A Letter To Dalgoda

The windswept and nippy East Of England.
Tuesday 15th June, 2010.

Dear Dalgoda,

you won't remember the afternoon, because it was such a long time ago, and because, of course, you're not actually real. But I can so clearly recall the circumstances of our first meeting, and I was fondly reminded of them when I discovered the dozen-or-so issues of your mid-'80s comic book at the bottom of my wardrobe yesterday morning.

In many ways, our introduction couldn't have come at a more unpropitious time. I was returning to York University after a disastrous evening trying to win back an ex-girlfriend in the wildlands near Heathrow Airport, and my mind was too scattered and wracked to focus even on the contents of a penny dreadful thriller bought from the W. H, Smiths at King Cross Station. And so, packing my student's Barclaycard to its spending limits, I'd stacked up with anything that looked readable from "Forbidden Planet", a pile of hopefully journey-killing comic books which also included, I recall, the very first "Crisis On Infinite Earths". That's how you and I first met properly, Dal, as a British Rail not-express juddered northwards and passed the Hellmouth of Grantham, where I mumbled the traditional and appropriately savage curse upon that town's demon-daughter, who, having obviously been anointed by the Royal Lizards of Buckingham Palace, ruled savagely over the Britain of my youth. (It's a curse that's too appalling a profanity to be repeated here, Dal, or even to think about now, though I had to repeat it's vileness for many more years before I succeeded in magiking her out of office.) Crisp bright late afternoon sunlight slanted in through the filthy windows of my second-class carriage, and there you were, a really big dog in a spacesuit with a matchingly big ray-gun and a fleet of humorously Heavy-Metal-esque intergalactic warships. I wasn't exactly impressed, I will admit, but I was taken by your splendid moustache, and since the only other alternative to reading your adventure was to stare through the grime at England on a dull afternoon and think about what a complete fool I'd been, reading you it was.

First impressions weren't overwhelmingly positive, Dal. I'd never been too much of a fan of W. H. Auden, for example, and yet there were several lines of his "Musse des Beaux Arts" shadowing the action on page 1. (In truth, I enjoyed the scenes of your crashing spaceship, but I didn't actually understand the Auden, though I don't think I admitted that to myself back then.) And then I was confused by the clearly ancient US Navy vessel which winced you out of the Pacific, because how could such an ancient ship still be in use so far into the next century? (Today, as antique B-52's bomb Afghanistan mountain-ranges and even-more antique Nimrods act as AWACs over the North Sea, the prescience of your creators in having old and new technologies co-exist is all the more impressive, but back then I thought the future should be, if not shiny and dust-free, then at least recognisably new and different. Now I'm living in 2010 and there's not a jet-pack to be seen. In fact, Dal, they're retiring Space Shuttles! How can I have lived right through the future and now be watching it being out to pasture?) But already two major themes of your comic's appeal were being established for me. Firstly, that this was a comic book which was going to encourage a measure of thought as well as the more-familiar thrills of rampaging assassin-robots and zomboroids, and, secondly, that here was a vision of tomorrow which only now, in programmes such as Battlestar Galactica, is the media of the present day catching up with. A future where super-lasers and teleportation devices rarely appear, but where hamburgers and human stupidity and world economic downturns still do. It's a far more realistic tomorrow than I at first realised, Dal, but there you are. Your creators, Mr Strnad and Mr Fujitake, obviously knew far more about the day after today than I ever did.

And then there was you, Dalgoda, a space-faring dog from the planet of intelligent canines, come to Earth to desperately enlist our help against the marauding and invincible Nimps. Well, what a farce that was, looking for human beings to help against mighty alien threats when we couldn't even stop going to war with each. At every step of your tale, while you did your baffled best to encourage the humans to put together some kind of response to the Nimp, they trundled on stabbing each other - and you - in the back, bombing each other to world-wide social and economic collapse, ignoring the greater good while largely ushering in the greater evil. How different to a standard-issue science-fiction adventure tale this was, though it didn't look so on the surface. For unlike most endearing aliens who come into contact with humans in the likes of Star Trek and even in some episodes of Dr Who, you hadn't come to Earth to learn how fine we were and how much better off you'd be if you saw the world at least in part as we did. In fact, you were the role model to us, in many ways, which is something of a comment on us, because you were neither particularly bright nor especially cunning, were you, Dal? You tended to trust to fate and your good snout, to build a decent pack around you, and to hope that your hard work might outrun your own intermittent despair and ill-fortune. Still, you were quietly better than most of us, and that's another reason I quickly grew so fond of you. And, except in those moments when the very worst really did occur, such as Posey's fatal sacrifice or the return to your homeworld where barely a single canine out of the many billions remained, your optimism and good if fuzzy sense continued to hold your cause together. I admired that.

And so, Dal, you really were very fortunate in having come from Mr Strand's mind. Not only did he create you as a truly fallibly heroic figure, one not diminished by a superheroes' indomitable physical and moral strength, or the super-competency of most fictional beings from another planet, but he also surrounded you with characters that mostly never strayed out into the cardboard-lands of cliche. An honourable lawyer, an admirable priest? A strong and able female mechanic who'd thankfully never pass as a catwalk model, and who'd never damn well want to either? (I still think Gunner deserves a series all of her own, bless her grease-gun soul. I miss her too.) And even the reprehensible Victor ended up having a heart too, didn't he, Dal, and his father showed some shard of dignity by the time you'd persevered being a decent old dog-terrestial towards him. There were, with very few exceptions, no heroes or villains as such in "Dalgoda", just people behaving heroically or despicably. And so, in the end, I liked them all, although I will concede if pressed that your partner Chim always seemed too stereotypically perfect as the long-suffering lover, and Posey's ex-wife was somewhat unconvincing in the depths of her space-craft-destroying psychosis.


But I'm making your comic sound as if it was a terribly stiff and worthy space-opera, while "Dalgoda" wasn't ever an angst-ridden, meaningfully-deserving experience. It was often all rather light-hearted, an enjoyable adventure with more comedy than action, a design that allowed the bitterest components of the pill to slip down before the reader knew what they were swallowing. In such a way could Dennis Fujitake's warmhearted art ease the reader along some harrowing roads before delivering some truly touching denouements. I can still find myself close to tearfullness, Dal, when I think of how poor-Earthbound Posey - see scan above - quietly wept when he heard your voice after the five long months of your absence, how his hands cradled the phone, how his body shook before he mustered the self-possession to utter his one word answer, while we readers watched the Christmas rain falling on a sodden Honolulu Santa:

"Dal ... "

And just as I wish we could have seen so much more of you, Dal - I do hope it's OK to call you "Dal" - I wish we might have seen Mr Fujitake develop over the decades as a comic book artist. His was a pleasingly radical style for the American '80s, synthesising, as was often said, Moebius and Ditko, but also Herge and the DC artists of the Silver Age too. His story-telling was crisp, his character designs distinct and always recognisable, his sets impressively appropriate to the story's needs, and he never shirked a difficult panel-angle if it served the story well. And it always seemed to me that he drew a great deal from his own sketch book too to flesh out his never-skimped-upon background characters. (The lounging waitress at 1:25:3 has always stayed with me as an example of how a single panel can bring an incidental character to life.) Given time, Mr Fujitake would surely have risen from the already-pleasing sum of his considerable influences to a substantial and individual voice in the American comics scene. (And I suspect that 2000AD would've provided a suitable home for his considerable talents even if the somewhat myopic US scene of the '80s couldn't.)


And so I do believe that I miss you, Dal, I really do. I knew nothing of dogs when I first read your adventures, but in the quarter century since, the Splendid Wife has introduced me to two Splendid Dogs. The first, Jack, was a collie who'd coil himself around my legs as I bashed away at the keyboard, a loyal and true companion with an obsession for sticks-for-the-throwing and baths-for-the-blowing-of-bubbles. He is much missed, as is his son Alf, who died suddenly after a short life of appalling ill-health and irrepressible kindness and enthusiasm. If wishes were dreams, then, just as there'd be a "Dalgoda" book back on the shelves, so too would this old house rumble with the excitement of walk-anticipating border collies again. Ah, well. Times pass, things change, and not always for the worse either. I'm glad I knew them, father and son, and on reflection, you shared many of your best qualities with them, as of course you should have done.


So,I do hope that New Canida escaped the Nimp, Dal, or even that your people learnt how to beat back their insectoid persecutors. I hope Chim made a decent chap of you, and that the pair of you lived knee-deep in puppies and grandpups. I hope Gunner and the Reverend and Trione made it back to Earth, and that there was indeed enough of Earth left to make the journey home worthwhile. It seems strangely impossible to me that I'll never find out what happened to you all, and on reflection, it seems that Tolstoy's reputed comment that old age is the greatest surprise of a man's life is quite wrong. Old age has been creeping up on me for years and its effects are as predictable as they are unwelcome. But what does surprise me most, I think, is to look around and find that my comic book friends from the past are no long around on the shelves, that TV21 and Chance, American Flagg and Journey, The Defenders and Dalgoda, should no longer be being created. That can't be right, can it, Dal, because while I no longer so regret the losing of the woman which led me to buy your first issue in such desperation, I do in my own rather wistful, end-of-the-afternoon way miss you. What that says about me, I don't know, beyond thinking that some stories reach an absolute if not traumatic end, and others never get to end at all.


I really do wish you well, Dalgoda. Thank you for what you brought me, those moments of distraction and even absorption when despair at my own daftness threatened to swallow me whole. If I ever make my millions, which I never shall, I shall hunt down your creators and pay them shedloads of sparkling gold currency to finish off your story. And if I have my way, it will be a good end too, as I do hope it's been for you anyway.

Sincerely

Colin.


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