Jeff Hawke’s Cosmos Vol 6 No 3 Now Available

By John Freeman on April 18, 2011

The new issue of Jeff Hawke’s Cosmos has just been released with its usual selection of complete stories from artist Sydney Jordan’s Daily Express strip, detailed background notes on the strips themselves as well as other articles.

Volume 6 Number 3 features full length reprints of the Jeff Hawke strips Overland from 1966/1967, Cataclysm from 1968 and The Bees of Daedalus from 1971 complete with introductions written by Sydney Jordan and Hawke’s Notes on each strip written by Duncan Lunan. Editor William Rudling provides a Hawke’s Wings factual feature on the Woomera rocket range in Australia that features in some of the Hawke strips while Andrew Darlington’s Space Heroes feature covers DC Thomson’s 1950s character Nick Swift Of The Planet Patrol who featured in Adventure beginning in March 1952.

After six years of continuous publication Cosmos is rapidly coming to the end of the original Jeff Hawke strips and there has been some debate as to whether the magazine will continue with Jordan’s follow on strip Earthspace. This featured the similar character of Lance McLane and was syndicated in some newspapers as Jeff Hawke. Editor William Rudling tells us that he has decided to continue Cosmos with the Earthspace stories and, having read some of them recently, we here at downthetubes can say that Hawke fans will not be disappointed with them.

Attendees at next month’s Bristol International Comic and Small Press Expo will be able to see copies of Cosmos as William Rudling will have them there alongside Jeff Hawke’s creator Sydney Jordan who will have original Jeff Hawke art boards for sale.

Jeff Hawke’s Cosmos Volume 6 Number 3 is available from the Jeff Hawke Club. The subscription rate for Volume 7 is £22 for UK members which provides three issues of the 88 page, A4 magazine and access to the back issues and specials that the club has previous published. There are more details on the Jeff Hawke Club website.

John Freeman

The founder of downthetubes, which he established in 1998. John works as a comics and magazine editor, writer, and on promotional work for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He is currently editor of Star Trek Explorer, published by Titan – his third tour of duty on the title originally titled Star Trek Magazine.

Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine, Babylon 5 Magazine, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics. He has also edited several comic collections, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”.

He’s the writer of “Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies” for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs” with Dave Hailwood.