combat is the true test of a man's (or woman's) honour. Villainy must be confronted and destroyed - physically - and that villainy often wears a civilian face. Confidence comes from an inner trust in one's own gut instinct, and decisions should be made on the spot. Never trust a politician. Never trust a peacemaker. Never trust a negotiator.
This is the moral DNA of fascism. This is what a story about anti-fascism also believes.
So far so weird. We fight fascism with the myths and tools of fascism. But here's the twist:
The evil Prime Minister (evil, remember, because he seeks to avoid a devastating war he sees as a no-win situation; evil because of his moral cowardice, lack of daring and faith in the military) is clearly modelled on Tony Blair, in appearance and personality. The in-script references rub it in:
Dare: You've been having trouble resigning, haven't you? You're on your -- what, third or fourth attempt, is that right? You keep promising, but you just can't seem to pull it off.
PM: Well, I mean -- we've -- we've begun that conversation, we're looking at --
Dare: Having a debate, no doubt. So long as we're using phrases that have almost lost all meaning, let me work closely with you to reach a conclusion: your problem's the Mekon. Isn't it?
So here's the kicker: The Prime Minister, who is to be seen as a future Tony Blair, is evil because he doesn't want to start a war, doesn't trust the military to get the job done. He'd rather sacrifice the entire military to aliens to avoid a war - and does. He's the classic 'appeaser'.
But the real Tony Blair - the one in our universe - the one on which this guy is based - remember him?
He's the guy who was all gung-ho about sending the military in to start a war when we didn't need to! He's the guy who said we had to face down tyrants and not be an appeaser! He's the guy who lied, who sweated, who manipulated, who was the lapdog of a more powerful nation -- not to avoid a war, but to START one under false pretenses! To send in the Space Marines to kill the Mekon. He's the guy who's squirming in an official enquiry about his lies right now!
There's a fundamental disconnect from reality here so powerful, it creates its own event horizon and sucks everything in around it. It's like the Dolchstosslegende underlying every good war story - heroic strong honourable fighter, evil weak betraying civilian master - is so deeply engraved into our consciousness that when it's patently obvious that the EXACT OPPOSITE happened in reality - that the liars and schemers were PRO war rather than fearful of fighting - that the myth still chugs happily along under its own steam, bending space and truth around it. So Tony 'Saddam has weapons of mass destruction!' Blair becomes 'I'd sell my soul to the Mekons to avoid a war!' Prime Minister without raising a beat.
And this is a left-wing writer, who presumably opposes Blair's part in creating the Iraq war - or at least opposes Tony Blair's Labour for being insufficiently left. But at some point, probably around 1917, 'left-wing' stopped meaning 'opposed to war' and started becoming... what?
Certainly not 'opposed to fascism', though Ennis obviously is opposed to the symbols and some specific platforms (like racism) of historical fascism. He'll spit that bone out. But the whole rest of the fish - salvation through glorious violence, the military as the model of all good citizenship, pacifism as the index of a society's depravity - swallow it whole.
There's something very scary here, and it bugs me, because Ennis isn't by any means alone in these views; they're uncomfortably mainstream, on left and right both. Ennis, only a year older than me, is a child of the punks; not one of the first late-70s wave of punk writers, he describes growing up reading 2000AD. (2nd generation punk?) In any case, punk sensibilities - which politically generally mean a left-anarchist slant, distrust of authority, combined with a sort of desparing, nihilist embrace of violence - inform most of my generation of comic writers (who are now running the asylum at DC and Marvel). There's a lot more too them, of course, than just the anger and the despair and the glib ultraviolence; and I think 'Dan Dare' shows Ennis at his best. But the fascist love of hardcore violence as an aesthetic is there, as it's been all the way since punk. And it scares me.
The punks self-described as fighting fascism, usually seen as the right wing and corporate privatisation - but in spirit, they embodied it. Or did they fight it because they loved it, because it scared them? The image of the street fight, the revolutionary, the burning cars. All posturing, but still the artistic ideal. Take Green Day's "21st Century Breakdown" as an example. The spirit, the dream, is still the war against the state, the collapse of oppressive order, the glorious riot. The anarchist logo of the raised fist. The leather and boots. Why does this still inspire us?
I missed punk the first time - I missed the zines and the music, the flurry of all-media do-it-yourself, though I caught part of that flame in the microcomputer revolution. I don't mind that part. There was an honest outburst of creativity there, it seems.
Then we had the 1990s; X-Files and Seattle grunge was in, but it was also a sort of slick corporate neo-punk fetish, more sheen than substance. The Web saved the 90s; rebooted the microchip dreams of 1982. Now we're in the age of Google Earth and the iPad and the lockdown is upon us again. Punk's fears of a world-striding electronic machine of total control, total despair are closer now than ever before. Google and Apple in 2010 have made possible what was laughable in 1996, but seemed inevitable in 1969: an Internet with one central hub and non-user-serviceable terminals. IBM and Ma Bell reborn. The new age of the mainframe is upon us. We are going to need new creative heroes to rise to break the system again.
But when the next revolution in underground literature comes - and it has to - where will it point? When will we stop being inspired by dreams of violence and destruction, and start doing something creative about creativity?