16 January 2016

Below is the  second part of the Jeff Hawke story index, containing the definitive listing of all the stories published ( or to be published ) by the Jeff Hawke club. The column on the left  lists the stories in chronological order and the right hand column  shows the  issue of the JHC  in which each is published. Skipper Prossitt

 

70. The last frontier                                           (E.S.E.)*
71. Angel of mercy                                              (E.S.E
72. Chimera                                                          (E.S.E.)
73. Lisistrata II                                                     (E.S.E.)
74. The Achene on Amalthea                          (E.S.E.)

75. The woman who would be king             (vol7.no3)
76. The ice burner                                              (vol8.no1)
77. The chalk circle                                           (vol8.no1)
78. Sorcerer’s apprentice                                 (vol8.no1)
79. The song of the charioteer                        (vol8.no1)
80. The little people                                           ( vol8.no1)
81. the ghost of a chance                                 (vol8.no2)
82. Voodoo                                                           (vol8.no2)
83. Star maker                                                  (vol8.no2)
84. Blood brother                                               (vol8.no2)
85. Dear dead days                                          (Lunar 10)
86. The nursery                                               (Lunar 10)
87. The dragon and S.T. George                   (vol8.no3)
88. Messiah                                                         (vol8.no3)
89. A night remembered                                 (vol8.no3)
90. The zoo                                                        (vol9.no1)
91. Base builder                                                 (vol9.no1)
92. Mail order                                                     (vol9.no1)
93. Baphomet                                                       (vol9.no1)
94. Time out                                                          (vol9.no2)
95. Home is the sailor                                        (vol9.no2)
96. Frozen assets                                                 (vol9.no2)
97. The phoenix at Easter                                  (vol9.no3)
98.Tangaroa                                                         (vol9.no3)
99. Nest of the phoenix                                       (vol9.no3)
100. I talk to the trees                                         (vol9.no3)
101. The asset strippers                                     (vol10.no1)
102. The shark in the clear air                          (vol10.no1)
103. What dreams may come                           (vol10.no1)
104. Pharoah’s army got drownded               (vol10. No1)
105. Sails in the red sunset                                 (vol10.no2)
106. Even death may die                                     (vol10.no2)
107. Virus                                                                 (vol10.no2)
108. A message from Medusa                            (vol10.no3)
109. Time’s jest                                                     (vol10.no3)
110. Out of the ecliptic                                         (vol10.no3)
111. Song for Methuselah                                   (vol10.no3)

 

The devil at Rennes le Chateau                       ( vol7.no1)

* – Earthspace special edition

 

 

 

 

 

 

9th January 2016

Below is an index of all the Jeff Hawke stories in the chronological order in which they were published  in the Daily Express  and the Scottish Daily Record. The  right hand column  shows the volume and issue of the Jeff Hawke Cosmos in which the particular story appears. The second part of the index will be published next week.  Remember that all issues are still available and can be obtained by contacting the editor at the Jeff Hawke club ( details on main website).        Skipper Prossitt

 

STORY                                                                           JHC ISSUE

 

1. Space rider                                              pt.1(vol1.no1)   pt.2 (vol1.no2)
2. The Martian invasion                            (Martian quartet)
3. The search for Asteron                          (Martian quartet)
4. The threat from the past                       (Martian quartet)
5. Opposite power                                       (Martian quartet)
6. Sanctuary                                                 (vol2.no2)
7. Unquiet island                                         (vol6.no1)
8. The castaway                                            (vol6.no2)
9. Out of touch                                              (vol5.no2)
10. The dream pedlars                                   pt.1(vol2.no3)  pt2(vol3.no1)
11. Poles apart                                                 (vol3.no2)
12. Sacrifice                                                      pt.1(vol1.no3)    pt.2(vol2.no1)
13. Time out of mind                                      (Lunar 10)
14. Overlord                                                     (vol7.no3)
15. Survival                                                       (vol7.no1)
16. The wondrous lamp                                 (vol6.no2)
17. Counsel for the defense                           (vol7.no2)
18. Pastmaster                                                  (Lunar 10)
19. The Immortal toys                                     (vol7.no3)
20. the ambassadors                                        (vol7.no3)
21. The gamesman                                           (vol3.no3)
22. A test case                                                    (vol4.no1)
23. Pass the parcel                                            (vol3.no1)
24. the changeling                                            (vol5.no2)
25. Rip van Haddow                                        (vol1.no1)
26. Prodigal son                                                (vol1.no2)
27. Uncanny deep                                             (vol5.no1)
28. Winner lose all                                            (vol5.no1)
29. faeryland forlorn                                         (vol5.no3)
30. A foreign body                                             (vol3.no1)
31. Moonstruck                                                  (Lunar 10)
32. The helping hand                                        (vol4.no2)
33. Anti-gravity man                                         (vol2.no1)
34. Made in Birmingham                                 (vol5.no2)
35. The oil rig                                                      (vol7.no2)
36. Incognito                                                       (vol4.no1)
37. The great Atlantic crossing                        (vol2.no3)
38. Getaway                                                         (vol7.no2)
39. Ghost errant                                                  (vol2.no2)
40. A word of advice                                           (vol4.no1)
41. The intelligent ones                                     (JHC – Hawke’s notes)
42. Wildcat                                                            (vol4.no2)
43. Overland                                                         (vol6.no3)
44. The engine that worked on grass               (vol5.no3)
45. the hole in space                                            (vol7.no3)
46. The Venusian club                                         (vol7.no1)
47. Cataclysm                                                        (vol6.no3)
48. The poltergeist                                               (vol3.no2)
49. Rogue star                                                       (vol5.no3)
50. The day the Moon nearly exploded            (Lunar 10)
51. The strange ship                                             (Lunar 10)
52. Daughter of Eros                                            (vol7.no1)
53. S.O.S.                                                                (vol4.no3)
54. Rescue party                                                    (vol4.no3)
55. Chacondar                                                        (vol1.no3)
56. The book of the worlds                                  (vol6.no1)
57. Time is out of joint                                         (vol6.no1)
58. someday I’ll find you                                      (vol7.no1)
59. the bees on Daedalus                                     (vol6.no3)
60. Here be tygers                                                 (vol4.no3)
61. Selena                                                                (Lunar 10)
62. Sitting tenants                                                 (vol3.no3)
63. Shorty’s secret                                                 (Lunar 10)
64. On the run                                                        (vol4.no2)
65. The comet’s tale                                              (vol6.no2)
66. The first person plural                                   (vol4.no1)
67. The winds of Mars                                           (vol7.no2)
68. Moratorro                                                          (vol5.no1)
69. Heir apparent                                                   (Lunar 10)

 

31 December 2015

Following on from our recent post about the Sacrifice story, I also discussed with Sydney some other stories that use the theme of   ancient aliens in the Jeff Hawke series. Notable among these is THE WONDROUS LAMP,  an ingenious story which falls into two distinct parts. Sydney always speaks of the erudition and creativity of his friend and collaborator Willie Patterson , and Wondrous lamp probably shows Willie’s creative imagination at its best. For according to Sydney the story is a sly elision of two popular tales “ Aladdin” from the “Arabian nights”, and “Gulliver’s travels”, Swift ‘s satirical take on the England of the early eighteenth century.

According to Sydney, Willie Patterson shared much of Swift’s dislike of bureaucracy and class and  and so it was a natural

choice to use the tropes of “Gulliver’s travels” to prick the pomposity of the British establishment of the nineteen sixties.

The Aladdin story is archetypal . The folkloric theme of a poor young man discovering a magical prize which turns out to be a mixed blessing recurs throughout history in one form or another, and Willie by a clever sleight-of- hand adapted it to fit the needs of science-fiction.. The lamp becomes an alien matter-transporter and communicator and the Jinn of the lamp becomes the holographically projected image of the alien controller with whom the lamp can communicate. Ala Eddin can summon up riches from the matter transporter , but unlike his Arabian Nights counterpart who lives to enjoy the fruits of his good fortune, the JH version is destroyed by the aliens and his unwitting companion lives on to enjoy his new-found

bounty

Here the story takes a sharp turn in another direction , the ancient lamp itself providing the pivot which holds the two halves together.

The time is the present and the matter transporter coil inside the lamp and a duplicate which has been made on Earth become the means whereby the Krahrrids , a warlike and barbarous alien race plan to invade and take over our planet. A klahrrid scouting mission

discovers to their dismay that compared to themselves , the Earth people are giants, but nothing daunted, their leader decides to proceed with the invasion anyway. Here the Swiftian themes are introduced thick and fast. The Klahrrids are Lilliputians and like their Swiftian counterparts , their ferocity and warlike manner is made absurd by their tiny size. Just as the Blefuscun warfleet is easily subdued by Gulliver who tows it with little effort into captivity, so the Krahrrids’ invasion plans are effectively stymied by the minister’s office cat who overawes almost a million of them in a Whitethall corridor! The panel which shows the delicious Swiftian joke at its best is H2113 which shows Hawke lying prone on the floor surrounded by the Klarrhids in an exact reference to the passage in “Gulliver’s travels” where Gulliver awakes on the shore to find himself surrounded by Lilliputians. The Klahrrids fire their tiny blasters at Mac’s hand just as the Lilliputians

fire their bows and arrows into Gulliver’s. And like Swift’s Laputans who can see no practical application for their scientific knowledge but spend their time in absurd pursuits  like extracting sunbeams from cucumbers , so the minister in the Hawke story cannot see the amazing potentialities of the matter transmitter which Hawke presents to him and sees it as nothing but a toy. The story cleverly juxtaposes the ineffective Whitehall bureaucrats with the equally ineffective aggression of the Klahrrid invaders. It is no surprise that THE WONDROUS LAMP is one of Sydney’s favorites. Its highly literate use of material that nonetheless sits so lightly on the reader ,lifts it far above most drawn science-fiction .  Skipper Prossitt

 

20 December 2015

I recently had a conversation with Sydney about an obituary notice that he had recently written about his ex-colleague and mentor   Eric Souster who passed away a couple of weeks ago. He told me of an extraordinary  chance encounter that in hindsight was, to Sydney’s mind, a key turning point in his life and without which the whole universe of Jeff Hawke might never have come into existence .

It was the spring of 1952 and Sydney, a young jobbing artist , recently arrived in the big Smoke from his home in Scotland , was making his way along Fleet street to the Amalgamated Press building in the hope of picking up more commissions. His portfolio contained a miscellany of work and included some sketches he had made for a prospective sci-fi strip with a main character called Orion.He recalls that he had stopped briefly outside one of the Agencies’ windows and was admiring some artwork by Tony Wier, who later went on to produce the “ Matt Marriott” western strip.

Whether it was a gust of wind, a slip of the arm or indeed the hand of fate, something caused the bundle of artwork to spill from the portfolio and to scatter onto the pavement next to him. By an amazing chance, at that precise moment   Eric Souster and Bill Bailey, directors of the Bailey-Souster agency were passing, and bent to help the young artist to pick up his scattered work. Souster, glancing at the pages, spotted the incipient talent immediately and there and then, Sydney was offered work.   Over the following months at the agency , Souster began to take an interest in the “Orion” sci-fi strip. He could see that it had potential but needed some refinement and direction. Taking this on

board Sydney made some changes and Souster then approached the Daily Express with a view to daily syndication. It was suggested that the name of the strip should be changed and thus “Orion” became “Jeff Hawke”. Negotiations were successful and of course the rest is history .The first Jeff Hawke strip was published on 15^th February 1954.

So by way of a chance meeting in the street, Eric Souster  was to   become a key facilitator in bringing Jeff Hawke from a sketched idea to a nationally published strip . He died on 6^th December 2015.   Skipper Prossitt

11 December 2015

Below are the last five cards which complete the Jeff Hawke Space gen series.The last card in the set is the only one  to resemble Sydney’s character and is clearly inspired by the artwork in the original SPACERIDER  story.    -Skipper Prossitt

29 November 2015

I recently interviewed Sydney about SACRIFICE, an early story which departed from the usual sci-fi formulae and which was a precursor to several others in the same mould. All these stories ( including Sydney’s favorite THE WONDROUS LAMP) explore ancient myths and mysteries but explain them in terms of extra-terrestrial intervention in the affairs of Earth. SACRIFICE was written a decade before von Daniken published his best selling “Chariots of the gods” which was a pseudo – scientific exploration of he same theme of ancient aliens, but Sydney remembers that the notion of ancient aliens was already present in the fifties . He recalls that he was familiar with the works of Emmanuel Velikosky, whose book “World’s in collision”,

while not going so far as to suggest alien intervention, proposes that ancient Earth history was directly influenced by celestial events. According to Velikovsky , at around 1400 BCE Jupiter ejected or re-directed a comet which passed close to the Earth and eventually became the planet Venus. Its close flyby caused many disasters on Earth which Velikosky believed were reflected in many ancient mythologies which spoke of mass destruction, an example of which was the biblical flood. Like “Chariots of the gods” a few years later, “Worlds in collision” which was published in 1950, received a storm of criticism and scorn from the scientific community , but became an instant best-seller. Its imaginative appeal was irresistible and it is this element that caught the fertile imaginations of Messrs Jordan and Patterson.

Another theory which was present in the zeitgeist of the nineteen fifties and which was, according the Sydney, responsible for his choice of Tiahuanaco as the setting for SACRIFICE , was that contained in the works of H.S.Bellamy. First published in 1943 “Built before the flood” again explored ideas of celestial events influencing the ancient history of the Earth. His theories were based on the study of the strange calendar carved on the Sun Gate at the Tiahuanaco site. The calendar is one of only 290 days and from this oddity , Bellamy and others before him constructed a bizarre theory that a pre-lunar

satellite orbited our planet 100,000 years ago and that this object rotated so close to the Earth ( and eventually crashed into it) that it caused a more rapid rotation of our planet. And of course much concomitant devastation and destruction followed its eventual impact. The book achieved some success and was re-printed three times, its third iteration “The calendar of Tiahuanaco” coming out in 1956, just three years before SACRIFICE. Again, like “Worlds in collision”, although the science and archaeology of the work were discredited, it provided fertile soil for a writer of science fiction.

The last strand which, according to Sydney, formed the seed of the ideas in SACRIFICE, was the KON-TIKI expedition of Thor Heyerdahl. This voyage which took place in 1947, was an attempt to show that Inca technology could have built ships capable of crossing the Pacific ocean and colonizing Polynesia. His journey and subsequent book and documentary caught the attention of the world and Thor Heyerdahl became a household name. Viracocha , the name of the Incan sun god was adapted by Sydney   into the Viracochan the alien power source which lay in the heart of Tiahuanaco in SACRIFICE. This theme of two cultures meeting for the first time, specifically in the history of the Incas , who originally thought that Pizarro and his conquistadors were Viracocha-cuna or gods, provided Sydney with the scenario of ancient

 

contact between the inca and an alien race, by a quick transposition of Spaniards for Aliens!

SACRIFICE is a subtle and well-paced blend of Mythology and science-fiction , which Sydney was to explore again in later stories; It is interesting to note that its theme pre-dated “Chariots of the gods” by almost a decade.  Skipper Prossit

 

 

 

Jeremy Briggs , a Jeff Hawke enthusiast and collector, has recently shown us very rare and interesting   item from his

collection. We met Jeremy, a reviewer for the British sci-fi news site “Down the tubes” at the   recent Cartoon arts festival in Kendal, where he showed us the “Jeff Hawke crewman’s handbook “ a little booklet which readers of the 1950’s Junior Express weekly could send away for in order to join the Jeff Hawke club and become a Space crewman. It is similar to, though not as substantial as the Horlicks spaceman’s handbook which was

issued at around the same time for fans of the Dan Dare serial on radio Luxembourg . This latter publication of 80 pages contained many illustrations of the various Solar system inhabitants which were encountered in the serial, together with depictions and descriptions of the various enemies that Dan and co came up against. The Jeff Hawke booklet is a much simpler affair of just eight pages and is really a “Space” version of the Air cadets‘ record of service book, the 3822. It contains an intro by Jeff himself, a Spaceway code, and a section where you can fill in your details and choose your crew status; pilot ,

navigator etc. Finally the

inside back cover has three little spaceship illustrations.

A link to the “Down the tubes “ website is on our link page. If you do not already know the site it is certainly worth a visit.

Skipper Prossit

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sydney Jordan’s long-time collaborator , astronomer and author Duncan Lunan   has pointed out , in a paper given at an astronomical meeting in Scotland last month, yet another example of a prediction made in the JH strip which looks likely to come to fruition. Sydney famously predicted in the Hawke strip in 1959 that the first moon landing would take place in the summer of 1969 and was accurate to within fourteen days of the actual landing.  Now Duncan has spotted another example of Sydney’s prescience , but this time with regard to the first manned Mars mission.

Many proposals have been aired over the years for a manned mission to Mars, but daunting financial costs and lack of popular support, to say nothing of the immense technical difficulties to be overcome, have caused all to flounder

so far.

But now , with the success of the ORION spacecraft’s first flight last December, NASA has released new plans for a manned mission to Mars. The first “Earth reliant” phase , utilizing the International space station to test new technologies will last until 2024, the second “proving ground” stage will venture out beyond the Moon’s orbit and attempt an asteroid capture, and the third stage, the actual manned mission to the red planet is scheduled for the early 2030’s with a preliminary landing on Phobos in 2033 and touchdown on the planetary surface six years later.

Remarkably, in Sydney’s story THE ASSET STRIPPERS,   the “Hope” spacecraft is in orbit in the Mars system, and two crew members, discussing a good place to set up a base, suggest touching down on the Phobos base which was set up in the 2030’s!   The strip was published in 1984.

The ” Asset strippers” story will be published in JEFF HAWKE COSMOS vol.10 no.1   Skipper Prossit

8 November  2015

 

 

 

The Jeff Hawke club had its most successful show to date at the Kendal cartoon arts festival  last weekend. Offering a wide range of illustration art from political cartoons to adult graphic novels and  main stream U.S. comics , the festival attracted visitors of all ages and from as far away as the U.S. and Canada. Sydney Jordan  himself attended the show and was present at the Jeff Hawke club stand, where he signed books and JH strips for the many fans who made the trip.        Skipper Prossit