27 March 2016

1981 saw the publication of the Sydney’s story MAILORDER in which Hawke and his crew investigate a strange UFO, which, in a curious echo of the Russian classic Solaris, can make solid objects out of human thoughts and desires. It was also the year of the royal wedding in the UK, an extravaganza which seemed to grip the nation and indeed the world at large. Diana Spencer was fast becoming the most photographed woman in history and she appeared everywhere from magazine covers to TV media. Not to be left out of the zietgeist , Sydney also used her image to create one of the characters in the story, namely Lieutenant Spicer, part of the first team sent to investigate the UFO. The images that Sydney used for the story where those of the young , somewhat awkward and shy Diana, before the designers had turned her into the mirror of fashion.

As a footnote, I first saw this likeness while reading through the Milano libri edition of JH and was delighted to have spotted this connection. But when I checked Hawke’s notes for the same story I noticed that Duncan Lunan had (as usual) seen it first. Skipper Prossitt

20 March 2016

Many comprehensive editions of the Jeff Hawke series  have been published in Italy over the years , notably the Milano Libri editions, and Italian readers are well known for their enthusiasm for Sydney’s work.  In adition to these definitive publications there have also be some curious one-off  Jeff Hawke imprints from Italy. One such is a  book from the late eighties, notable both for its large format   and for its coloured pages.    Its large size ( 24cm by 34cm )  is to accommodate the strip format as it was published in the Italian newspapers ( three strips at a time), and it contains two complete stories; SELENA  and THE COMET’S TALE.  The strips are hand coloured  and some pages,particularly  in SELENA  are quite subtle and pleasing. It also has a unique cover, which is a compilation and re-working  by Franco Grillo of some of Sydney’s interior artwork .  Skipper Prossitt

 

 

 

11 March 16

OVERLORD was an important milestone for the Jeff Hawke strip as it saw the beginning of the long and fruitful collaboration between Sydney and Willie Patterson , a creative partnership which brought about what many readers regard as the “Golden age “ of the strip which lasted until the spring of 1969 when Willie had to give up his work due to ill health.

But OVERLORD also saw another innovation which was to become a hallmark of the strip, namely the introduction of a prologue to the stories in the form of Mephisto and the troll. Sydney remembers that he had been casting about for some device which would create a break between one story and another and yet would form a smooth transition between the end of one and the start of the next.   He and Willie decided that a prologue of some sort was

needed   and Mephisto and the little troll came into being. Mephisto himself   is suave and sophisticated, Shakespearian in his posture and delivery while the troll is the underdog   and is definitely Horatio to Mephisto’s Hamlet. Sydney says that their relationship reflected, in a light-hearted way, that between Willie and himself. Willie, the urbane and sophisticated man of the world, with a refined taste for the good things in life which belied his humble origins, is obviously Mephisto ,while Sydney, in a claim made with a degree of light-hearted disingenuousness , says that he was the downtrodden troll . The Mephisto character in his attitudes owes something to   C S Lewis’ devil -Screwtape , while his physical appearance owes more than a little to Doré’s demonic depictions in his illustrations to Dante’s inferno.

These characters developed as the stories unfolded and their prologues and epilogues ( for they served as both) became also a sort of Greek chorus , commenting on the actions which were about to take place. According to Sydney their misty and amorphous abode is none other than the imagination of the writer and the artist and they can conjure up objects from the stories by merely mentioning them. For instance, in their brief appearance after SURVIVAL , Mephisto has but to mention the wondrous lamp from the next story , when it appears in his hand . Theatrically speaking it is as if they live in the wings , surrounded by props and stage furniture while the stories themselves are enacted on the main stage. Skipper Prossitt