The follow up to "Destination: Gibraltar" proved a very uneven experience, especially when compared to its more famous successor. And while the subject matter of "Bruce J. Hawker" was always too specific to enjoy the trans-media success of "XIII", the naval history series' second outing's almost distances itself from the designated genre. Vance offers a typical adventure story, featuring our heroes trapped in the enemy's dungeon, and concocting a very far fetched plan to escape.
Infuriatingly, the writer/artist never sets up the prison ship's daily routine - he begins the story with the English soldiers already putting their plan in action. A very overwritten page introduces the rest of Hawker's surviving officers, but Vance doesn't really do the same for their Spanish tormentors.
Unfortunately, this robs the heavily detailed backgrounds and strong figures of the dynamic they would have if coupled with a better paced story. As a Spanish soldier stumbles into their part of the ship to be caught in Hawker's plan for escape, so does the reader jumps in the album's strange flow. The twists and turns then appear haphazardly, with a convenience of a writer running off the check list of adventure tropes.
The gypsies come to appease the Spanish soldiers, distracting them from the English soldiers, who still exhibit very little in the way of an actual character. A single foolhardy youth makes for some change in the dynamic, but otherwise, it's hard to care when the Spaniards bullets find their way to their backs.
That bit of realism aside, the titular orgy also appears ill-balanced, with the frequent shifts to the dancing Gypsies and Spanish revelers bringing little to the story except for some color. When Hawker and his men light the fuse and resurface in the main hall, the sudden twist of Gypsies turning against the Spaniards seems like just another in a string of ill-considered plot twists.
Following an adequate action sequence, Hawker and a couple of his surviving men finally manage to put their nightmarish captivity behind them. Vance thankfully saves some of the Gypsies, including the beautiful Gypsy the protagonist saw in a dream in "Destination: Gibraltar".
The album closes on a high note, as the officers finally encounter another British ship, with a commanding officer that has a very firm stance on Hawker's actions. The final panels mirror the first album's cliffhanger, promising another tense entry in the series, that would not come until 1985.
It's very hard to understand the reader coming back for more for any other reason except for the creator's uncanny draftsmanship. Despite the promise in the last pages, which set up the next album, it's easy to understand why the series vanished from the pages of "Tintin" until the writer/artist made his name in the Franco-Belgian industry.
On the one hand, a case could be made that it's a deus ex machina moment, and doesn't really feature a turning point based on the protagonist's actions, but to have it dashed off after dozens of generic action adventure pages in the series billing itself as a naval historic fiction, really feels misconceived.
By all accounts, this early in the series "Bruce J. Hawker" is still an early work of a creator that would mature into much a stronger storyteller. As such, it's unlikely that it will be of interest to any but the fans of "XIII", the specific period setting, and readers looking for a not too distinctive piece of pulp entertainment. It's hard to imagine a series picking up from the creative nadir that is "Orgy of the Damned" without the success of the Van Hamme collaboration.
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