STAR HAWKS (1977) Paperbacks

 

As we've seen here before, back in '77, in the pop cultural afterglow of Star Wars' unprecedented success, lots of folks tried to cash in on the perceived appetite for space opera entertainment. Along with the film and television knock-offs, toys and games, there were a handful of "original" sci-fi comics, many of them with the word "star" in the titles. One of these was the Star Hawks newspaper comic strip, which I've written about here before.

As knock-offs go, Star Hawks - written by sci-fi author and comics historian Ron Goulart, and drawn by legendary comic book artist Gil Kane - was reasonably successful, running daily and Sundays for three and a half years, for a total of 1,252 strips. Some of these strips were collected into two standard-size paperbacks by Ace/Tempo books, in 1979 and 1980. To the publisher's credit, the artwork was not cut apart panel-by-panel and re-formatted to standard page size, but run intact - although the strip's unique two-tier format required that the art be run on its side, forcing the reader to turn the book sideways to read it.

Actually, I don't find that to be a problem, but the small size of the lettering does make it difficult for these aging eyes to read, even with these damned, old man bifocals I wear these days. 

Anyway, aside from two strip collections from Ace/Tempo, Goulart wrote two Star Hawks prose novels, published by Playboy Press, beginning in 1980. The first of these, Empire 99, makes its connection to the newspaper strip very clear, with a cover and interior illustrations by comics collaborator Kane - and even trumpets its comic strip origins as a selling point. The second novel, on the other hand, came out well after the strip had been cancelled, and was marketed less as a comic strip tie-in. 

I haven't included a scan of that second novel, The Cyborg King, here because a.) I don't have it (yet), and b.) it doesn't have a Gil Kane cover, and c.) I couldn't find a decent cover scan online.

ADDENDUM: Thanks to "Tex," here's a scan of the cover of the second Goulart Star Hawks novel, The Cyborg King:

Goulart & Kane's STAR HAWKS (1977)

Inspired - as so many things were in the late 70s - by the tremendous success of Star Wars, the newspaper feature syndicate NEA (Newspaper Enterprise Association) got it into their heads that a space opera comic strip that evoked the cosmic high adventure and swashbuckling derring-do of George Lucas' movie might be a popular addition to the nation's comics pages. They contacted comics historian and science fiction author Ron Goulart (who had written a quartet of Flash Gordon novels for Avon Books, and would later ghostwrite William Shatner's popular "Tek" series) to develop their proposed comic strip.

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Goulart then contacted comic book veteran Gil Kane, artist on scores of DC and Marvel titles, to collaborate with him on what ultimately became Star Hawks - which began on October 3, 1977 and ran through 1981. Star Hawks was a pulpy concoction that chronicled the adventures of Interplanetary Law Service officers Rex Jaxan, Chavez, and Alice K, as they battled a procession of interstellar criminals and miscreants. The strip actually took place in Goulart's "Barnum System," a sci-fi setting that he used in many of his original novels (incl. Clockwork Pirates, Galaxy Jane & Shaggy Planet), and, in 1980-81, Goulart even published two Star Hawks prose novels titled Empire 99 and The Cyborg King.

According to Kane, in a 1978 Comics Journal interview: "I got a call from Ron Goulart, who told me he'd been having some talks with Flash Fairfield, who is the art editor of the comics at [the newspaper syndicate] NEA, and they wanted to see me about going to work on that strip. I met with them at that time. Ron had done about two weeks of material, but it was very far from where we went with it. So we reworked the material, and I'm very strong ... on romance and lyricism, and I started to advance the cause of that kind of material and make it less satirical and more of a classic[-style] adventure strip. [For the hero,] originally I had James Coburn in mind. ... The hero's friend, Chavez, was modeled after a bald-headed Victor McLaglen."

The format the team pushed for was unique for newspaper syndication: the daily strip was laid out in two tiers. Each daily was twice as deep as a normal daily strip. This format allowed artist Kane great flexibility in his layouts, but it did hinder NEA's efforts to sign on papers to carry the strip. The strip ran daily and Sunday for three and a half years, for a total of 1,252 strips - in the end, the dailies had gone to a standard single-tier format, and the writing had been taken over by the great Archie Goodwin, who also wrote the Star Wars newspaper strip (as well as a million other things).

My local papers didn't carry the strip in the 70s, but I did pick up the two paperback collections published by Ace/Tempo in 1980/81, and read many of the installments in the 80s when Hawks was reprinted in early issues of Amazing Heroes magazine. I love Kane's depiction of the series universe and the stories are fun and fast-paced.

I know that Hermes Press has reprinted the entire run of the strips in a single volume, Star Hawks The Complete Series, but according to the customer reviews on Amazon, the art reproduction may not be as good as it could be, and I'm hesitant to shell out for the (rather pricey) book, if it doesn't look very good - especially as Kane's art is what I love best about the strip.