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
The first James Bold serial that was printed in Cheeky Weekly, 'Fangs of Fear', was based on the original script of the first Maxwell Hawke story to appear in Buster, 'MH and The House of a Thousand Secrets' (29 October 1960 to 04 February 1961). The Cheeky Weekly version used new artwork. The final James Bold tale to appear in Cheeky Weekly, 'Island of Fear', was apparently another re-drawn MH script, this time using the plot of 'MH and The Isle of Ghosts', which ran in Buster from 07 March 1964 to 09 May 1964 (thanks to alanultron5 from the Comics UK forum for the info re Isle of Ghosts). I've always assumed the other James Bold stories (there were 5 series in all) were also based on MH scripts from Buster weekly. I'll have to check whether the JB stories that appeared in the Cheeky Annuals bear any similarities to the opening pages you've shown here.
ReplyDeleteI always felt that Buster (and other comics) were better for having a mix of adventure and humour strips, and looking at these pages confirms that for me. I'm not sure why adventure strips were removed from the likes of Buster, Whizzer & Chips, etc., and wonder if it was a financial decision, as page rates were lower on humour strips. Anybody know?
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