High in the evening sky over southern England a pilot falls from a strange spacecraft and plummets toward the dark Earth. After anxious moments the Shute unfurls and billows into shape . The pilot drifts slowly to the ground . Thus Jeff Hawke returns to Earth at the start of “The Martian invasion” . And

Hawke’s return to Terra Firma on this occasion is metaphorical ad well as actual. For Sydney was changing the direction of the strip fundamentally at this point. In the first story “space rider” he was finding his way, and his first inspiration had been Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon, the most influential space comic strip of the thirties and forties . Space rider showed many similarities to Flash Gordon; an Earthman finding himself on another world, and overthrowing a tyrannical regime. But this type of story was a little clichéd by the nineteen fifties and Sydney decided that he would have to change this thin fare for something more substantial if the strip was to survive.

When he bailed out of the Shining Ones’ saucer he not only made the journey back to terra firma , but that journey represented his transition from Space fantasy to a more subtle character rooted in that background of reality and hard sci-fi which we now associate with Hawke. He lost his costume and cape and replaced them with an RAF uniform and a group of friends and associates with whom his character could interact, develop and be reflected . The somewhat cardboard cut-out hero of Spacerider , was re-moulded into a subtler and more interesting

personality

This subtler approach shows itself immediately in the host of new characters which appear in the story and which form a richer backdrop to Hawke’s world. These include Doctor Gilton, Groupie , Smitty and a host of named astronauts; but two emerge in sharper focus than all the others, namely Laura and Mac who will prove to be key figures in the development of the strip . Sydney remembers that Doctor Gilton, Laura’s father was a character who he intended to develop at first , but that as the plot unfolded, Laura, almost by an instinctive process took centre stage as the female lead and Hawke’s romantic interest

Mac emerged almost by a throw of the dice, from the numerous named spacemen that accompanied Hawke in building the space station . Sydney says he wanted someone to act as a foil to Hawke’s essentially serious nature and a wise-cracking Canadian( a nationality which also gave a nod to Daily Express owner Lord Beaverbrook) fitted the bill perfectly .

Not only were the dramatis personae changed in this story but also all the props and scenery . for we are now in the realistic and familiar world of the nineteen fifties albeit with a little imaginative increase in space technology.

Thus Hawke’s career was relaunched along this new trajectory , a platform from which messrs Jordan and Patterson could   now weave the ingenious and subtle stories with which we are now all familiar.  Skipper Prossitt