Hawks of the Seas Introduction by Al Williamson
Originally published in the 1986 Kitchen Sink Press edition of Hawks of the Seas; transcribed from the 2003 Dark Horse edition.
Introduction
In the late 1930s, when I was nine years old and living in Bogota, Colombia, something happened that altered my life forever. My mother brought home a magazine called Paquin, which printed only comics. Before that time, I hadn't been very conscious that comics existed. Suddenly, I was confronted with a magazine that gave me nothing but.
Just as suddenly, a new world opened up for me. Or rather, worlds. Worlds past, present and future: worlds that existed in the here and now, and others that knew no other reality save what the artist and reader gave to them. I wasn't a lonely kid, but I was a loner, and I was ready — open — to venture forth. I accepted comics with a curiosity fed by a sense of wonder.
When I was nine, the only thing I knew about the technical side of Paquin was that I had a new one in my hands every week. On the aesthetic side, Paquin was my magic door to the lands of fantasy and good art. There was El Imperio Submarino, or The Undersea Kingdom, a jungle and Atlantean adventure created by Carlos Clemen, of Argentina. There was the mysterious Far East portrayed by Milton Caniff in Terry and the Pirates. There were the many lands of Don Dixon, a Flash Gordon impression by Carl Feiffer.
There were others, but the world that really held me in thrall when I first saw comics was created by a guy named Willis B. REnsie, who spun for me a continuing saga called Aguila Azul, or The Blue Eagle. In English we know it as Hawks of the Seas.
Everything about Hawks of the Seas was new and exciting to me. There was nothing about it I did not cherish. One page of it appeared every week in Paquin, and I was instantly transported to the mid-18th century, to a pirate ship in the Caribbean. The adventure centred on The Hawk, one of nature's noblemen, who led a rowdy but good-hearted crew of buccaneers, not in pursuit of riches, but of justice.
Hawks had a high moral tone underlying all the action. The African/New World slave trade was The Hawk's one true obsession. From the life of a rich idler, he had, through an intellectual opposition to slavery, been propelled into chains on a prison ship. Two years on the prison ship forged the intellectual into a crusader against any who would bind others unjustly. The idler became a man of action. The Hawk had powerful reasons for his stance, and everything he did was pointed toward slavery's eradication. He was dedicated to fighting injustice in general, but when it came to the specifics of slavery, he welcomed danger.
The Hawk could not be bribed or co-opted. Greed was not part of his makeup. In the rare adventure which was not related to slavery, he might find treasures and riches, but it went always to somebody else. Somebody who deserved it, needed it. His men went along with The Hawk's wishes in these matters. They respected him as a fighting man. They admired his sensibilities. They were loyal; there was no dissension. They just wanted adventure. This air of camaraderie made the pirate's life look like a lot of fun, indeed.
I must say I didn't reflect on all this at the time; it was enough for me that The Hawk was a good guy through and through. I think, now, it was great for little kids to be exposed to The Hawk's moral philosophy. In 1938 and 1939, no one in comics was doing much about the equality of man except Willis B. Rensie in Hawks of the Seas.
Rensie could show the wistful side of the pirate's life, too. There are little vignettes of The Hawk on deck or at wharf-side, longing for a more stable life, regretting the loss of a love, reflecting on the path his life has taken. No woman could resist The Hawk's innate charm — except for his first love, a slave dealer's daughter who repudiated him because of his stance and because she thought he killed her brother. He encountered a number of beauties in his travels. I personally hope he wound up with Jose Mantilla's daughter, Maria, a lovely Spanish woman who was also handy with a sword. But Rensie never made it clear that the two remained together. I just didn't want The Hawk to end on a pier, forever looking out to sea, forever reflecting. Would he keep fighting the slave trade until he died? Would he find the balm of personal love during his lonely quest? Rensie never said.
As I went along, I learned that Paquin came in three editions, imported to Colombia from Mexico. There was a small size, which reprinted daily newspaper strips, and the medium which reprinted American and European daily and Sunday strips. Then there was the grande edition, a tabloid-size magazine that had European, North American, and South American Sunday pages. That was the Paquin my mother bought for me. The regular Sunday pages were in color — Terry, Dick Tracy, Moon Mullins, Smilin' Jack, and more — while pages like Hawks and The Count of Monte Cristo were in black and white.
I came in on the Hawks continuity toward the end of its run in Paquin, during the "Treasure of Sea Gull Island" story. When the magazine stopped running Aguila Azul, it left me a sorely disappointed reader in Bogota. But righter after, an Argentine comics magazine named Pif-Paf came to my rescue. It started printing Hawks from the beginning, and I was able to follow the adventures of surely the most benevolent pirates in history.
The whole thing was so absorbing that between the time Paquin finished its serial and Pif-Paf began it, I felt a real sense of loss. My period of mourning was mitigated somewhat by the appearance in Paquin of something called The Spirit, by Will Eisner. It was my best friend, Adolfo Buylla, a working cartoonist in Spain today, who informed me that Willis B. Rensie and Will Eisner were the same guy. Turn either last name around and there you are.
Childhood is a time for learning.
I had been drawn to The Spirit anyway, and now I noticed that the feature exhibited some of the same qualities as Hawks of the Seas. Especially in the portraying of fights. When somebody gets socked in an Eisner story, they stay socked. Eisner makess you feel the impact.
I had first been struck by Eisner's sense of design and facility with action in the "Sea Gull Island" sequence. One panel that is still fresh in my memory occurs during the climactic fight on the island, after The Hawk's friends are captured by Dr. Snyde and his villainous band. During the rescue attempt, a pirate attacks The Hawk with a knife. In one of the panels reprinted here, The Hawk is looking up at his opponent, who is off-panel except for his knife and his hand — which is spread over The Hawk's face. The dramatic positioning of the figures in the panel, the upward angle emphasizing the strain and tension between the antagonists, and the startling image of the hand on the face were fresh then and remain fresh today.
There are many others, and Eisner has tremendous ability in staging and portraying any type of scene, but let's look at one more fight. After all, this was the stuff that really captured the kid reader in 1939. In the early part of the book, The Hawk confronts "Claw" Carlos aboard the villain's ship. The Hawk enters the captain's quarters through a window and leaps at Carlos. The drama is enhanced by the angle at which Rensie/Eisner placed The Hawk as he came through the window. The panel layout showing Carlos and The Hawk clashing emphasized the drama of the fight.
Meanwhile, above decks, The Hawk's stalward crew were tanglingn with Carlos's men. There is a jubilant quality about all the fihts Rensie portrayed in Hawks of the Seas. After all, these were pirates and they loved their work.
There are fight scenes in Hawks that, for my money, have never been topped.
In 1943, my mother and I flew back to New York, the place of my birth. In the move, most of my collection of Paquin and Pif-Paf were lost forever in transit. Through those publications, along with the strips already mentioned, I had become acquainted with Alex Raymond's Flash Gordon and Hal Foster's Prince Valiant, so I was a bit upset when the trunks arrived by ship from Colombia minus my collection. There was nothing to do but begin clipping, stacking, and storing comics all over again.
In 1944, my mother was working at Joshua B. Powers, right next door to Editors Press Service, the syndicate that fed Hawks of the Seas and many other comics to South America and the world. They did the translations into Spanish and sent the proofs to their clients. One day while I was visiting my mother, I was invited to look around at Editors Press.
A man named Erwin — I never knew his last name — was the warehouse manager there, and he knew I was interested in comics. There was a wealth of both original art and very good proofs of strips like Hawks, Terry and the Pirates, Buck Rogers, Flying Jenny, and the other creations the service sold. The art was literally stacked to the ceiling.
Since Erwin had three or more proofs of each page, he invited me to help myself and take what I wanted. Well, I wanted everything. But I took one page each of Hawks. I visited Erwin a few more times, and he was always glad to see me. But one day he told me that the front office had complained about the kid always rummaging around in the files. Erwin said I shouldn't cut out my visits altogether, but I should probably drop around more infrequently.
A few months later, I got up the courage to go see Erwin again. When I got there, I saw that all the art and proofs were gone. It seems that Editors Press was being pushed out of its office space by the accumulation of paper in the warehouse, so they instituted a massive housecleaning — and threw everything out. I was crushed. Erwin apologized to me. He told me he had thought of me when the housecleaning began, but he had had no way of contacting me. He never knew my last name, either!
I suppose every collector has a horror story, and that one's mine.
Many years later, in May of 1978, I happened to be in a Manhattan office building, looking for something else, when I saw on the register that Editors Press had moved there. On the off chance that Erwin was still around, I called at the office. It turned out that it was Erwin's last day before retirement, and he didn't look too happy about it. We reacquainted ourselves and reminisced for a while. One of the last things he said to me was, "I guess they didn't know what they had in their warehouse, did they?" I guess they didn't.
By the time I had secured my Spanish Hawks proofs, I had become more serious about my own art, something that had never occurred to me before I saw my first issue of Paquin. Like most kids, I drew houses and planes, for school. The more comics I read, however, the more it came into my head that what I wanted to do when I grew up was draw comics. The first efforts I made were copies of panels I found in Paquin, including, of course, Hawks. Soon, instead of drawing houses and trees in school, I was drawing ships and pirates — in sequential panels.
As it turned out, my dream came true, and I gradually began working in comics. It also turned out that as the years passed, about 18 pages of my Hawks proof sheets were lost. It baffles me to this day where they went, but in the 1960s, I was finally able to afford plastic coverings for all the sheets, and that's where they remained until the mid-1980s. At that time, I made my Spanish language proofs available to Kitchen Sink Press for their original edition of this book. In turn, Kitchen found most of the pages missing from my collection, leaving this book only three pages from completion.
I passionately love comics, so you will understand when I say that Eisner is one of the big loves of my life. I've always enjoyed his work immensely. He is one of the great masters of comics art. I react emotionally to his art, not critically, and his work always evokes a positive emotional response in me.
He combines a high degree of professional, technical skill with a humanitarian outlook. He carries with him a strong moral spirit, but without any stuff trappings. He is on the side of life in all his work and, perhaps more important, is able to convey that sense to us. He brings to his art much strength and vigor and feeling, and he gives us much joy.
I have always been watching him since I was nine, and I'd like to express my gratitude for the enjoyment he gave me all those years ago and for the enjoyment he gives me today. His art reveals itself to any who have eyes to see.
— Al Williamson