22 October 2017

As outlined in part one of this synopsis last month, the Florida Vikings had taken McLane ( Hawke) prisoner and have returned with him( by the  captured airship) to their settlement  in the New world where they are beset by genetically bred Dire Wolves. Duncan Lunan, the original writer, takes up the story:

“It’s winter time, however, and the wolves have the upper hand.   The Vikings have had to retreat to their fortified farmhouses and travel between them is no longer possible.   People are running out of food, medical supplies etc; but still McLane is unable to persuade them to let him communicate with the Space Force.   Finally the airship is ambushed by Dire Wolves at an outlying farm where they’ve managed to overrun the stockade and hide in the outbuildings.   At last McLane ( Hawke) persuades the suvivors to let him call for help, and they create a diversion to let him get to the transmitter in the wreckage of the gondola.

In the meantime Fortuna has been heading for Earth, bringing a set of Dik-Diks which she intends to use in the search for McLane ( Hawke).   She arrives in time to take part in the dramatic rescue of the task force and turn her powers to the question of whether any accommodation can be reached with the Dire Wolves – but the answer is no, their hostility is implacable. Even Fortuna’s powers stop short of changing the mind-set of an entire species. Whether or not the Vikings evacuate to Cornwall, this isn’t a long-term solution because the Wolves will simply find other targets, and will be able to threaten higher-technology groups like the Base-builder settlement as their numbers grow.   Nor does the Space Force have the resources to seach the whole of North America to make sure all the Wolves are found and killed – especially when they’re in winter coats and very hard to spot.

 

The answer is to programme the Dik-Diks to protect settlements – all settlements – against the Wolves.   The same sensors they used to home in on heat sources on Mars will be adequate to find such large creatures in the snow, but without reacting to human beings, with the approriate programmng.   The Base-builder settlement has high enough technology to turn over part of its facility to build Dik-Diks. Even if the Vikings don’t want a high-technology ‘fix’, there has to be one for the sake of other communities, so they may as well accept it.   If they do establish a settlement in Cornwall, maybe they’ll start talking to the Bordeaux Vikings eventually…”
It is interesting to note that there has been a resurgence of interest in the Dire wolf, due to their recent  appearance in the hugely popular “Game of thrones” TV series, but Duncan got there first in the eighties!  Skipper Prossitt

 

Come and visit the Jeff Hawke display at the Cartoon arts festival in Kendal this coming weekend ( 14th and 15th October). You can meet Sydney Jordan , the strip’s creator and writer, and also  William Rudling who founded the club and who edits the Jeff Hawke books.

All the Jeff Hawke stories  so far published will be on sale  as well as some of Sydney’s original Hawke artwork. We look forward to seeing you at our stand ( no. 24) in the Clock tower. Skipper Prossitt

8 October 2017

Sydney has always stated that there is no time-line in Jeff Hawke, at least not until after HEIR APPARENT and C-day. He says that he didn’t want to be constrained by   having always to ensure that events in one story   had to be informed by those that had occurred in previous ones. While a timeline can enrich and give a series continuity and an internal realism , it can also provide constraints. Jeff hawke, as Sydney conceived it , was a series of freestanding stories, with little to tie them together except the main characters.

An advantage that this gave was that ,he could introduce technical innovations when as as he thought fit without reference to earlier stories. An example of this is the   evolution of Hawke’s various spacesuits as drawn throughout the series, which represent the spectrum of those depicted in sci-fi   during the fifities and sixties and when science finally caught up with science-fiction in the form of the US space programme , Hawke was accordingly attired in a NASA style suit

 

The earliest spacesuits that we see in the Hawke series are those worn by the Earth

crews who are building the Earth defences against the imminent MARTIAN INVASION. The style is that of a rigid suit with points of articulation at elbows and knees etc, with the ubiquitous bubble helmet so popular among pulp illustrators at the time. The Adventure annual of 1953, for example, has cover art with precisely this type of suit . As the strip reached OPPOSITE POWER , the suit had evolved into the “space armour “ style with fully articulated arms and legs and with a closed-in helmet with visor, a style which Sydney retained through to OVERLORD and beyond, and which became the JH “look” for a number of years. Again, this type of spacesuit was popular among sci-fi artists and was also seen as a realistic possiblity as to how real astronauts might   look in the future. A magasine article form 1956 which speculated on what real suits might be like, mocked up such a suit to demonstrate to its readers what we might wear in space. Chesley Bonastall, who illustrated the groundbreaking “ Conquest of space “ (1949) influenced many later sci-fi artists, Sydney included, and depicts several astronauts wearing suits similar to those of the OVERLORD type

As time went on and space exploration became a reality with the “Space race” of the nineteen sixties, the Hawke strip also took on board these more realistic elements and both ships and equipment started to resemble those actually used by NASA . Thus the spacesuits we see in the strip took on a more realistic look and when the crew descend into the crater Plato in MOONSTRUCK they look much more like   astronaunts from the Gemini programme.

With the beginning of the seventies , when the US moon missions were in full swing , the strip also reflected these new developments and Hawke and Mac, when investigating the alien probe in the environs of Pluto in HERE BE TYGERS   look very much like Apollo astronauts. Skipper prossitt