The ASSET STRIPPERS, a story recently published in the JHC, has an interesting history, in that when originally published in the Scottish daily record, it was substantially longer to the extent of about thirty strips. Its published form in the JHC and also in the Milano Libri series back in the 80’s has a somewhat truncated introduction. According to Duncan Lunan , Sydney’s one time collaborator on the Hawke strip, a package containing the thirty original strips was lost in transit when being returned to Sydney after its publication in the Daily Record. As a result Sydney had to create new artwork for the beginning of the story in a somewhat shorter form for the Milano Libri edition, and it is this re-done artwork which now exists in the JH archives and which was used for reproduction in the JEFF HAWKE COSMOS . Fortunately Duncan has copies of the Scottish daily record for this period and has kindly sent us some scans to reproduce here on the Blog. Below are the first three strips of the original longer version. We will reproduce all the missing strips here in the next few weeks. Skipper Prossitt