Jeff Hawke - Publication History

Publication History

Sydney Jordan was a graduate of the Aeronautical Technical School in Reading. He long sought to draw a fantastic comic where he could exploit his skills in drawing aeroplanes. In 1955 he met Eric Souster and Jim Gilbert in London, two friends with whom he had served in the R.A.F. Together they created the character of Jeff Hawke.

At first Jeff Hawke, presented as an ex-R.A.F. pilot (just like Jordan) was a rather ordinary, Flash Gordon-like heroic character. The plots were centred around ordinary adventure and science fiction themes common in pulp comics and fiction of the age, and at this stage the drawings were only of average quality. Nevertheless the strip was good enough to be published daily in the Daily Express.

In 1956 William Patterson joined his childhood friend Jordan, at first writing only the dialogue. Prior to this he did work on the Childrens' Encyclopedia for Amalgamated Press, also doing stories for Dan Dare and war comics. However after a few years he began to produce plot lines and stories as well. This led to a dramatic improvement in the quality of the comic. Patterson made Jeff Hawke the first science fiction comic strip for adults, not just children or adolescents. Jordan, now concentrating entirely on drawing, improved his style to a highly suggestive, realistic, contrasted black-and-white mark. The Patterson-Jordan period is considered the "true" Jeff Hawke by most.

Willie Patterson was born in 1929 in Perth, Scotland, and met his future wife Anne (b 1929) at Perth Academy where they both studied the classics and became sweethearts. They married in 1951, aged 22, and had three daughters - Chrys (b 1952), Frances (b 1961) and Eva (b 1966). Throughout the fifties and sixties Willie Patterson travelled between Perth and London, by sleeper train, to fulfil obligations at the Daily Express, and also worked at home on the Jeff Hawke scripts. Using an electric typewriter on a specially made large wooden desk, listening to operas and classical music. He was a larger than life character who organised fireworks displays for the community and parties for his children. His parents and sister lived in Perth and Willie liked to spend time with them, going down to the local pub with his father for a wee dram. Family was important to him.

In 1969, following a number of stresses and pressures, William Patterson's contract to write Jeff Hawke came to an end. He wasn't in good mental health and remained in London, separated from his family who stayed in Perth. Willie Patterson's physical health also was affected and he died in 1986, aged only 57yrs old. He was laid to rest in Kensal Green cemetery, attended by his daughters Chrys Muirhead and Frances Patterson, and Sydney Jordan. The 1986 Titan Books republication of Jeff Hawke, Book Two, contains a testimonial to the life of Willie Patterson, by Sydney Jordan.

Jordan took back care of both stories and drawings, but without Patterson the quality of the strip declined again. Finally, on 18 April 1974 the Daily Express published its last Jeff Hawke strip.

In 1977, however, comics artist Brian Bolland was approached by Jordan to ghost some episodes, and remarked that by this point fellow artist - "active in the days of comic fandom" and soon to turn professional - Paul Neary had "already done quite a few." Bolland drew 15 episodes, and "Syd touched up some of the faces, a few details here and there, to make them look a bit more like him." By this point, "although the Express owned the rights to the strip, they were not printing it," but since it had a strong European following, these new episodes (Bolland believes) "got collected in anthologies in French and Spanish," but not in the UK except briefly in "the fanzine Eureka."

Jordan later tried to revamp the character by publishing a similar strip called Lance McLane in the Scottish newspaper Daily Record. After this failed to catch on, Jordan came up with an embarrassing plot hole in which McLane somehow transformed himself into Hawke. However the resuscitated strip never recovered the original brilliance of the Patterson period: Jordan left more and more work to his unnamed helpers, and rapidly the strip fell into oblivion.