Collected Hook Jaw

    (Spitfire, 2007)
™ and © Spitfire

The description on the back of the Collected Hook Jaw, reprinted from the weekly UK comics series Action (not to be confused with Action Comics Weekly), notes that these pages represent “the most violent comic of all.” While that may not be exactly true (much has changed since this strip’s original publication in the mid 1970s), this book is pretty gruesome—it contains a lot of Kill Bill-style violence, mostly as a result of shark attacks, for it is a shark, Hook Jaw, who is the primary antagonist of the stories therein. These comics follow Hook Jaw and his human nemesis, Rick Mason, as this great white shark terrorizes man-made institutions: first an oil well, then a tropical resort. In both stories, Rick must not only deal with the blood-crazed shark, but the greed of fellow human beings. One cannot help but be reminded of Jaws and Moby Dick, but with much more violence. Though the artwork is in black and white, the pencils do their job of portraying the brutal nature of these shark attacks, which come every few pages, and are certainly the centerpiece of this volume.

— Eric Garneau
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