Can you identify this comic strip?

bazzabear

bazzabear

bazzabear

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This just popped out of my memory from nowhere while watching a video of someone in a shark cage. I can't remember anything about where I saw this in the first place.

What I do remember is that there was an old man in a posh nursing home, and every day they would take him to the swimming pool, and he would stand in it raging about having lost his son, and punching at the water. The background was that he'd had an obsession about hunting a shark, and it resulted in his son dying. I think he was caught in the shark cage on the sea bed and saw his son getting killed by the shark.

From the googling I have been doing, it might have been part of the comic 'Hook Jaw'. In do possibly remember the shark having a harpoon below it's jaw. But I can't find the storyline or the comic I vaguely remember.
 
Lol

The storyline you're describing — a shark-obsessed old man in a nursing home, raging in a swimming pool, having lost his son to the shark — sounds very much like it could be from Viz magazine
 
I asked one of the Chatbots the wrong question

ChatGPT Image Jun 28, 2026, 02_09_13 PM.png
 
Hookjaw was one of the strips in Action comic, which was published in the 70s. The shark has a gaff hook stuck through its lower jaw.

I've got a book which reprints a lot of Hookjaw episodes. I'm not sure if it reprints all of them, but there are 20 or so episodes in it. It seems to sell for stupid money second hand, from a quick check. I checked it earlier, there's no scene with an old man raging in a swimming pool in it. There is a scene where a diver gets eaten by baby sharks which swim through the walls of the shark cage.

Hookjaw was extremely graphic for a comic aimed at young boys- lots of scenes of people being ripped to pieces. Ah, the 70s were great.
 
Remembering a bit more:

I think the son was originally in a glass bottomed boat, which the shark attacked and he escaped, but it damaged his leg. Prior to that he was a promising athlete.

The son was pragmatic about it, but the father vowed revenge on the shark. It was while he was trying to enact that revenge that he was in a shark cage, the son in a boat above, and somehow the boat got sunk, or exploded or something to kill the son. The father was left in the shark cage to see it all.

The more I remember of it, the more I am sure that it was part of the 'Hook Jaw' comics. But can hardly find any of those strips reproduced on line, never mind the exact storyline I am remembering.

I also don't remember at all ever having an Action comic, so no idea where I would have read it. On the other hand, my mum was a great one for scouring charity shops, so maybe I had an Action annual from a random year or something?

EDIT: That comic isn't far from what I remember! As far as I recall though, the father's shouting in the pool was along the lines of "it should have been me!".
 
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Regarding the glass bottom boat, I'm recalling a particular frame from the comic, looking down on the boat, with the shark coming straight up at it and the people inside being blithely unaware of their doom "doesn't the glass make it look close" type of thing.
 
Googled Hook Jaw attacks glass bottomed boat and AI came up with this.

AI Overview



The "Hook Jaw" shark attack on a glass-bottomed boat does not occur in the original 1970s British comic. Instead, this specific attack was featured in Hook Jaw #2, published by Titan Comics in 2017.
Written by Si Spurrier with art by Connor Boyle, the modern reboot features several key details regarding this specific scene:
  • The Victims: A corrupt, heavily armed faction is tracking the legendary great white shark in the fictional waters off the African coast. They are using an anchored, modified glass-bottomed boat as a mobile, underwater cage/observation station.
  • The Attack: The giant shark, distinguished by the rusted gaff hook permanently lodged in its lower jaw, sneaks up beneath the vessel.
  • The Damage: Hook Jaw rams the reinforced glass from below. The sheer size and force of the impact shatter the glass bottom, flooding the vessel and immediately turning the observation room into a terrifying feeding ground.
Click to expand...

Definatley not the one i remember.
 
My mate has lost 3 wives because of his addiction to collecting stuff and the amount of money he keeps spending.
His house is a museum with the most collectibles from Star Wars.

His first reply:
My first thought would have been Hook Jaw from ACTION comic, if talking comics
 
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