Salem Hawkshaw

Major Story Arcs

The Hand of Four

Salem Hawkshaw is an American cowboy and ex-boxer on the run from the mob in Victorian London (he refused to take a dive in a fight). This rascally, rowdy varmint (who looks not so different from Wolverine) is spending his time enjoying a bar fight when Mandy Flynn, detective, runs across him. The Hand of Four is using Dr. Pretorius's electrical fields machine to imprison her partner, the alien Bozz. After she breaks a bottle over the last of his four opponents, she convinces him to help her out. Immediately attracted to the voluptuous young lady, he agrees.

Salem knocks out a guard and lassoes the control switch on the machine to save Bozz. He happily joins up with the detectives for their future cases. Although he often sees Bozz use his special alien abilities (along with many of their opponents' supernatural powers), he can never bring himself to believe that he's actually from another planet, and thinks it's all just tricks.

Raising Hell

After he moves in with Bozz and Mandy, he often does the cooking, creating such dishes as his Texas-Style Chili, Texas Tearmaker, Laredo Lip-Smackers, and Chili Peppers El Diablo with Red Onion Chewies. However these meals are always extremely spicy and also not wonderfully cooked, leaving Mandy always searching for a way to avoid his food.

Inspector Fitzroy from Scotland Yard, who has noticed the detectives' success with unusual cases, comes by to ask them to look into a series of demonic appearances. While he's there, he also falls for the buxum Ms. Flynn, starting a long-lasting rivalry between himself and Salem. Fitzroy is a member of the upper crust of London society and his family owns many of the fine clubs in town, so he is continually asking Mandy to eat there with him--only to have the proudly lower-class Salem insist on her staying to eat his own unique food. Mandy often ignores both of them, having an unrequited love for Bozz, herself.

They investigate the demonic appearances, finding that they are related to the home of Samantha Townes. While interviewing her, Salem enjoys eating her fancy "midget sandwiches." After later being attacked by more demons, they finally track down Samantha's husband Bradley, a poor sorcerer who has accidentally turned his head upside-down. They discover that Bradley's brother Harrison, a wizard himself, has been sabotaging his efforts and is the source of the attacks. With Bozz's abilities, they defeat him.

The Tomorrow Man

The detectives relax at a carnival, where Salem shows off his shooting skills, hitting 5 out of 5 targets with a rifle. Later on, Inspector Fitzroy once again tries to woo Mandy, and Salem decides to show off his own wooing skills, uncouthly slurping the hand of Fitzroy's sister. It does not impress anyone.

Regardless, Fitzroy asks them to look into a series of murders in which the bodies have all shown up with strange objects that we would recognize as the technology of today, but which are unknown in the Victorian era.

Based on a tip from a local street urchin named Ollie, they find out that Bozz is being held in the sewers by a Dr. Paine, a mad scientist who built a time machine. They rush off to save him, with Salem providing the muscle as usual. They destroy the time machine and solve the case.

Were-Town

The detectives take a trip out to the country to visit Mandy's estranged father, who has just contacted her. There have been a series of strange supernatural murders in his town. However her dad only cares because it's ruining his business, and Mandy is not impressed that this is why he's contacted her for the first time in 20 years. Salem tries comforting her when a demon appears in town.

Salem and the others do their best to stop it but it has superhuman strength and abilities and escapes. They track it down to a painting of a demon made by the local Squire Blakblud. That night Mandy and Bozz check out the squire while Salem stands watch over the painting to see what happens. Not only does that painting come alive again, but so do many other paintings that the squire has seeded throughout town. Salem tries shooting them, to no avail, so he runs off and warns Mandy.

They find out that the squire made a deal to let Satan take over the world if he would spare his town. Satan himself starts to appear, but Mandy manages to burn his painting and save the day.

The Cobblestone Jungle

Once again Fitzroy brings them a case, this time a jewel stolen from an African tribe. And once again, he makes some moves on Mandy, to Salem's great frustration. This time, Fitzroy manages to get her out to the restaurant, and Salem has to eat with Bozz, who surprisingly enjoys his cooking, as long as it is flavored with a few copper pennies.

Mandy stays the night with the Inspector and Salem confronts her, being worried about her, but Mandy won't be penned in. They trace the jewel to the home of Colonel Alexander Carruthers, an explorer, who plans to use it as the energy source for a laser cannon. He has several African warriors attack the detectives, and Salem wades right into the fight, but is held down. Bozz saves him and Mandy, stops the Colonel and retrieves the jewel, which turns out to be one of his own race's energy sources. They decide to go to Africa to see if any other trace of Bozz's race remains there.

King Solomon's Spaceship

Unfortunately for Salem, FItzroy coms along on the trip, and they spend most of the time bickering, trying to prove themselves the better suitor for Mandy, but only acting like children in her eyes in their increasingly silly macho displays.

As they go deep into the wilderness, Salem is knocked off a boat and almost drowned in a wild river, but is saved by Bozz's special powers. He and Fitzroy are later separated from Mandy and Bozz by a fire. After saving themselves by jumping into a mud pool, he and Fitzroy have had enough of each other, and get into an extended bare-knuckle brawl. Fitzroy is a surprisingly good fighter for a gentleman of leisure, and he and Salem finally come to respect each other after being unable to knock each other out. The find out Mandy is in danger and forget their differences to help her against the immoral adventurer Jan Kruger.

They join up and rescue Mandy and Bozz, and defeat Kruger. Bozz had found an example of his race's ships, but it is destroyed in the fight. Salem is, nonetheless, stunned to find out that Mandy's story of Bozz being an alien has ben true all this time after all.

The group returns home, friendships strengthened but romantic desires unresolved.