Greetings Primitives,  This week we feature part 5 of Jeff Hawke – Star venturer, in which our courageous  “Hero” begins his investigation of the wrecked Skandor ship and is assailed by a blast of telepathically transmitted terror.

Kolvorok

 

 

 

 

Greetings Primitives , I will be taking command here for the next week or so while that pirate Prossit is away on some nefarious business of her own. I have been instructed to tell you that a new Jeff Hawke car sticker is now available from the club secretary ( email address at the bottom of the page) I have consulted the bureaucrats on Earth in charge of the Road fund licence and they have kindly agreed to abolish the tax disc so that Earthlings can display the Jeff Hawke Club badge in its place. To have influence is everything!

Kolvorok

 

 

Car sticker price £1.60 inc P+P (UK)

£2.55 inc P+P ( Europe and rest of world)

Below is a brief synopsis of the first Jeff Hawke story  “Space Rider” which appeared in Junior Express Weekly from 4th Sept 1954.

The story starts in familiar fashion when Jeff, in his Gloster meteor is sent to intercept a flying saucer, exactly the same saucer as that in Sydney’s strip. The saucer belongs to the shining ones who, again, as in the original, have a team of robots serving as their crew. Here the two stories start to diverge. Jeff discovers that there were two accidental stowaways aboard his Meteor , his friend Capt. Bill Judd and

Judd’s nephew Dick Regan. All three are enlisted into the service of the Shining Ones to act as their agents on troubled planets throughout the galaxy. They are equipped with spacesuits and sent on their first mission to the distant planet Rea. Here they are met by a robot called Groka ( different from the Shining ones’ robots and of a very interesting design). Groka has been awaiting their arrival. He explains that his people, a race of robots called the Ruks, were rescued by the Shining ones and given refuge on Rea. However the other inhabitants of Rea, a group of humans called the Sators have become very belligerent and are waging war on Groka’s robots for no obvious reason. Jeff and co are needed as they can infiltrate the Sators and discover their plans. After speedily capturing a Sator plane , Jeff and his companions arrive at the robot HQ.

Here they are trained to fly spacecraft and to use ray guns and then sent in a swift plane across the border to begin their spying mission.

 

After a series of adventures where Jeff and co manage to insinuate themselves into the Sator army, they arrive at the enemy HQ and discover that the Sators have been constructing a robot army of their own , identical to the Ruks and built for the purpose of infiltrating and destroying them from within. While investigating the fake robots, they are discovered by a Sator officer who recognises that they are spies but who also reveals that he is part of a clique of officers whose plan is to rid themselves of their warlike dictator , who , confusingly, is also called Sator. No sooner have these discoveries been made when they learn that the dictator’s invasion of the Ruks territory has

began.

After a brief attack on the Sator forces in a small spacecraft, in which he displays his superb flying skills , Jeff leads the Sator rebels on a bombing run in which they drop huge quantities of red paint on the fake Ruks, thereby making it easy for Groka and his people to identify the fakes. Although now deprived of the element of surprise the Sator dictator decides to continue his attack and in a foolhardy move leads his army of men and paint-splattered robots through a narrow valley toward Ruk territory. Jeff locates the command vehicle which controls the Sator robots and destroys it from the air. The fake robots are thus put out of action and

the demoralized troops of Sator’s army begin to give in. After escaping the battle in a swift pursuit ship the dictator returns to his citadel where the last of his loyal troops are still holding out. Before long Jeff ,Groka and the others arrive to prise him out. The dictator escapes in a waiting plane and his deserted supporters surrender to a man. After some further adventures in which Jeff ,Groka and Dick track the dictator to a swamp in which his plane has crashed, and encounter a “swamp-beast” a

kind of fanged aquatic ape, the injured dictator is finally captured and taken back to Groka’s headquarters. Their mission over the three companions are taken up once more into the Shining ones’ saucer for another mission.

Skipper Prossit

Herewith, part 4 of the unpublished story  which we are delighted to present for the first time ever on this blog. In this strip Kolvorok puts on his distinctive spacesuit, the one familiar to JH readers from OVERLAND , to go and investigate the wrecked alien ship. We see more of his crew in this strip – notably larger than the tiny engineers that manned the same craft in SANCTUARY

Skipper Prossit

Although tangential to the main body of Jeff Hawke stories, an alternative incarnation of Sydney Jordan’s space hero appeared in the pages of Junior Express weekly, a juvenile publication which started in February 1954, only seven months after Hawke’s first appearance in the Daily Express. The publishers considered that Jeff Hawke would also appeal to younger readers in stories that were tailored to their tastes. Although not drawn or written by Sydney and with a different cast of supporting characters ( including a young schoolboy with whom readers could identify), the comic book Hawke nonetheless retained some of the elements from the adult strip. Hawke’s encounter with a flying saucer and the Shining Ones in Sydney’s first story SPACERIDER , are repeated in the comic book, but in the latter , not only Jeff but his two companions, Capt. Bill Judd and Judd’s nephew Dick are taken aboard the alien craft. Again, the robots who serve the Shining Ones are present and drawn exactly as Sydney had drawn them in the newspaper strip. Their purpose is also the same, namely to set missions for Jeff and his companions to carry out, with the usual aim of righting wrongs throughout the galaxy, though the stories themselves are different  and contain different villains   and story-arcs. Having said that, the “Underground men” from the second story, PLANET OF FIRE look identical to Ultar and the “new” Martians in Sydney’s Martian invasion who must have been their inspiration.Later posts will look at the four individual JH stories which appeared in Junior Express weekly and present brief synopses                                  Skipper Prossit