Alex Raymond's Flash Gordon: Vol. 2

The second of Checker's re-issue of the color Flash Gordon strips from the pen and brush of its unsurpassed originator, Alex Raymond. The work of a master at his best, these color strips were originally published in 1935 and 1936.

Outstanding art overcomes weak scripts in this sci-fi classic, which started in 1934 as a rival to the extremely popular Buck Rogers. The story begins as three Earthlings—muscular Flash, beautiful Dale and brilliant Dr. Zarkov—are dropped on the alien planet Mongo, ruled by Emperor Ming the Merciless. Much swashbuckling hugger-mugger ensues, as Flash, Dale and Zarkov bounce from one realm to another, from one crisis to the next. Uncredited writer Don Moore relies on melodramatic conventions to keep things moving: handsome but humorless Flash is irresistible to any alien queen he meets; Ming is a standard, creepy Yellow Peril villain; Dale alternates between simpering and pouting. Nevertheless, Raymond's wonderful brushed ink illustrations bring the characters to life. His work recalls the tradition of magazine illustrators such as Joseph Clement Coll and J. Allen St. John, and is superbly composed and executed. The notion of Flash wrestling with a monstrous "constrictosaurus" while chained to the wall of a dungeon is a cliché, but Reynolds's rendering makes the silly beast appear menacing. His Dale is more attractive than irritating. Even Ming looks wily enough to be convincingly dangerous. The terrific art makes ignoring the slapdash writing worthwhile.
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Seven decades after he first appeared, Flash Gordon remains synonymous with science fiction, or at least with the naive, planet-hopping variety of it called, erstwhile derisively, space opera. His eponymous newspaper strip, which recounted his, his girlfriend Dale Arden's, and the brilliant scientist Dr. Zarkoff's adventures as they battled the evil warlord Ming the Merciless on the planet Mongo, made a lasting impact on the pop-cultural landscape. When George Lucas couldn't obtain the rights to film the strip, he transmuted the project into Star Wars. Flash's popularity was driven less by the strip's simplistic plots and cardboard characters than by the look of magazine illustration that artist Raymond gave it. Raymond's idealized figures and exotic settings were like nothing the comics had seen before; transferring particularly well to superhero comics, they would be the key influence on generations of comic-book artists. The strips reprinted here, from the series' second and third years, lack the polish of Raymond's later work but exemplify the derring-do and romantic flair that made Flash an enduring icon. Gordon Flagg
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