Jeff Hawke: The Ambassadors

Here's how this works. I read a book or two and tell you about them and try not to get too long-winded. This time, a review of Jeff Hawke: The Ambassadors (volume two) (Titan, 2008).



In the mid-1980s, when Titan was originally doing its lines of black-spined, 64-to-80 page collections of British comics, they released a pair of Jeff Hawke editions, each reprinting three serials. Hawke's original home was a comic strip in the Daily Express which ran for two decades. Titan didn't start from the beginning, but about six years into the run, when Willie Patterson took over writing chores from the strip's creator and artist Sydney Jordan. The two books featured cover artwork by Brian Bolland and were quite popular, but they never released a third volume.

Twenty years later, and with their other collected editions proving very successful, Titan went back to the well and has now upgraded those old paperbacks considerably as a pair of nice hardcover editions. The first book, which I reviewed briefly a year ago, reprinted the first four of the six serials which Titan had done in the 1980s. This book features the remaining two, along with a further three storylines not previously reprinted, and they include introductory pages and a complete "stripography" of all the character's storylines.

Honestly, I enjoyed the unpredictable and witty stories so much more than just about any other science fiction material available today. Hawke is a thoughtful diplomat, working with bemused curiosity at the latest strange "non-invasion" of Earth by some unusual aliens. The title story deals with some oddball ambassadors who are flabbergasted to learn that birds are not the dominant species on our planet, while another wonderful one features some tiny alien students wreaking havoc after they boost a scientist's intelligence and conceptual understanding of physics, only to have him retreat to a levitated Winnebago and try to blackmail the British government with a heat ray.

Patterson and Jordan's solutions to the very unusual challenges are reasoned and rational, with very little violence or wild action, leading to very entertaining stories with unexpected resolutions. Jordan's artwork is gorgeously detailed, with a believable and consistent design for the far-flung future of the 1990s.

I don't believe that Titan has announced plans for any further Jeff Hawke collections yet, but I hope they do. These are very intelligent, whimsical stories, and highly recommended for fans of British literary science fiction. If you've got Clarke, Kneale and Wyndham on your shelves already, you'll probably want Patterson and Jordan. More please, Titan!

Jeff Hawke vol. one and Droid Life

Here's how this works: I finish reading something, and I tell you about it, and I try not to bore you to death.



Titan's ever-growing series of great old reprints continues with Jeff Hawke, a great old science fiction newspaper serial that started in 1954 and ran for twenty years. Their first new volume compiles four stories from 1960-61, which saw Willie Patterson joining artist Sydney Jordan for some remarkably inventive and clever tales of alien law and morality. The art's a downright treat, and you can see why they got Brian Bolland and Dave Gibbons to provide cover endorsements, as both men were clearly influenced by Jordan. One of Bolland's first pro jobs, incidentally, was inking Jordan in 1974-75. All four stories are very good, but "Wondrous Lamp," which goes from the tale of Aladdin to matter-transmission coils to having a mean li'l housecat become one of Earth's greatest defenders, might be the best of them. Highly recommended!




...but then there's this. If Cat Sullivan's Droid Life was a webcomic, its audience would dwarf even Achewood's. Recently, I've been a little guarded in recommending 2000 AD collections, as they've not proven quite as punchy in collected form as I'd thought. The reverse is true here, where what's often amusing as a weekly four-panel gag strip becomes absolutely riotous when read in one sitting. I am unhappy with the price - £7 is awfully steep for a book so small, especially with the dollar so infernally weak - but this book includes the disembodied brain of Sylvester McCoy as a recurring character, and one strip's punch line is "Easy-peasy TV emcee AC/DC BC VCs," and consequently it's worth twice the price. Highly, highly recommended!

(Originally posted March 26, 2008 at hipsterdad's LJ.)