Jeff Hawke

Prior to this he did work on the Children's Encyclopedia for Amalgamated Press, also doing stories for Dan Dare and war comics.

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.

He was laid to rest in Kensal Green cemetery, attended by his daughters Chrys Muirhead and Frances Patterson, and Sydney Jordan.

"[1] 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.

"[1] Jordan later tried to revamp the character by publishing a similar strip called Lance McLane in the Scottish newspaper Daily Record.

Jeff Hawke started as a conventional hero-vs-aliens science fiction action comic, but under Patterson's direction it quickly developed its own individual style.

In the United States, Jeff Hawke was printed in the Deseret News and was reprinted in Menomonee Falls Gazette.

In the strip H1760, published 21 November 1959, it is possible to see a stone that commemorates the first human landing on the Moon, noting that it happened on 4 August 1969.

Thus, Sydney Jordan and William Patterson forecast the real date of this event with an error of only two weeks, ten years before Neil Armstrong made the first descent to the Moon surface on July 21.

[2] In the introduction to The Jeff Hawke Book Two: Counsel for the Defence (Titan Books, 1986), Sydney Jordan states: The discerning may recognise from my drawings of Hawke, that I used Hans Meyer as a model.South African actor Hans Meyer later went on to feature in a number of TV shows including BBC TV's Colditz as Hauptmann Ullmann.

[3] A second collection followed soon after, subtitled "Counsel for the Defence," also under a newly commissioned cover from the popular Dredd and Camelot 3000 artist, Bolland.

In addition to the regular magazine, three special editions - The Martian Quartet, Lunar 10 and Hawke's Notes have also been published.

William Patterson, writer of Jeff Hawke
A typical Jeff Hawke strip.
The final frame of the strip H1760.