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