TITLE:
Hookjaw Classic Collection
WRITERS:
Pat Mills & Ken Armstrong
ARTISTS:
Ramon Sola, Felix Carrion, Juan Arancio, Eric Bradbury & Jim
Bleach
PUBLISHER:
Titan Comic
FORMAT:
Hardback, 29.5cm x 22cm colour + black and white 158 page book
PRICE:
UK £29.99 US $34.99 CAN $45.99
REVIEW:
Britain's
'Action' comic should not be confused with the American comic of the
same name that featured to first appearance of Superman. IPC's
'Action' was a UK anthology comic for boys that first appeared on
Valentine's Day 1976. It was part of a new breed of adventure comic
which were aiming their stories at a slightly older readership than
comics had up to that point… more teenagers than the under tens.
The team behind 'Action'… John Wagner, Steve McManus and Pat Mills
had just launched 'Battle' for IPC and were about to go onto create
the ever popular '2000AD'. 'Action' took the approach of taking ideas
from popular (and quite adult) mainstream movies of the day and
putting it's own spin on them.
Undoubted
star of the comic was 'Hookjaw', heavy influenced by Steven
Spielberg's shark thriller 'Jaws' (which had been a hit only a year
before.) The difference was that whereas Spielberg's monster Great
White had to be dispatched at the end of the feature, 'Hookjaw' was
an on-going strip and the killer shark had to survive and thrive.
This led to 'Hookjaw' being presented as a kind of shark-hero in the
strip (if sharks read comics, 'Hookjaw' would be their 'Superman'!)
This
monster shark gets his name from the billhook that is left jutting
out from his chin by an encounter with fishermen in the first
episode. This spear and the mis-shappen fin on his back keep him
distinctive from any other sharks featured in the strip.
Although
the strip presents us with many villainous humans for Hookjaw to
chow-down on, the star of the strip doesn't restrict his diet to only
the black hats… He gets to eat heroes, villains and the innocent
along the way. He is a sort of Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers of the
deep. Stalking, killing and eating his way through the oceans of the
world. And like those horror movie bogeyman he is just as
unstoppable. Shot, stabbed, impaled, run-down, bombed… even hauled
ashore… nothing seems to kill him or even slow him down.
Where
Spielberg's film had been a thriller, 'Hookjaw' was a horror movie in
serialised comic strip form. Each weekly episode features him killing
someone in new and graphic ways. Often in 'Action's colour middle
pages the waters and the pages run literal red. People are bitten in
two… Legs, arms heads go missing… or even worse… float free
from the beast's jaws. There is a gleeful humour to all this gore in
much the same way '2000AD' and many strips by Garth Ennis capitalise
on. It's so over-the-top that it can't possibly be taken seriously.
Much
has been made of 'Hookjaw's environmental agenda, but I think this is
stretching a point really. It's true the first strip does feature a
villainous oil rig owner who cares nothing for how much he pollutes,
but this is more by way of giving us a bad guy to jeer at. By the
second adventure the green agenda is much less clear, by the third
story it has disappeared completely and the villains are merely
robbers.
These
strips were written in the mid-seventies and as such they are a
product of their time. With that in mind I must call out the rather
embarrassing racism in the second adventure. Set on a Caribbean
island with some black characters who are not just disparaged by the
villains (which would have been fair-enough social commentary), but
are presented in an unflattering light by the writer. They speak in
poor English, they refer to white people as 'Masa' (master) and worst
of all are continually (and without correction at any point) referred
to as 'natives'. Black people are no more native to the Caribbean
than the white people! In defence of the writer of these episodes,
this is all done out of ignorance rather than hate. Still, if I had
been Pat Mills writing his new introduction for this book, I would
have wanted to put this all into some sort of context and perhaps
make my apologies for it (but he doesn't mention it.)
Anyway
it all came crashing down for 'Action' when the newspapers started
campaigns against it. The 23rd October 1976 edition was
printed… but never made it to the newsagents. Most of the print run
was pulped and if you have a copy of it, it fetches very high prices
today. When the comic returned on 4th December 1976 it had
been gutted as effectively as one of Hookjaw's victims. The violence,
gore and anti-establishment style of the comic had been totally
removed. The killer shark was now only allowed to kill bad guys and
then only out-of-shot. The fun had gone out of it too and within a
year 'Action' was merged with 'Battle' and 'Hookjaw' was gone
completely.
There
are a couple of misleading blurbs on this book, which I must make
potential buyers aware of. Firstly, the cover reads 'The complete
original series!' This is not true. Of the original run this book
only reprints the first three 'Hookjaw' serials (along with a strip
from the 1976 'Action Summer Special' and one from the 1977 'Action
Annual'.) The regular strips in this volume end with the 4th
December episode, but the strip continued on for another year
(admittedly with Hookjaw only bloodlessly eating people behind
rocks!)
Also
this book declares several times that the 'Lost Pages' were 'Not
previously published'. These are the uncensored pages which featured
in the banned issue and those that were intended to follow it. Great
though it is to have these revealing pages included in the book, most
of them have indeed seen print before in Martin Barker's 'Action: The
Story of a Violent Comic' from this very same publisher. A better way
of putting it would have been to say that these pages were 'Not
originally published'. Still, there is a least one page I
hadn't seen before.
I
would recommend 'Hookjaw Classic Collection' with some reservations.
This is a fantastic look at a crazy time in British comic history and
the stories are so over-the-top as to be laugh-out-load funny… But
if the dated racism in it will up-set you… This is best avoided.
Reviewed
by John A. Short
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