It was pointed out to me recently by one of our readers, Sjaak Bakker, that I gave the impression in my post of 18^th May 2016 that the JHC publication of “Earthspace” was the first time that these particular strips have ever been reprinted.   He was correct to point out that the Earthspace series had indeed been printed under the title “Lance McLane “ by the Italian publisher “Comics in avventura” in a well produced hardback book in 1978. It contains all five Earthspace stories, and the strips are very clearly printed, faithfully retaining all the half-tones and shading   with the strips at their original size .

However t he JHC publication is certainly the first English printing of the series.     Skipper Prossit

Despite the distinctively aquatic appearance of Kolvorok and even more so that of Tallid, who Sydney jokingly refers to as a Portuguese man-o-war , their original inspiration did not come from sea creatures. Kolvorok , of course came first , making his debut in SANCTUARY and the design for Tallid appears to have evolved, in turn, from him. Most of the alien species that appear in the JH stories before SANCTUARY are at least vaguely humanoid in appearance; even the hideous true Martians are bifocal and bipedal, but Kolvorok is an exception to this and is utterly different in kind. Sydney remembers that he wanted to create something which was truly alien and a one-eyed creature conveyed this otherness strikingly well.Having dispensed with bifocal vision ( a phenomenon that he freely admits would not in reality by selected for in nature) he also

dispensed with the bipedalism and decided on an arrangement of tentacles .

The shape and design of Kolvorok had its origins in the plant kingdom and owed something to a childhood memory. Sydney recalled   a science fiction strip that he read as a child , possibly in Mickey Mouse weekly, though his memory is vague on this point . However one thing he remembered with great clarity were the little aliens which were encountered in the story . They were willowy plant like creatures   and this notion of an alien based on a plant returned to him years later when Kolvorok was taking shape. His excellency’ s hapless assistant was “quite plantlike” according to his originator in his earliest depictions in SANCTUARY and visually his inspiration was a plant bulb , somewhat plumper than the little plant creatures from MM weekly but equally vegitable in origin.   An example of the kind of plant that inspired his shape is the Crocus bulb. Indeed the little corms that surround the base of the bulb show an uncanny resemblance to the air sacs that surround     Kolvorok’s base , while , with a little imagination, the little roots become his tentacles.

The astronomer Duncan Lunan, an authority on the Hawke material says that despite Kolvorok’s somewhat random origins , he might nonetheless be a viable life-form and he goes on to propose a credible biological development for his species and suggests the kind of planetary environment that such a creature would need .( To read his interesting speculation in full see JHC. Vol2 no2)

It says something for Sydney’s creative talent that where most of us would see a plant bulb as just that and nothing more, he was to see within that shape the raw materials with which he could devise a design for a memorable and completely alien life form. Skipper Prossitt