Jeff Hawke is a sci-fi comic strip by Scottish illustrator Sydney Jordan that ran in the British tabloid The Daily Express from 1955 to 1974, all illustrated by Jordan, and for the most part written either by Jordan or William Patterson; Patterson wrote Jeff Hawke episodes on and off from 1956 through 1959, and seems to be credited with bringing a higher quality of storytelling to Hawke's adventures.
I had never heard of Hawke before reading an interview book with British superhero comic artist/writer Alan Davis in which, when discussing his influences, Davis mentions Jordan and Jeff Hawke, although he preferred Jordan's later strip, Lance McLane, which--aside from having a Scottish hero and being published in a Scottish newspaper--was apparently rather similar to Jeff Hawke, although when it failed to catch on, Jordan had McLane transform into Hawke. :o
But Jordan's art in the strip, if perhaps not always his writing, was fantastic. Here's a sample strip; not one of his most spectacular but it's the one Wikipedia uses and I'm not sure what others qualify under Fair Use, so eh:
^ That's from the 1961 Patterson story "Counsel For The Defense."
Jordan is very good at depicting humans, drawn in a clear, strong-jawed 1950's style; his strips of men and women in plainclothes (as opposed to space suits) look thoroughly professional, and compare well against the some of the best comic illustrators of the day--which is to say, they're fairly bland-looking to the modern comic reader's eye.
It's his intricately cross-hatched depictions of space and spacecraft that really make the series stand out visually. Jordan was an illustrator and RAF pilot--my source for that is the Italian fan site jeffhawke.com, which is also where Wikipedia got the strip above--and also had experience drawing airplanes (perhaps from his pre-RAF schooling at the Aeronautical Technical School in Reading?), which would serve him well in drawing the many flying machines that would take to the skies in the strip. Space ships and scenes really seem to have inspired Jordan, and in those environments even his humans take on stunningly shaded, dramatic dimensions.
The series as far as I know is virtually unknown in the United States, but judging by the fan sites and lists of published collections, it enjoyed large success in continental Europe, particularly Italy, where extensive Jeff Hawke collections appear to have been published over the succeeding decades. All we have in the States are two fairly small collections put together in 2008, covering approximately the publication years 1960 through 1962: Jeff Hawke: Overlord and Jeff Hawke: The Ambassadors. I've ordered both and am awaiting them eagerly; if you want an idea of what they might be like, I noticed a perhaps somewhat unscrupulous soul has ripped the entirety of Overlord as high-resolution online scans.
Jordan's a genius with black and white rendered in a realistic style, and I think these books are going to be even more helpful and inspirational for my drawing in A* than Paul Gulacy's excellent full-color work in the Six from Sirius graphic novel has been. I'm really looking forward to checking out the two books up close.
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