Hawk Meets Harlot

Hawk Of The Seas started out as a 1937 newspaper strip by the incomparable Will Eisner. The swashbuckling saga was reformatted for Fiction House's Jumbo Comics in 1938 into full length installments. Whether the comic book version of this retitled The Hawk was done by Eisner himself is a slight mystery because they only had the credit of Willis Rensie who was a member of the Iger Shop of artists. The particular chapter we're talking about from Issue #64 was reportedly drawn by Robert Webb where the titular character is a seen as a pirate despite his attempts to clean the seas free of slavers. Hawk is captain of a ship named the Lady Scarlett with a loyal crew of freedom fighters, and he is called to the deathbed of his friend Jose who survived an encounter with a sexy siren which led to his experience of getting lethally injured from an explosion. Hawk decides to hunt for the source of his buddy's demise, and after weeks of searching he finds a scantily clad blonde pretending to be shipwrecked on a small island. The nearly naked unnamed woman is really acting as bait since she is the captain of a pirate gang that lure vessels into a trap for them to plunder. Hawk manages to contact his crew to fend off the dastardly buccaneers and capture their comely captain. Having a knockout as your gang's leader using her feminine wiles to act a big carrot on a stick for sexually frustrated sailors might appear like a good plan, but you have to make sure your victims aren't smarter than you and can blow you out of the water.