I first came to appreciate Flash Gordon as a fan of the movie serials starring Larry "Buster" Crabbe and the animated television series by Filmation, but even as an elementary school student, I was well aware that it all began with a comic strip in the 1930s. Created by artist Alex Raymond and ghostwriter Don Moore, it is considered one of the greatest strips in the history of the medium, and its influence on the genre of science fiction adventure is staggering.
To understand the full scope of Flash Gordon — and to appreciate the accuracy or inaccuracy of its various adaptations — one needs to go to the source, so I purchased Flash Gordon: On the Planet Mongo (Sundays 1934-1937) and two other volumes spanning the entirety of Alex Raymond's Sunday strips.
I am not even halfway through this volume and will forgo giving a review (other than to state I am very satisfied), but I thought I would share a few initial observations about the earliest strips.
- Ming is always referred to as "Ming, the Merciless" with a comma after "Ming."
- Flash Gordon's usual exclamations of surprise are "Great Scott," "Great guns," and "Good heavens."
- Dale's surname changes from "Arden" to "Ardan" and back again.
- Mongo is variously referred to as a "strange new planet," a "comet," and back to "planet."
- Zarkov's original plan was a suicide mission: deflect the course of the runaway planet/comet that was heading to Earth by flying a rocket into it. The fact that it was instead pulled into Mongo's gravity and forced to crash land was (somehow) unanticipated.
Reading the Sunday strips is enormously entertaining, and it is renewing my appreciation for the serial, the animated television show, and the 1980 film.
GORDON'S ALIVE
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