In Review: Jeff Hawke Club Magazine Volume 10 Number Two

The latest issue of the Jeff Hawke Club magazine – Volume 10 Number Two – is on sale now, offering 86 pages celebrating work of Sydney Jordan, as well as offering features on space flight and insights into the background to strips featured in the issue.

This issue features two complete stories from the later “Lance McLane” story era, published in the Scottish Daily Record – “Pharoah’s army got drownded“, a post environmental disaster story that finds Hawke battling terrorists in a flooded Channel Tunnel; and “Sails in the Red Sunset“, a spooky tale set on Mars, unearthing some deadly secrets from the ancient past.

Jeff Hawke Club Magazine Volume 10 Number 2 - Pharoah's army got drowndedJeff Hawke Club Magazine Volume 10 Number 2 - Sails in the Red Sunset
Both stories are an enjoyable read, with “Sails in the Red Sunset” more the kind of story you’d expect from the Jeff Hawke strip, pitting the hero and his team against a mystery robotic threat guarding a secret Martian hideaway. The story ends on quite a cliffhanger.

Both stories are accompanied by Duncan Lunan’s commentary on their themes.

Notes on the strips include design art

While these later tales don’t have the humour that made the early Jeff Hawke stories so memorable (the work of the series original author Willie Patterson), they are still great adventures, with numerous themes and ideas buzzing through them that help make the character such an enduring success, albeit more beyond Britain’s shores, in Italy and Scandinavia.

The Jeff Hawke Club team have also done a lot of work trying to represent these particular stories in the absence of printers proofs. That the the stories shine through despite the reproduction problems is a testament to their strength, for me.

The magazine also offers a roundup of club news, including an upcoming get together for Hawke fans, original art for sale, some terrific limited edition figures, an obituary for US astronaut John Glenn and other items of space interest.

If you’re a Jeff Hawke fan, in the absence of any bookshop-distributed English language collections of this great strip, then joining the Fan Club is surely essential.

There are more details on the club website here including subscription rates. The Magazine is published three times a year for £26 (UK subscribers). Back issues are also available as well as a number of special edition books | Follow editor William Rudling on Twitter 



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