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.
