1956 was perhaps the Anno Mirabilis of the Hawke strip, the year in which Jordan and Patterson got into their stride and everything changed.

This creative pair decided that something extra was needed in the daily strip; Just as Dan Dare had the Mekon and Holmes had had Moriarty, so Jeff Hawke needed an arch-enemy. Between them they created the character Chalcedon , a larger than life (literally) space-pirate and outlaw, full of braggadocio and low cunning. He made his first appearance in the story SANCTUARY in panel H717 , where we see him as a shadowy and menacing figure on the research satellite “Cupid”. and we are kept in suspense for a full six weeks until we see his face for the first

time!

This decision to create Chalcedon was more momentous than they realized at the time. For it led to unanticipated consequences for the strip, consequences which would completely change the character of the stories and transform the strip into its definitive form. Although the initial plan was simply to introduce an arch-enemy , the ramifications for the strip didn’t stop there. . For if you want to introduce an alien outlaw, that suggests that there is a law which he is outside. Thus almost by accident the Galactic federation was summoned into existence, headed by its two stalwarts, His excellency and Kolvorok, characters who in time were to be as emblematic of the strip as Hawke and Maclean themselves. And being a galaxy wide body this federation was depicted as a heterogeneous array of many different alien types working together , a trope introduced at this point for the first time that in later years was to be a defining characteristic of the Hawke strip.

From this one decision and the consequences that flowed from it Patterson and Jordan did something most unusual in sci-fi writing . This group of newly minted aliens , were they to have followed the usual conventions of sci-fi , would have either been cold calculating inhuman creatures with whom Hawke and co would have fought their battles, or would have been creatures like the Ptyrrans whose interests co-incided with those of the humans but who were ultimately mysterious and unknowable.

Instead they made them sympathetic beings with whom the reader could identify and sympathise ;

beings with the same worries and exasperations that we have . In doing this   there were thus created two foci in the strip with which the reader could identify :on the one side Hawke and his human companions , and on the other   the aliens themselves for whom the humans are causing so many problems in their efforts to police the galaxy. In many stories the members of the Galactic federation act as a sort of Greek chorus , commenting on and giving perspective to the actions and follies of the.Earthmen. And in fact the aliens occasionally had stories of their own where Hawke and co never appeared at all . Thus was created that magic ingredient which in the end was to lift the JH stories far above the usual run of science fiction and raise it to a new level.

From here on the stories were no longer parochial and geo-centric – us vs the aliens – but took on a much larger vista and an almost galactic point of view,

where the actions of the humans were just part of a much larger pattern.  The Hawke strip was never the same after Chalcedon and his unexpected consequences lifted it head and shoulders above its contemporaries.   Skipper Prossit