MAXWELL HAWKE STORIES IN BUSTER ANNUALS

It’s not often that I blog about adventure strips but this time I’ll do exactly that. Maxwell Hawke was a popular ghost hunter series that ran in BUSTER for six years from 29 October, 1960 till 3 September, 1966. As far as I know, Maxwell Hawke was also reprinted in other countries, Spain in particular, and there are quite a few people who still have fond memories of the series.

The Maxwell Hawke saga consisted of 29 serialised tales in the weekly comics, details can be found in the paper version of BUSTER Index 1960 – 1995 compiled by Ray Moore and Steve Holland, as well as on BUSTER comic website HERE.

BUSTER index mentions that Maxwell Hawke also appeared in BUSTER annuals 1962 – 1967 but does not provide any details, so I decided to fill the gap and make the index of the stories complete.

Here goes the list, followed by photos of the first page of each of the 6 original stories. Photos are the best I can show here because the binding of those BUSTER annuals makes them completely unsuitable for scanning without damaging the fragile books…

Buster Book 1962 The Black Monk, 10 pages

Buster Book 1963 The Ghost of Glenghoul Castle, 10 pages

Buster Book 1964 Maxwell Hawke and the Phantom Swordsman, 8 pages

Buster Book 1965 Maxwell Hawke and the Ice Demons, 8 pages

Buster Book 1966 Maxwell Hawke and the Ghosts of Blackstone, 8 pages

Buster Book 1967 Maxwell Hawke in the Haunted School, 9 pages

SPARKY 'MOONSTERS' COVERS

SPARKY issue No. 59 with the cover date of 5th March, 1966 is one of the few issues that I still need to complete my set of the title. Someone is offering a copy on eBay this week but I think it is overpriced and postage rate to where I am is outrageous, etc., but that’s not what this post is about… I am glad the seller showed a decent image of the cover, so now I know what's on it.

It looks like Bill Ritchie later used the idea of Moonsters’ brass band for the cover of Sparky annual 1968. Some of the figures are near-identical, don’t you think? Remember to click to see the image full size!

In my opinion the whole series of SPARKY ‘Moonsters’ front page sets is among the best impact covers in British children’s comics. The action-packed, bright single-panel drawings must have been real eye-catchers on the newsstands. I might do a complete series of those covers (more than a hundred of them!) sometime in the future…

MY COMICS WORK: THE FROLICS OF THE ONE-HORNED DEVIL, PART THREE (FINAL)

Here’s part three with the grand finale of the story :) Go HERE for part one and HERE for part two.

MY COMICS WORK: THE FROLICS OF THE ONE-HORNED DEVIL, PART TWO

Time for part two the story that I drew in 1990 or thereabouts for the national humour magazine. You can read the first part HERE. The magazine lost my original artwork of the first page below, so the image is scanned from the printed version, hence poor quality.

The last four pages will be up soon!

P.S. Apologies for possible delays in publishing and/or replying to your comments – I will be travelling overseas starting from the coming Sunday until the middle of the month and may have limited internet access at times. I have scheduled the next part to go live automatically :)