Eagle was a British boys comic, considered one of the most influential of all UK titles. The comic was founded by Reverend John Marcus Harston Morris, a former RAF chaplain. At the time comic strips in British comics were mostly found in titles aimed at younger readers, such as The Beano, while fare aimed at older children, such as The Magnet and The Hotspur, predominately presented their adventure stories as prose. Concluding that there was a market for comic strip adventure stories, Morris decided to create a more wholesome alternative to the US ones, enlisting artist and writer Frank Hampson. Hulton Press picked the title up. Hampson's wife provided the comic's title, Eagle, and Morris became the founding editor. The first issue went on sale on 14th March 1950, and proved an immediate runaway success.
Eagle ran for twenty years, changing publishers a couple of times, first to Odhams Press and eventually to IPC's ownership. Sales eventually dropped, and its final issue was Vol.20 No.17 (the 991st issue). A week later it merged with Lion.
Note: The issue numbering for Eagle reset to 1 each year, so the last issue of 1958 was volume 9 issue 52. Thus the issues below are numbered using the two digit volume number followed by the two digit issue number. For the first few years, Eagle switched volumes on the anniversary of its "birthday" in the third week of April. However, starting with volume 5, Eagle changed volume numbers in the first week of January, with the start of a new year heralding the new volume. As a result, vol. 4 is shorter, consisting of only 38 issues.
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