Flash Gordon: On the Planet Mongo: Sundays 1934-37 by Alex RaymondMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Flash Gordon: On Planet Mongo collects the Sunday strips from 1934 to 1937.
I'm passingly familiar with Flash Gordon from the cartoon when I was a wee fellow and the Defenders of the Earth cartoon when I was slightly less wee. I've been trying to read more of the revered comic strips and threw this on my Christmas list because I'm allegedly hard to buy for.
So a comet, or more correctly, a rogue planet is headed for Earth. Flash Gordon, his soon to be girlfriend Dale Arden, and Doctor Zarkov board a rocket and find themselves on Planet Mongo and at odds with its ruler, Ming the Merciless.
The story is a Planetary Romance in the old sense, a never ending series of adventures mixing medieval weapons, rayguns, and monsters. Flash goes from one battle to the next, kicking ass and taking names, and protecting his main squeeze Dale from all the alien bad guys who want to marry her. The stories are a little repetitive but Alex Raymond probably didn't intend for me to read three years worth of strips in a week.
The art is the star of the show here, no mistake about it. I knew Alex Raymond by reputation but had no idea he was this skilled. His artistic footprints are visible even on today's comics. Once the strip gets going, the artwork plateaus into a style I see reflected later in Alex Toth, Russ Manning, Wally Wood, and a lot of other greats from the EC era and beyond.
Flash Gordon: On the Planet Mongo is an eye opening look at a Golden Age great. Four out of five stars.
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