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Behind the Scenes on Battle-Action: The Return of Hook Jaw

By John Freeman on November 21, 2024 • ( 0 )

Gladiator II has nothing Battle-Action Issue 3, in comic shops and newsagents now, and on sale in the US from 4th December. This issue includes an all-new strip featuring the star of the original Action comic – Hook Jaw, the great white shark! Brought to you by Steve White, PJ Holden and John McCrea, Hook Jaw must face off against a killer whale, as a nature documentary team and a group of shark conservationists get between them. Who will make it out alive?…

downthetubes, with thanks to Steve Morris at Rebellion, caught up with the creative team…

Battle Action Volume Three Issue Three - Hook Jaw

When did you first encounter “Hook Jaw” – and what gives him such enduring appeal?

PJ Holden: Oh man, I’ve no idea when I first saw him, I think I probably saw Action – I’m certainly old enough – but whenever that encounter was so long ago I have no memories, but he sort of lurks, like a primordial ancient god of the deep, waiting.

John McCrea: I read the original Action comic as a kid from issue 1 to its sad demise, and Hookjaw was always my favourite character. As a bloodthirsty little bastard, a giant killer shark with a dagger sticking out of his chin ticked all my boxes.

Action No. 2 cover dated February 21st 1976 With Free Gift - a "Hook Jaw" Iron On Transfer, in Fine Condition — *Action No. 2 cover dated February 21st 1976 With Free Gift – a “Hook Jaw” Iron On Transfer, in Fine Condition*

Steve White: I think it was the main reason I picked up Action in the first place. I had developed a fascination of sharks as a result of seeing Jaws at a very tender and impressionable age, so there was a certain inevitability that I’d want to read a comic about a killer shark. I also loved the artwork.

I’ve often wondered about Hook Jaw’s appeal. I can’t help but feel it’s like the appeal so many people have for serial killers – the sort of ‘rubbernecking’ at terrible things being done with such elan. It’s kind of like Hannibal Lecter – classy, intelligent, homicidal. And in the case of Hook Jaw, often to bad people. There’s a ghoulish pleasure in seeing someone bite the dust in such pretty nasty ways. I think a lot of people see shark attacks as an awful way to die – alone, helpless and in what is to humans an alien environment, but there is just this terrible fascination with it.

I also think Hook Jaw speaks to that part of human nature that just loves a bad guy. And he’s not like Darth Vader – he’s not going to turn to the light side. There’s a great line that always stayed with me from the novelisation of Jaws 2, where Chief Brody is preparing to meet the onrushing shark in their climactic battle and as he sees it coming on, he thinks “Not an animal but a force of nature”. You just know Hook Jaw is never going to be a good guy because he is, at heart, an untameable predator. It’s why we like programmes about disasters and extreme weather and Tyrannosaurus.

Were you fans of the original Action in general?

McCrea: I loved everything about Action, but “Hook Jaw” and “Dredger” were my favourites. The more mayhem the merrier! I did try to read every comic I could get me hands on, but I had never encountered anything as anarchic as Action, and it seared itself into my tiny mind for that reason.

White: I was, pretty much from the off. I had read comics since I could read – all the usual things British boys of a certain age read: Victor and Valiant, and Battle. I was never a fan of the funny comics like The Beano, et al. They never really appealed to me. Action was the first comic that really did, and it was the first comic I bought religiously.

Aside from “Hook Jaw” I was a fan of “Hellman of Hammer Force” – I was very much taken with the notion of a German good guy, especially having grown up on a diet of war comics where that seemed anathema. I was gutted when Action fell foul of the moral do-gooders and became an anaemic parody of its former self. I think I was one of the many who voted with his pocket money and quickly moved on to other titles.

Holden: I suspect I had a few issues as a kid, but really it was all war and 2000AD for me. The action window was small enough that if I did see it, it probably wasn’t for long. But the hangover from action, that’s stayed for a long time!

How were you recruited for Garth’s “Battle Action” project?

White: Garth emailed me one day to ask what I would do with “Hook Jaw”. I think writers were having trouble with doing something that wasn’t a version of a previous story. You’re talking about the eponymous hero being less a character and more a plot point. Stories have to be built around the shark. It’s like doing a story about Pompeii or a hurricane or like Knight Boat in The Simpsons – every week there’s a canal, or an inlet, or a fjord that means he can chase the bad guys who are now on land.

With Hook Jaw, it’s how you have a story that sets up the shark to do what the shark does, and I think maybe Garth and Rebellion were looking for something different. As it turned out, Garth’s email was coincidental with a few things I’d been looking at and it enabled me to go straight back to him with an elevator pitch.

McCrea: Oliver Pickles, the editor on the book, asked me. I said yes please!

Holden: Like many who’ve been subjected to Garth’s abuse (I mean “asked to draw his war scripts over the years”) I’ve built a solid ability to draw the right tank when asked, so I suspect I was one of the names on a list that Garth had. There’s a few of us who’ve drawn for both 2000AD and for Garth doing War Stories, so I suspect I just hit the right buttons – plus I was available!

What was the inspiration for your take on Hook Jaw?

White: As I mentioned, a few things had crossed my path that ended up being woven into the story. I am currently working on an encyclopaedia on the evolution of sharks. This came about as a result of a conversation on Twitter (as it was) with my now friend, Charlene De Silva Graham. She is head of shark resources management in South Africa (if you’ve read the story, you’ll notice certain similarities…) and as a result of luck and happenstance, she’s the book’s writer. We had been discussing the curious deaths of white sharks in South Africa, the culprits of which were a pair of killer whales. She’d just sent me the academic paper on the subject which I’d read, so it was on my mind.

I’d also just re-watched Blackfish, the harrowing documentary about orcas in captivity. What I had taken away from that was that it was like watching the birth of a serial killer. A young orca torn from his wild family and placed in captivity where it was bulled and beaten, and then it begins killing his trainers. I saw a real parallel there.

There was also all the publicity surrounding the attacks on boats by killer whales in the Straits of Gibraltar, the reasons for which were, at the time, being attributed to an incident between a boat and an orca calf, triggering what the press was calling revenge (but more likely the way orcas deal with any threat to their young).

All this, plus various bits of interesting information on orcas led me to the conclusion that here was a possible antagonist for Hookjaw.

The setting was also as a result of an incident with a Discovery Channel film crew at the Guadalupe Islands where they were filming white sharks. Now, don’t get me started on these supposed documentary makers. They’ve been doing a lot of irresponsible garbage lately – sort of the Jackass of natural history filmmaking, the upshot of which is that some places won’t let them film anymore. Anyway, that just seemed to provide some useful plot stuff that I worked into the outline.

Finally, as I was working up the plot, an academic paper came out that studied the movements of a pair of white sharks. They’d been tracked travelling thousands of miles, always together. This was very unusual. There seemed to be no familial links; they weren’t a mating pair, or such, so they were being called ‘friends’. Of course, that’s easy to anthropomorphise but it was weird, and it came at just the moment I was looking for a motive to give to Hook Jaw. It’s all about revenge!

Are there resources on sharks which fans should check out if they want the real deal on them, rather than fear-stoked myths?

White: There’s so many great places to look at sharks online. David Shiffman, Ph. D. is a shark researcher and science writer on BlueSky, who is definitely worth following. I love Discover Sharks on Instagram – they post fantastic imagery of sharks and ocean-related subjects and also have a great website.

There’s also the Shark Trust (sharktrust.org); they’re a conservation organisation whose website also includes a great deal of info for anyone looking to broaden their knowledge.

And unsurprisingly there’s a great many books on sharks. Many new titles are endeavouring to show sharks as animals rather than the monsters, especially white sharks, and point out that there are some 250 species, most of which are more or less unknown to the general public.

PJ and John, how does your partnership work on a strip like Hook Jaw?

Holden: We’ve done a few things over the years. Largely, I’ll help John out in a pinch where deadlines are tight or life has generally got in the way – though, to be honest, they’re all just sort of excuses adults need when in fact, it’s really just you and one of your best mates drawing comics together like you’re 12 years old!

McCrea: Originally, I signed up to do all the art but due to an unexpected family tragedy I was unable to do so in the given time. I had worked with Paul on previous stories (he is one of my oldest friends in comics) and our styles are very compatible. Paul did the layouts and I took it from there.

Holden: John will pass me on the script, I’ll read it and draw up some roughs. Sometimes I forget myself and do it more detailed than necessary, but I’m always trying to give John a version of the comic that makes sense of the script and that still allows him a chance to really go to town. I think one of the fun things about John and I is there’s a massive element of order and structure in what I do, and John is like an agent of chaos.

I think you get rock solid storytelling and incredibly dynamic art from John. I’m smugly pleased when I see a page largely unaltered but you can always tell John’s had fun when he’s mostly inked me with an eraser…

You’ve successfully melded the horror of the original Hook Jaw with what we know about sharks today – a far cry from the hysteria of Jaws, that the strip was originally inspired by in Action. Are you pleased with the result?

White: Thank you! I think it came out okay. I feel I managed to tell a good story that has enough bloodshed to appeal to the more long-standing fans while given adding a few modern elements that bring things up to date. That was always going to be the narrative juggling act, but I think I can be happy.

Do you think there’s more tolerance of “blood and guts” in comics now than there was back in the 1970s, when action got taken off the shelves? How do you tread the line, as artists, so suggest horror, rather than show “everything?

Holden: Well the readership is older, so I don’t really worry about the tolerance level any more – certainly if editorial came back and said “Actually we’re aiming this at 12 year olds” I might have a think, but to be honest, I’d be surprised if I’d tone anything done (much more likely I’d push things to more absurd levels!) I do work to my own internal barometer, though, so for me a blood splatter is a more fun way of conveying evisceration rather than showing an actual disembowelling, but that’s me rather than – say – any outside influence.

McCrea: There is more of an understanding that comics aren’t just for kids – some comics are adults only and some are aimed at younger readers. Most of the work I do is aimed at older folks. That said, I have been censored many times.

If you get the chance, would you welcome a second “face off” between Hook Jaw and “Charles”?

White: I have left things open-ended, you might say. I have been secretly plotting in my head how I’d like a future encounter to play out, so we’ll see, I guess…

Do you have other favourites strips you’d like to tackle, given opportunity?

White: I mentioned “Hellman of Hammer Force” but also “Fighting Mann” – I have a deep and abiding fascination with the Vietnam War, so would love to get in the Green Machine with Charlie. And if we’re talking pie in the sky, I would kill to take a crack at “Flesh.”

McCrea: As above, I really like “Dredger”, so would love a shot at him.

Holden: There’s a part of me curious what a modern strip created brand new for Action would look like? Or, (does a quick google search) the “Coffin Sub” appeals – an entirely unloved strip (and one I’ve never read) about a Submarine commander haunted by the crew that he lost. (Though it was metaphorical, it’d be fun to have something with actual ghosts, wouldn’t it?)

What other projects are you currently working on, together or separately?

McCrea: I am currently drawing “Rogue Trooper” (cover and interior story) for 2000AD, Dead Eyes for Image Comics and a bunch of covers for DC. I am not working with Paul on anything now, but I am sure that will change soon enough.

Holden: For Monster Fun, “Gums!”. for 2000AD, I just finished a Dredd, so we should see that at some point. Outside of Rebellion, I’ve just finished a book for Mad Cave that we’ll hear about in the New Year.

White: I have a few things bubbling under but it’s all speculative – nothing definite. I guess having not written anything for the best part of three decades, I’m a little out of the game, but really hoping to get back into it. I’m also very keen to try my hand at drawing a comic one day!

• Battle Action Volume Three Number Three is on sale now in all good comic shops – and available here from the 2000AD webshop

• Steve White is online at stevewhiteart.co.uk

• PJ Holden is online at pauljholden.com

• Follow John McCrea on Instagram | BigCartel