Originally published in the UK newspaper the Daily Express, the adventures of Jeff Hawke - explorer, thinker and frequently, ambassador for the human race - were a huge success, running for over twenty years. With artwork by Sydney Jordan and scripts by Willie Patterson, the stories in this collection represent the strip's golden age and are presented in beautiful library editions for the first time...

Jeff Hawke is not your average space hero. Focused on reasoning, diplomacy and moral virtues instead of brute force, he frequently finds himself to be the ambassador - rather than the savior - of mankind. His universe is populated with alien species that meet humankind by accident or for commerce, but hardly ever for invasion.

This hardback collection of some of his adventures includes a number of interesting tales. The enigmatic alien criminal Chalcedon frustrates Jeff Hawke in Overlord; a crash-landed Hawke and crew must deal with a dangerously mutated crew member in Survival; warlike aliens invade the Earth in Wondrous Lamp; and, in Counsel for the Defence, Hawke and Maclean must defend Chalcedon in a bizarre alien trial.

Sydney Jordan provides an interesting few pages of introduction to this collection - he also includes a page before the start of each tale to offer a little additional information that he feels readers would find of interest.

Whether you remember this series when it was originally printed, or have never even heard of Jeff Hawke before, Overlord is one collection that is worth checking out.

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Pete Boomer