Another Reminder You Should be Reading Flash Gordon

I've praised Dan Schkade's on-going run on the Flash Gordon comic strip on King Feature's Comics Kingdom (and apparently still in some newspapers), but I felt like I should do so again. It's really good, so I don't want you to forget it.

Historically, those that followed Raymond on the strip have stuck to the formula of fantasy adventure in exotic locales. Some of the early authors also mimicked the Raymond strips frequent love-triangle melodrama, but that seems to have fallen away in later years. What came in instead though is a tendency to use only the sandbox of the Raymond years as canon rather than the interplanetary adventures of creators than followed.

Schkade's follows the sticking to Mongo approach and seems to stick mostly with a "Raymond years only" canon, though there are occasional nods to later writers and to Flash in other media beyond the strip. What Schkade adds that no one else has (outside of some of the comic book versions) is a further depth to the world. The various rulers of Mongo have their own motivations and political aspirations that made them allies against Ming, but rivals in the post-Ming world. Ming has a backstory and point of view that makes him understandable if no more commendable. As in the strip above, we get the point of view of someone who follows him.

Schkade does this without changing the essential nature of the strip from fast-paced adventure. It's a worthy addition to Flash Gordon's storied history, and I hope it gets collected in a physical format one day.

The Vintage Comics of Lulu

I'd mostly used the print-on-demand and independent bookstore site lulu for indie rpg stuff in the past, but I've noticed there are a number of vintage comic books and comic strip collections available there. Some are public domain, some are likely of unclear copyright status, and others are perhaps charitably classed as "abandoned" to various degrees.

Here are a couple of places to check for a number of 40s and 50s comics.

The Comic Strip Appreciation Group has a number of restored, vintage strips collected on their page.

The Elusive Volume

In try to run down various hardcover comics-related series, it always seems like there's one volume that's unusually rare and doesn't show up very often--and when it does people want more for it. You can get the others fairly easy, but that one elusive volume makes it hard to complete the set without really paying for it.

Lately, it seems like that volume is number 2. 

Over the holidays, I was trying to complete the sets of Star Hawks, the newspaper strip by Goulart and Kane, collected in three volumes by IDW in 2017. I got volumes 1 and 3 fairly easily, but 2 doesn't seem to show up in a price range I'm willing to pay for it. It doesn't show up as often and some places goes for 4-5 times as much!

Then there's the Star Wars newspaper strip collections also from IDW. Here, there's supposedly a Marvel Omnibus coming, but I assume it will be based on the Dark Horse reprints that were arranged in portrait, comic book format and colored, and I don't think they are planning on reprinting the earliest, Russ Manning strips. Here again, the second volume with the great Al Williamson material is the tricky one to find. Not quite as bad as Star Hawks, but the available ones tend be in pretty heavily used condition. I finally relented and got one, though.

So what's the deal? Do these middle volumes just happen to get lower print runs? 

Flash Gordon turns 92

The Flash Gordon comic strip by Alex Raymond and Don Moore debuted on this day in 1934. The current creator on the strip Dan Schkade is doing an homage to that first story, "On the Planet Mongo" this week. 

Flash started out as a Sword & Planet character, perhaps the most famous of those that followed in John Carter's footsteps, before going in a more Buck Rogers direction (though Rogers started out less spacefaring than he became) in the 50s and later decades. Much of the Flash Gordon media post the 1980 has moved the character in a Star Wars direction, at least visually, which is ironic given the influence Flash Gordon film serials had on the Star Wars films.

I enjoy Schkade's and other modern takes than all a blend of elements from multiple eras, but keep as the core Raymond's adventure story on another world.

I hope Flash Gordon continues his adventures for decades to come.

Gordon's Alive!

I've been enjoying the latest incarnation of the Flash Gordon comic strip in digital format on the Comics Kingdom website. Cartoonist Dan Schkade relaunched the series on October 22, 2023, and has been doing daily and Sunday installments ever since.

Schkade's series starts right after the defeat of Ming (in Raymond's 1941 strip) and tells the story of what happens as the uneasy alliances of the revolution fall apart and the different kingdoms jockey for power. I think it's a novel approach: something fresher than either a complete reboot we've seen so many times or bland "further adventures" in a world without a strong central conflict. 

His design sensibility is strong too. It is broadly "classic," but draws a lot on the 80s film that many readers will be familiar with and adds modern, often light science fictional/space opera touches.

Schkade gave an interview to The Comics Journal regarding his approach here. You can check out the strip on Comics Kingdom here.