The mid-1970s were a time of change for British comics. The contents began to reflect the trends seen in films and TV. Writers Pat Mills and John Wagner, who would go on to create 2000 AD, were brought in by publishers IPC to help with the new direction, with the results being seen in the long-running Valiant and the new Battle Picture Weekly. Mills was then involved in the creation of Action, a controversial comic dubbed the "Sevenpenny Nightmare" by the press. The violent nature of many of the strips would eventually lead to publication being suspended before the comic returned in a watered-down form.
Gracing the colour centre pages of Action was the Jaws-inspired Hook Jaw, written by Ken Armstrong and drawn by Ramon Sola. The colour allowed them to include plenty of blood and they did! I'm not sure what research Ken Armstrong did but his knowledge of diving left a lot to be desired. In the very first issue, the following sequence took place:
(Click for larger images)
Rapid ascents can, of course, be very dangerous for divers. In addition to decompression sickness caused by nitrogen bubbles, barotrauma such as lung over-expansion injuries can be caused by rapidly expanding air. However, no diver has ever exploded in the way depicted in the strip! To make matters worse, the incident is then blamed on nitrogen narcosis, which, while it does exist, is a completely different problem from decompression sickness. Cousteau called nitrogen narcosis "the rapture of the deep" and said, "I love it and I fear it!" American technical divers used to call it "the Martini effect" - every 50 ft of depth was like drinking another Martini! Once you start going deeper than 30m (the recommended limit for recreational divers, with 40m being the absolute limit), nitrogen can began to have a narcotic effect which can lead to impaired judgement. Ascending to a shallower depth will generally deal with it quite quickly.
Poor old Bannion was only the first of many divers to come to a gruesome end in Hook Jaw, but most of them were just bitten in half or eaten! There was at least one other erroneous mention of nitrogen narcosis though:
Judging by this next sequence, Armstrong's research into great whites wasn't particularly thorough either.
Newborn great whites are actually about 4-5 ft long with their main diet consisting of small fish, rays and squid. Ken certainly had a lively imagination though!
Look out for another Hook Jaw post coming soon.
