Review: Jeff Hawke's Cosmos: The Epilogue (January 2021)

The final issue of Jeff Hawke's Cosmos is a bumper package, clocking in at a whopping 158 pages. It has a nice package of features to run alongside the final three comic strip adventures of Jeff Hawke, some additional colour and even a celebration of the contributors who helped put together the magazine over its 18 year history. I was one of those contributors in the early years, and I'm proud of the association.

But my contribution was the tiniest fraction of the totality that is Jeff Hawke's Cosmos. William Rudling and his crew—chief amongst them Duncan Lunan and Ian Pillinger—deserve three rowdy cheers for their perseverance and patience in putting together over 30 issues and specials. It's an astonishing feat, as anyone who has tried to put a magazine together will tell you. There are lots of moving parts and any one of them can go wrong!

This issue is 'The Epilogue' and it contains four stories: 'A Message For Medusa' (1986-87); 'Time's Jest' (1987); 'Out of the Ecliptic' (1987-88); and 'Song For Methuselah' (1988). As always, each story is accompanied by Duncan Lunan's notes, which also extend beyond the last story, which was cut short when The Daily Record axed the strip on 30 April 1988. Lunan discusses two potential stories that went unpublished, although details have appeared previously on the Jeff Hawke Club blog. [You will need to dig around, but the notes start in September 2017.]

As a prelude the stories, Rudling writes briefly of Syd Jordan's days at the Strathmore Studios before Syd himself picks up the story of his career in Fleet Street. There's a brief interview with Syd courtesy of Chris Tubb before we reach the main course of the magazine, the first of some 90 pages of comic strips.

Duncan Lunan supplies the last of his 'The Sky Above You' columns before tackling the intriguing problem of episode numbers that were attached to Jeff Hawke and Lance McLean stories. How many episodes were published of the strip(s)? It would appear that the grand total was 10,209.

Roger Ley discusses Britain's future role in space exploration—inconclusive but Roger remains optimistic, while I'm more pessimistic following the current government's decision to pull out of the Galileo and EGNOS programmes, which means losing access (for instance) to the EGNOS SoL (Safety of Life) service from 25 June this year. The government also admits "UK-based businesses, academics and researchers cannot bid for future EU GNSS [Global Navigation Satellite System] contracts and may face difficulty carrying out and completing existing contracts." But that's an argument for another day.

There's an interesting look at some of the guest appearances that have made their way into Jeff Hawke's adventures, from friends and family to Boris Karloff, Sydney Greenstreet and Princess Di, and Sandy Morrison writes on crewed exploration of the solar system. The colour pages at the back of the issue include numerous photos of Syd Jordan's attendances at talks and conventions and a couple of nice colour prints are available... as are back issues of the magazine and its special issues.

That is not the very end, as there are plans for a further issue, indexing the magazine and collecting some previously unpublished episodes.

Meanwhile, you can find more details about back numbers at the Jeff Hawke Club web page or by contacting william AT williamrudling.co.uk.

Jeff Hawke's Cosmos v10 no3 (January 2018)

What a long, strange trip it has been, reading through the complete set of Jeff Hawke stories. The early issues of Jeff Hawke's Cosmos jumped around a little, reprinting some of the earliest yarns from the 1950s alongside what many consider the classic era of Hawke's run in the 1960s. For the past couple of years, the magazine has been reprinting the later Jeff McLane tales in chronological order. And this month we have reached the penultimate issue, with only four more tales to go.

William Rudling deserves a huge round of applause for bringing one of the best of all British science fiction strips back into print. I was very proud to have been a contributor from the beginning in 2003, writing a series on old SF strips from the 1950s before I ran out of steam a couple of years later (that and a full-time job with Look & Learn!). William has been indefatigable, having now published thirty issues plus three specials.

This penultimate issue contains two long Lance McLane (or Jeff Hawke as they were in syndication) stories: "Even Death May Die" and "Virus". The first is a blend of science fiction and horror, beginning with the discovery of an old space shuttle in earth orbit, now a tomb for its crew. Scavengers board the derelict, accidentally opening up a way for the ancient gods to return. With his partner left on board the shuttle, one of the junkers makes it to the Spacewheel and a rescue ship is sent. Meanwhile, Jeff and Fortuna are aboard the Spacewheel and when Fortuna scans the mind of the injured, escaped space-scrap merchant, she witnesses a scene of Cthuluian terror.

In "Virus", Fortuna feels the urge to return to the asteroid where she was found by Hawke. At the same time, scouting parties are exploring the remains of London, checking the likes of hospitals for dangerous leaks of bio-hazards or radiation, the result of years under ice. On the asteroid that she is named after, the android Fortuna sees one of her creators, a Grand Magician of Aurigae, while on Earth, medical supplies are brought  to Moonbase by a pilot who has been accidentally exposed to... something.

As always, the quality of storytelling is superb and it's a sign of its quality that the strip was able to jump from Lovecraftian horror to medical drama and elsewhere—wherever the story demanded.

The stories are backed-up here with copious notes by Duncan Lunan, who also pens astronomical features, including the final episode of "Space Notes".

Next: Jeff Hawke's Cosmos: The Epilogue, which will contain the final four stories, along with Lunan's "Hawke Notes", extra articles and a colour section. It will be priced £14. The Jeff Hawke Club will continue to publish a newsletter and supply back-issues. More details next time.

Meanwhile, the last few issues are available on subscription: £26 for three issues here in the UK and £34/38/41 for overseas subscribers, payable in a variety of ways. You can find more details (and back issues) at the new Jeff Hawke Club web page or by contacting william AT williamrudling.co.uk. 

Jeff Hawke's Cosmos v.10 no.2

Jeff Hawke's Cosmos magazine has been off the radar for quite some time as the artwork and printers' proofs for one of the stories included have vanished off the face of the planet. A complete run of the story has been put together from the strip's printed appearance and the printed colour dropped in favour of greyscale. The quality is a little patchy in places, but all the strips are legible and any minor problems are forgivable against the benefits of having the strip together in one place to read.

The latest issue (v.10 no.2, released August 2017) contains just two stories this time round. The icy earth of the Lance McLane strip (under which name the strip ran in the Scottish Daily Record—although the lead character was Hawke in syndication) is undergoing some massive changes, with the ice receding and ocean routes opening up. In the Middle East, the Holy Land is freed from ice and a journey is planned by an Israeli-Arab team to reclaim Palestine and Israel with technical aid from the orbiting spacewheel.

At the same time, a man—ill-equipped and close to death—has been discovered on the ice near the French coast. The survivor of a group living at Bayonne, the man relates how an army looking for slave labour attacked their camp and that they have been forced to work on reopening the Channel Tunnel at Calais—or, more precisely, uncovering a cobalt bomb that have lain buried in the Tunnel since before the ice advanced.

Following the action of 'Pharaoh's Army Got Drowned', we head off to Mars for 'Sails in the Red Sunset'. A Martian survey team loses contact with Mars Base... and then a second survey team stops transmitting. The Hope, delivering nuclear waste for reprocessing, brings Hawke to Mars and a scan of the surface shows an anomaly at Arsia Mons: a strange cold spot. Then Mars Base comes under attack from a drone-like aircraft and communication is lost.

After shooting down several of the attacking craft, Hawke discovers they are robot-made and operated by sophisticated flight brains. Their base appears to be Arsia Mons, where a factory is discovered, automated systems dating back centuries. He also discovers that the attack craft may be guarding something even more ancient.

As with many of the best Jeff Hawke stories—and, indeed, good science fiction in general—the stories often explore major themes; in this latter instance it is the argument between Creationism and Darwinism.

Duncan Lunan, responsible for many of the Lance McLane storylines, provides more 'Hawke Notes', takes a look at the reality behind the Martian drones as well as a number of astronomical features. A couple of features by Roger Ley and William Rudling, plus a look back at the Jeff Hawke Club Weekend of 2016, round out the issue nicely.

Subscription rates are £26 for three issues here in the UK and £34/38/41 for overseas subscribers, payable in a variety of ways. You can find more details (and back issues) at the new Jeff Hawke Club web page or by contacting william AT williamrudling.co.uk.

Jeff Hawke Jnr

A welcome companion to Jeff Hawke's Cosmos, William Rudling has brought together all the episodes of "Jeff Hawke" from the pages of Junior Express—hence the "Jnr" in the title on the cover. The early issues of Junior Express—later Express Weekly and later still TV Express—are scarce and even fans of Hawke with deep pockets will struggle to find a decent run of the paper. Here we have all 83 episodes that made up four serial stories between September 1954 and April 1956.

The dates will probably clue you in to the truth that they are not the most sophisticated of stories. The opening panels echo the strip's first appearance in the Daily Express, in which Jeff is introduced as a pilot at Farnborough—as simply a pilot at an air show in the Junior version, rather than the pilot of experimental aircraft—before he flies off to encounter a flying saucer. In the Junior strip, Jeff is joined by a friend, Bill Judd, and his nephew, Dick Regan, who stowaway aboard his plane and are soon caught up in the adventure.

Shining aliens in both stories take Jeff into space before dropping him off on a planet. The stories diverge... for the more youthful reader, Jeff is led by a robot guide named Groka and asked to spy on the other inhabitants of the planet Rea under the rule of the war-thirsty Sator. Jeff, Bill and young Dick (no sniggering, please) train until they can pass as members of Sator's army and use a stolen aircraft to fly behind enemy lines.

Jeff's battle with Sator continued for 30 weeks and, whilst it could never hope to match the Daily Express strip for quality in both art and storyline, it was entertaining and the plot made good use of the fact that these early issues were printed in red and black, the former colour coming in quite handy when it came to identifying allied and enemy robots.

The red also gives colour to the flames of the Planet of Fire, the second story in this collection, although Jeff, Bill and young Dick (you've been warned!) are dropped off on the planet's seventh moon with the curious instruction to find "the people who dwell in caves". Led by Zirk the Black, the cave-dwellers turn out to be refugees making arrangements to flee the planet of fire, mining the moon for a rare metal required to build spaceships.

Returning from the ore-rich satellite, attempts to build rockets for Zirk's people are thwarted by earthquakes and attacks by other desperate inhabitants of the planet. Despite requiring 200 spacecraft, Zirk is forced to begin ferrying his people off-planet with only three in what seems to have been a very hurried ending to the story.

Story three involved two changes of artist, introducing George Stokes and Ferdinando Tacconi. The stories also improved dramatically as the previous premise was dropped entirely and Jeff's next adventure involves the building of a space station and Jeff is to be put in charge of a space fleet. Alien eyes watch, planning an attack. When a meteorite strike sends a spaceman floating off into the void—with Jeff in pursuit in a space taxi—they use the opportunity to help themselves to some captives via tractor beam.

Unfortunately, alien technology is as poorly constructed as Earth technology and the tractor beam breaks; the space taxi runs out of fuel; a young boy named Bobby spots the problem from Earth using his grandfather's telescope and his father is able to phone space control with the news. The boy subsequently stows away on the rescue rocket sent from Earth. I think I spoke too soon about the improvements in the quality of the stories.

But the quality of the artwork and layouts vastly improved with the arrival of Ferdinando Tacconi, who took the strip to full colour in early 1956. The strip was now published across two pages with a feature below them... and it's here that I disagree with the choice to break up the strip, varying the panel sizes to create patchwork pages rather than reprinting the originals. I don't have the original issues, so I don't know whether this would have created major problems with text dropping into the gutter, but the results aren't as satisfying as a straight reprint.

 

The final story begins with another new space station and an easy to spot villain by the name of Professor Bodkin, whose nephew, Scrubby, is one of the space cadets sent up to the station. To avoid being seen by his uncle, Scrubby hides in the hold of the ferry rocket where he stumble upon a bomb intended to sabotage the mission.

Threats are issued against the latest station that is being built but the satellite is completed safely – or so everyone thinks; two gravity bombs have been set to explode when the sun and the moon reach certain positions and even Bodkin cannot remember where they are planted.

As well as the four stories, Jeff Hawke Jnr has a wealth of factual material written by Duncan Lunan, Jeremy Briggs and others. These articles include a look at the Space Crewman's Log Book, given to members of the Jeff Hawke Spaceman's Club (and Junior Express readers) and the 25 cards that made up the Jeff Hawke's "Space Gen" card set.

Despite the poor storylines, it's great to see these strips collected. The Jeff Hawke Club have done an amazing job of pulling together the complete run of Jeff Hawke and Lance McLane strips and Jeff Hawke Jnr is the icing on the cake.

Subscription rates are £26 for three issues here in the UK and £34/38/41 for overseas subscribers, payable in a variety of ways. You can find more details (and back issues) at the new Jeff Hawke Club web page or by contacting william AT williamrudling.co.uk. Contact William Rudling for details of Jeff Hawke Jnr. 

Jeff Hawke's Cosmos v.10 no.1

After the bumper release of Earthspace a few months ago, Jeff Hawke's Cosmos returns to its regular 3-issues a year schedule, the latest, the debut of volume 10 appearing in August 2016. This continues the run of stories featuring Jeff Hawke from the days when he was appearing in the UK—or at least in Scotland in the Scottish Daily Record—as Lance McLane but syndicated under the original Hawke name.

'The Asset Strippers', the first of three stories reprinted from 1984-85, sees an alien race arrive on Mars with the seemingly innocuous offer of trade—a restored atmosphere in exchange for a few tons of ore for their engines. The offer is not genuine, of course. Instead, the aliens are planning to steal the planet!

The titular Shark in 'The Shark in the Clear Air' is an aircraft that begins attacking other aircraft and strafing a small town of survivors in Northern Australia—a pilotless defence system that believes that the slowly expanding survivors of the Earth's ice age are the invaders it has waited so long to defend against.

An asteroid full of exotic ores perfect for mining is threatened by a rogue. The crew of Faith plan to nuke the problem out of existence, but one of the crew dreams that a woman is trapped on the rogue asteroid in 'What Dreams May Come'.

The stories are as satisfying as ever, as are the ever-present 'Hawke Notes' by Duncan Lunan, who also supplies various astronomical features to this issue, as do Roger Ley and Sandy Morrison, looking at Tim Peake's trip to space and the National Space Centre respectively

Subscription rates are £26 for three issues here in the UK and £34/38/41 for overseas subscribers, payable in a variety of ways. You can find more details (and back issues) at the new Jeff Hawke Club web page or by contacting william AT williamrudling.co.uk. 

P.S. Duncan Lunan has a collection of time travel stories published by Shoreline of Infinity Publications in paperback and as an e-book on 14 September, illustrated by Sydney Jordan. You can order the book directly from the publisher or via Amazon.

Earthsearch (Jeff Hawke's Cosmos)

The latest issue of Jeff Hawke's Cosmos is actually a separate book entitled Earthsearch containing the first five (or six, depending on how you count them) stories starring Lance McLane following the demise of Jeff Hawke in the pages of the Daily Express in 1974. Some syndicated Hawke stories appeared, notably in the Scottish Daily News, but an attempt to revive the character in the pages of the Daily Record faltered as the new paper wanted to distance itself from its rival's property.

Thus was born Lance McLane, who debuted in May 1976 in a tale that lacked the humorous tones of Hawke and his well-established coterie of aliens; instead, McLane's adventures were set against a darker background, the Earth all but uninhabitable after a collision with the Moon and mankind's survivors based on three vast spaceships, Faith, Hope and Charity, or spread thinly around the solar system. In 'Last Frontier', McLane is performing surgery on Mars when he and his nurse are kidnapped and forced to fly to a desolate Earth populated by barbarians, knows as Pocs (post-collision survivors).

'Angel of Mercy', the second story, introduced a new regular character. An S.O.S. signal McLane and the crew of Hope to a distant asteroid where only one of the two entities identified is human. The second is an android, a being made to last for centuries afraid of letting the human's take her dying companion.

To avoid spoilers I'll skip fairly promptly through the remaining four tales. The android Fortuna takes a pivotal role in 'Telepath', set in the icy-wastes of South America, and 'Chimera', set on Saturn's moon, Titan, while Hawke and Fortuna crash-land on Earth and find themselves captives on an island of women in 'Lysistrata II'. 'The Achene on Amalthea' spans the solar system from Jupiter to Venus with Hawke and his crew in the grip of a strange alien lifeform.

For this volume, McLane has been renamed Jeff Hawke but the beard, background and storylines mean these stories sit uncomfortably within Jeff Hawke's universe. That situation was resolved  after a while so that new stories could be told where McLane could adopt the name Hawke for syndication. Although there's no attempt to disguise their origins, these are definitely Lance McLane yarns, not Jeff Hawke.

That's not to demean the stories, which are excellent. They're more straightforward science fiction compared to some Hawke tales, which had the advantage of twenty years of back story and a wide range of well-established human and alien characters. (Here, Fortuna is mankind's first contact with an alien being and having people refer to Hawke as "the good doctor" is somewhat anachronistic.)

I think I'm right in saying that the first tales are drawn for the most part by Paul Neary while later stories were drawn by Jordan assisted by Thayen Rich due to the pressure of having to both write and draw the strip.

The stories are accompanied by Duncan Lunan's notes and there are some short articles by Lunan, Roger Ley and editor William Rudling rounding out this issue's 110 pages. 

Subscription rates are £26 for three issues here in the UK and £34/39/41 for overseas subscribers, payable in a variety of ways. You can find more details (and back issues) at the new Jeff Hawke Club web page or by contacting william AT williamrudling.co.uk.

Jeff Hawke's Cosmos v.9 no.3

The latest issue of Jeff Hawke's Cosmos (Volume 9 Number 3, January 2016) dropped through the letterbox yesterday, containing the usual mix of strips and space features. The meat of the issue are four latter-day Jeff Hawke tales from his Lance McLean days—during this period (1983) the strip appeared in the Scottish Daily Record as Lance McLane but was syndicated under the more familiar name of Jeff Hawke.

Of the four strips, two are substantial and two slightly shorter. We begin with 'The Phoenix at Easter' (Jan-May 1983), a story that involves and explains the heads on Easter Island; next is 'Tangaroa' (May-July 1983), named after a mythical god, in which Jeff and Fortuna try to trace a missing medic, only to discover an underwater alien race. The longest yarn in this issue is 'Nest of the Phoenix' (July-Dec 1983), which has a more familiar space setting and begins with some mysterious findings on the planet Mercury. Finally 'I Talk to the Trees' (Dec 1983-Feb 1984) isn't about Earth-based trees, but genetically modified trees being grown on asteroids.

The strips here haven't been in print for years – in fact, the last story adds some episodes missing from a previous reprint. Duncan Lunan adds a variety of features and story notes to the package, which is an always welcome arrival.

Subscription rates are £26 for three issues here in the UK and £34/38/41 for overseas subscribers, payable in a variety of ways. You can find more details (and back issues) at the new Jeff Hawke Club web page or by contacting william AT williamrudling.co.uk. 

Jeff Hawke's Cosmos v.9 no.2

The new issue of Jeff Hawke's Cosmos (Volume 9 Number 2, May 2014, released June) has arrived, containing three more of the latter-era Jeff Hawke yarns from his Lance McLean days—the strip by then running as Lance McLane in the Scottish Daily Record but syndicated under the more familiar name of Jeff Hawke.

The three strips in the latest issue take the story from December 1981 to January 1983, so it's a substantial volume, as always. 'Time-Out' concerns time travel from a base near to the pyramids of Giza with Jeff finding himself in trouble in the matriarchal society of the 22nd century. 'Home Is The Sailor' begins with the disappearance of a honeymooning bride on Mars and continues with revelations of what happened to the lost Martian race. Finally, in 'Frozen Assets' Hawke faces genetically engineered soldiers planning to take over the planet using weapons hidden in space junk orbiting the Earth.

This is the first time these strips have been back in print for many years, so they're well worth the price of entry alone. Adding to the magazine's value, editor William Rudling continues to run a variety of features, from Duncan Lunan's story notes and astronomy features to Andrew Darlington's features on old space heroes, in this instance looking back at the old British comic Rocket.

Rudling has plans to reprint a number of special volumes and may be adding to the publications list of the Jeff Hawke Club. Subscription rates are £26 for three issues here in the UK and £34/38/41 for overseas subscribers, payable in a variety of ways. You can find more details (and back issues) at the new Jeff Hawke Club web page or by contacting william AT williamrudling.co.uk.