Category: Graphic Novels

By Sydney Jordan & Willie Patterson (Titan Books)
ISBN: 978-1-84576-597-2

Finally back in print – and in Titan’s spiffy Deluxe hardback format – is this superb collection of strips from the only serious rival to Dan Dare in either popularity or quality, not just in Britain but in the entire world.

Sydney Jordan began his saga of the thinking man’s hero in the Daily Express on February 2nd 1954, writing the first few adventures himself. In 1956 his old school friend and associate Willie Patterson moved from Scotland to London and helped out with the fifth adventure ‘Sanctuary’, and scripted the next one ‘Unquiet Island’, whilst sorting out his own career as a freelance scripter for such titles as Amalgamated Press’s Children’s Encyclopaedia, Caroline Baker – Barrister at Law and eventually Fleetway’s War Picture Library series.

He continued to supplement and assist the artist intermittently (Jordan was never comfortable scripting, preferring to plot and draw the strips – another confederate of the time was Harry Harrison who wrote the ninth tale ‘Out of Touch’, which ran from October 10th 1957 – April 5th 1958) until, with the fourteenth tale, he assumed the writing chores on a full-time basis and began the strip’s Golden Age. He would remain until 1969.

‘Overlord’ began on February 10th 1960. In it, British Space Scientist Jeff Hawke meets for the first time a character who would become one of the greatest villains in pictorial fiction: Chalcedon, galactic criminal and would-be Overlord of Space.

When an alien ship crashes into the Egyptian desert, it reveals that two huge fleets of spaceships are engaged in a running battle within the Solar System, and the Earth is directly in their path. After interminable babble and shilly-shallying at the UN, Hawke convinces the authorities to let him take a party to the warring factions in the hope of diverting them from our poor, endangered world. What he finds is not only terrifying and fantastic but, thanks to Jordan’s magical illustration and Patterson’s thrilling, devastatingly wry writing, incredibly sophisticated and very, very funny.

Running until June 20th, it was followed by a much more traditional and solemn yarn. ‘Survival’ (21-June to December 12th 1960) follows the events of an interplanetary prang that severely injures Hawke’s assistant Mac Maclean. Repaired – and “improved” by the penitent extraterrestrials that caused the accident – Mac rejoins the Earth crew, but is no longer one of them. Moreover they are all still marooned on a desolate asteroid with no hope of rescue, and must use all their meagre resources to save themselves. This gritty tale of endurance and integrity was mostly illustrated by fellow Scot Colin Andrew as Sydney Jordan was busily preparing art for a proposed Jeff Hawke Sunday page, which never materialised, although that art was recycled as the eighteenth adventure ‘Pastmaster’.

It was a return to Earth and satirical commentary with the next tale ‘Wondrous Lamp’. Running from 13th September 1960 to 11th March 1961 it begins in second century Arabia when an alien survey scout crashed at the feet of wandering merchant Ala Eddin, briefly granting him great powers before his timely comeuppance. Nearly two thousand years later the ship – which looks a bit like a lamp – precipitates a crisis when its teleportation circuits lead to an invasion by a couple of million of the universe’s toughest warriors…

This brilliantly quirky tale, like all the best science-fiction, is a commentary on its time of creation, and the satirical view of Whitehall bureaucracy and venality, earthbound and pan-galactic, is a dry and cynical delight, which is as telling now as it was in the days before the Profumo Affair.

Chalcedon returns for the final tale in this volume. ‘Counsel For The Defence’ (13th March -2nd August 1961) sees Hawke and Maclean press-ganged into the depths of Intergalactic Jurisprudence as the Overlord, brought to Justice at last, chooses the Earthman as his advocate in the upcoming trial. Naturally he has a sinister motive and naturally nothing turns out as anybody planned or expected it to, but the art is breathtaking, the adventure captivating and the humour timeless.

Jeff Hawke is a revered and respected milestone of graphic achievement almost everywhere except its country of origin. Hopefully this latest attempt to reprint these gems will find a more receptive audience this time, and perhaps we’ll even get to see those earlier stories as well.

© 2007 Express Newspapers Ltd.

By (Pelham Books/Rainbird)
ISBN: 0-72071-456-7

Jane is one of the most important and well-regarded comic strips in British, if not World, history. It began on December 5th 1932 as Jane’s Journal: Or The Diary of a Bright Young Thing, a frothy, frivolous gag-a-day strip in the Daily Mirror, created by the cartoonist Norman Pett. Originally a series of panels with cursive script embedded to simulate a diary page it switched to the more formal strip frames and balloons in late 1938, around the time scripter Don Freeman came on board.

Jane’s secret was skin. Even before war broke out there were torn skirts and lost blouses aplenty, but once the shooting started and Jane became an operative for British Intelligence her clothes came off with terrifying ease. She even went topless when the Blitz was at its worst.

Pett drew the strip, famously using first his wife and then actress and model Christabel Leighton-Porter until May 1948 when his assistant Michael Hubbard assumed full control of the feature (prior to that he had drawn backgrounds and male characters). Hubbard carried the series, increasingly a safe soap-opera and less a racy glamour strip to its conclusion on October 10th 1959.

Jane’s war record is frankly astounding. As a morale booster she was reckoned worth more than divisions of infantry and her exploits were cited in Parliament and discussed by Eisenhower and Churchill. Legend has it that The Mirror‘s Editor was among the few who knew the date of “D-Day” so as to co-ordinate her exploits with the Normandy landings. In 1944, on the day she went full frontal, the American Service newspaper Roundup (provided to US soldiers) went with the headline “JANE GIVES ALL” and the sub-heading “YOU CAN ALL GO HOME NOW”. Christabel Leighton-Porter toured as Jane in a services revue – she stripped for the boys – during the war and in 1949 starred in the film The Adventures of Jane.

Since there still isn’t a definitive collection of this fabulous strip (although the occasional brief tome has slipped out over the years) I’ve chosen to review this slim gem that was originally released in 1983 to tie-in with a BBC TV series starring Glynis Barber. It features “Hush-Hush House” from 1940 (incidentally the adventure adapted as the aforementioned TV show) wherein the simple ingénue becomes a British agent and is sent to a code-breaking site where a spy is causing havoc, and also “Nature in the Raw”, a gentle mystery with genteelly salacious artwork from 1951, drawn by the criminally underrated Hubbard.

Although the product of simpler, if more perilous times, the innocently saucy adventures of Jane, patient but dedicated beau Georgie-Porgie and especially her intrepid Dachshund Count Fritz Von Pumpernickel are landmarks of our artform, not simply for their impact but also for the plain and simple reason that they are superbly drawn and great to read. Let’s hope that one day that fact will be acknowledged with a definitive reprinting.

© 1983 Mirror Group Newspapers Ltd. All Rights Reserved.