by Mike Favila, Reporter

If you’ve never heard of Flash Gordon, George Lucas’ initial spark for Star Wars is on the back of Flash Gordon: The Tyrant of Mongo: The Complete Flash Gordon Library 1937-41: “Originally I wanted to make a Flash Gordon movie, with all the trimmings…” After reading these stories, I can understand where young George is coming from. The far away worlds presented here are bold, full of life and adventure, set in dazzling and exotic settings and an all around blast. This collection does a great job of capturing that excitement. This book is the third in the series, compiling all the Sunday strips from April 1937 to Jan 1941. On their website Titan Books states that their goal is to eventually reprint the entire story run from artist Alex Raymond.

Though I’m familiar with Flash Gordon as a sci-fi icon, I didn’t know too much about his story until now. Earth is in danger from deadly meteor showers. Nobody knows why. Flash is a polo player from Yale who is taken hostage along with his lovely girlfriend Dale by Dr. Zarkov, a scientist trying to find out where they are coming from. It turns out Ming the Merciless, an evil space villain had been sending them to Earth to subjugate them. The book covers the middle part of Raymond’s run, often considered the apex of his time on Flash Gordon. The formula seems to be a mix of romantic comics that were very popular at the time and the modern style action packed art, still present in comics today.

At the end of each strip, the tagline “Next Week:” always serves to remind you that the art is a serialized adventure.  After a while you start to gloss over it and read it as a complete piece. Even though I was sometimes overwhelmed by the amount of text and exposition used, I can understand the need for a recap and to telegraph what will happen next week. This prevented the readership from ever getting lost by previous storylines and kept them on the hook for the following week.

Don Moore’s writing is capable, if unremarkable. Moore was obviously well traveled,  having endowed Flash Gordon with the martial art jiu jitsu, which is a pretty forward choice for a writer in the 1930s.  That said, the real star of the book is Alex Raymond’s art. The shadowing and linework remind me a little of some of Frank Miller’s defining work on Daredevil, which made me wonder if he was slightly influenced by Raymond.  Every line conveys or contributes meaning to the narrative.  Doug Murray’s intro to the book is an excellent primer to anybody seeing his art for the first time. One of the pictures even show Raymond working from a nude life model, to achieve his goals for anatomy and realism.

The stories have a few weaknesses, but only when viewed through the lens of today’s values. A little too often, Dale is a damsel in distress, along with all the other females in the strip. Even the powerful ice queen has a tendency to become a victim, and she’s the queen! It seems their whole world is a construct to fawn over Flash’s affections or his near bout with death.  Don’t even get me started on Ming the Merciless.  From the ambiguously Asian robe to the Fu Manchu mustache, his overall yellow paleness totally struck me as ridiculous.  However, these are small complaints.

Flash Gordon: The Tyrant of Mongo: The Complete Flash Gordon Library 1937-41 is a total bargain at its cover price. It looks like it was built to be passed on to your kids. The size and format fall somewhere between an excellent coffee table book and an achival style masterwork. Every little touch, from the foil embossed letting on the front, to the beautiful fold flat binding demands that you take this book seriously. It even smells amazing! (I think my wife was wondering if i was ok, sniffing a book for so long.)  In this presentation, I have faith that Flash Gordon will see the future that he so easily conquered in his rocket ship.

Rating:
ComicsOnline.com gives Flash Gordon: The Tyrant of Mongo: The Complete Flash Gordon Library 1937-41 4.5 out of 5 blasters!

Buy Flash Gordon: The Tyrant of Mongo: The Complete Flash Gordon Library 1937-41 at Amazon.com today!