Sydney Jordan (born

Dundee Dundee (; ; or , ) is the List of towns and cities in Scotland by population, fourth-largest city in Scotland. The mid-year population estimate for the locality was . It lies within the eastern central Lowlands on the north bank of the Firt ...

Scotland Scotland is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and more than 790 adjac ...

, 1928) is a comics artist best known for his daily science fiction strip '' Jeff Hawke'', which ran in the ''

Daily Express The ''Daily Express'' is a national daily United Kingdom middle-market newspaper printed in Tabloid (newspaper format), tabloid format. Published in London, it is the flagship of Express Newspapers, owned by publisher Reach plc. It was first ...

'' from 1955 to 1974.

Career

He studied aeronautical engineering at

Miles Aircraft Miles was the name used for aircraft and associated businesses of British engineer Frederick George Miles, who, with his wife – aviator and draughtswoman Maxine Blossom Miles, Maxine "Blossom" Miles (née Forbes-Robertson) – and his brother ...

's experimental college in

Reading, Berkshire Reading ( ) is a town and borough in Berkshire, England, and the county town of Berkshire. It is the United Kingdom's largest town, with a combined population of 355,596. Most of Reading built-up area, its built-up area lies within the Borough ...

, but returned to Dundee and worked as an assistant to comics artist Bill McCail, and learned by studying the work of

Alex Raymond Alexander Gillespie Raymond Jr. (October 2, 1909 – September 6, 1956) was an American cartoonist and illustrator who was best known for creating the ''Flash Gordon'' comic strip for King Features Syndicate in 1934. The strip was subsequently a ...

Milton Caniff Milton Arthur Paul Caniff (; February 28, 1907 – April 3, 1988) was an American cartoonist known for the ''Terry and the Pirates'' and ''Steve Canyon'' comic strips. Biography Caniff was born in Hillsboro, Ohio. He was an Eagle Scout and a re ...

and

Stan Drake Stanley Albert Drake (November 9, 1921 – March 10, 1997) was an American cartoonist best known as the founding artist of the comic strip '' The Heart of Juliet Jones''. Born in Brooklyn Brooklyn is a Boroughs of New York City, borough of N ...

. In 1951 he assisted Len Fullerton on his comic strip ''Dora, Toni and Liz'', before creating ''Jeff Hawke'' for the ''Daily Express'' in 1954. Jordan's friend Willie Patterson came aboard as writer in 1956, and Jordan wrote the later strips himself. The series has been reprinted all over Europe.

Later work

After ''Jeff Hawke'' finished, Jordan created another science fiction strip, ''Lance McLane'', which ran in the Scottish newspaper the '' Daily Record'' from 1976 to 1988. In the mid seventies Jordan produced the one shot "Hall Star" for the Dutch comic strip weekly ''Eppo'', which he did not complete until the mid eighties. It was published in 1987 and 1988 as ''Stranded on Thyton''.

Assistance

Another artist and close friend of Sydney Jordan, Nick Faure (born in 1944) worked alongside the master, and aside from drawing his own commissions from the newspapers in Fleet Street, he helped as an inker to draw some the "likenesses" and realistic "ladies" in the stories at the latter period of the strips existence as Sydney was always the master of effects. Thanks to Sydney's connections at Porsche Cars GB, Nick went on to become a well known Racecar driver for Porsche in the UK and achieved his own success as "Mr. Porsche" with a career which included 11 participations in the legendary 24 Hours of Le Mans. Also assisting Jordan at times were up and coming artists

Paul Neary Paul Neary (18 December 1949 – 10 February 2024) was a British comic book artist, writer and editor. His first work was for Warren Publishing in the 1970s before working with Dez Skinn at Marvel UK as well as work for '' 2000 AD''. He later ...

Brian Bolland Brian Bolland (; born 26 March 1951)Salisbury, Mark, ''Artists on Comic Art'' (Titan Books, 2000) , p. 11 is a British comics artist. Best known in the United Kingdom as one of the Judge Dredd artists for British comics anthology ''2000 AD (comi ...

and Trevor Goring.

References

External links

Sydney Jordan
at the

Lambiek Comiclopedia Galerie Lambiek is a Dutch comic book store and art gallery in Amsterdam, founded on November 8, 1968 by Kees Kousemaker (, – Bussum, ). His son Boris Kousemaker has been the owner since 2007. From 1968 to 2015, it was located in the Ke ...

Audio interview with Sydney Jordan at Bristol Comics Expo, 2 June 2011Jeff Hawke Club
Scottish comics artists British comic strip cartoonists British science fiction writers British science fiction artists Living people 1928 births Artists from Dundee Daily Express people {{UK-comics-creator-stub