Herewith the next five cards in the Jeff Hawke Space gen series issued by Junior Express weekly in the 50’s. Like the first five cards in the series these deal with life aboard a spacecraft , or at least how it was envisaged in those far off and optimistic days when interplanetary travel seemed just around the corner.
Skipper Prossit
As mentioned in my previous post, the realism of the world of Jeff Hawke was enhanced by Sydney’s use of
real personalities in the stories. Another well known face that appeared in the strip was that of the late Sir Patrick Moore who made a cameo appearance in the story “Shorty’s secret”. The story opens with a reprise of the last moon landing, that of Apollo 17 in 1972, the first few panels of which show one of Cernan and Smitt’s expeditions onto the lunar surface. The scene then switches to the television studios in London where Patrick Moore is explaining the situation to viewers at home. Patrick was such a well known broadcaster and astronomer , that just by reading the speech bubble in the strip you can almost hear him uttering the words in his own inimitable style. Patrick Moore , astronomer and eccentric, had the unique gift of imparting not only information to his viewers but also his huge enthusiasm for his subject. His “Sky at night” astronomy programme was broadcast on the BBC from 1957 and Patrick never missed a show until his death in December 2012. Also a prolific writer on Astronomy and spaceflight , he popularised the subject for an entire generation in the U.K. Although his is not longer with us you can still watch many of his “Sky at night” programmes and interviews on Youtube.
Skipper Prossit
These are the first five cards in the Jeff Hawke Space Gen series that were mentioned in my post of two weeks ago. The first five feature the interior of an imagined Spacecraft of the future showing various crew stations
Skipper Prossit
Although much of the action in Jeff Hawke takes place in exotic extra-terrestrial locations , the Earth to which Jeff and co. return is one
familiar to us today. It is not a futuristic world of flying cars and needle-shaped buildings , but is the world of the nineteen sixties : a world of London taxis and country pubs, of local bobbies and familiar city landmarks. This familiar and prosaic world not only anchors the stories in a believable reality with which we can easily identify, but also serves as a foil which makes the extra-terrestrial events more fantastical because of the the contrast which it sets up. Sydney Jordan and his long time co-writer, the talented Willie Patterson, took this familiarity a step further by even introducing real personalities of the time into the strip. A familiar face to TV viewers of the late 1960’s and 1970’s was Peter Fairley , ITV’s science correspondent during those important years of the space-race and moon landings, and Peter duly made an appearance in the JH strips.
In reality, Peter Fairley would appear regularly on ITV explaining the latest developments in space exploration and astronomy, including the NASA Apollo missions. He was a clear exponent of his subject and was popular with both adults and
younger viewers.
Starting off as a science correspondent for the Evening Standard , he moved on to radio and later to television where he became ITV’s science editor.
His popularity with younger viewers can be seen in his frequent appearances on MAGPIE and in numerous books and articles on space aimed at children.
In the world of Jeff Hawke Peter appears in a story called TIME OUT OF JOINT, where, in his familiar role of science presenter he is explaining to TV viewers ,Hawke’s latest mission to the moons of Jupiter. He talks his audience through Hawke’s live transmission from Europa, and when the transmission goes down he handles the situation with all the coolness and professionalism that he displayed in real life. Skipper Prossit
