Intended as a
competitor to the comic strip Buck Rogers, which had been
published since January of 1929, the sci-fi themed adventure strip
follows the adventures of Harvard graduate and world-famous polo
player, Flash Gordon. Flash and girlfriend, Dale Arden, are kidnapped
from Earth by a half-crazed Dr. Hans Zarkov during a meteor-storm,
and transported via rocket-ship to the planet Mongo. There they run
afoul of Ming the Merciless, Mongo's tyrant king, and escape to the
planet's various forest, jungle, arctic, undersea, and mid-air
kingdoms. Each has its own fantastic architecture and nature, and its
own exotic ruler - Prince Barin of Arboria, the shark-man King Kala,
the hawkman Prince Vulta, and Queens Fria of Frigia and Desira of
Tropica,
As the strip
continued over the years, becoming a daily in 1940, Flash, Dale, and
Zarkov overthrow Ming and continue their adventures in other star
systems.
Alex Raymond drew
the original Sunday strip, evolving it by 1936 from a twelve-panel
layout to six - thus doubling the panel size - and removing all word
balloons, instead placing the dialogue in blocks at the bottom of the
panels. The added space enhanced Raymond's sumptuous illustrations,
which art critic R.C. Harvey describes as having "a technical
virtuosity matched on the comics pages only by Harold Foster in his Prince Valiant strip. Comics greats Jack Kirby, Bob Kane,
and Will Eisner all cite Raymond as a substantial influence.
The strip
continues to run in reprints to this day. Contributing artists over
the years include Gray Morrow and Al Williamson. More than a half
dozen publishers have printed high-quality contemporary collections
in hardcover and softcover, including Dark Horse Comics and Kitchen
Sink Press.
The character and
his exploits have been adapted in all manner of media, including
magazines, comic books, novels, radio serials, a 1936 - '40 film
serial, three live-action TV series between 1954 and 2008, four
animated TV series and movies between 1979 and 1996, and of course
the softcore sci-fi classic, 1974's Flesh Gordon, and its not-so
classic 1990 sequel, Flesh Gordon Meets the Cosmic Cheerleaders.
In 2010, director Breck Eisner (The Crazies - 2010/The Witch
Hunter - planned October 23, 2015 release) announced development
of a 3D big-screen reboot of the character, describing the movie as
“very much looking back to the original Alex Raymond strips; it’s
imagining that Alex Raymond were to draw the strips today instead of
in the ’30s and ’40s.” As of 2012, Eisner was still promoting
the project, in an April 21st Screen Rant interview that year saying,
“We have a couple months to go until the draft goes into Sony.”
The Star Wars franchise fan website Star Wars Origins notes George Lucas' original
intent for his blockbuster sci-fi/fantasy franchise was to remake the
1930s and '40s Flash Gordon serials, saying the director moved on to
other ideas when he found the rights unavailable. Notable influences
in Lucas' finished films remain, however - including their opening
credit crawls, soft wipes between scenes, cloud cities, and central
plotline of rebels fighting imperial forces for the fate of the known
universe. Other pop culture Flash Gordon manifestations include the
U.S. Postal Service's inclusion of the strip in their 1995 Comic Book
Classics series - a collection of twenty stamps honoring the
centennial of the newspaper comic strip.
On a personal
tangent: I had the questionable honor of doing several months'
post-effects work on Flesh Gordon Meets the Cosmic Cheerleaders.
While the finished film was near-excruciatingly bad, the effects gig
was great fun; our Detroit-area crew had a blast conceiving,
actualizing, and shooting a broad variety of intentionally cheesy,
old-school practical special effects – creatures, miniature
fly-by-wire spaceships, alien landscapes, explosions, outer space
shots, planet surfaces, and the like. We had a broad scope of work
and were given considerable creative freedom.
I remember the
day when a shipment of miniatures from the original film arrived at
the shop. I opened a box and found the gold “dick ship” from
“Flesh Gordon” carefully packed inside. I spent the next several
days restoring it – fixing scratches and other minor damage,
replacing nail-head miniature “rivets”, and giving the ship an
overall polish. I had in my hands and entrusted to my talents an
(admittedly minor) icon of science-fiction. It was a thrill.
Over the course
of the “Flesh 2” gig, fellow filmmaker and effects tech Tom
Chaney bought the 16mm camera Flesh co-director Howard Ziehm
used to shoot his original pop-culture classic, and Tom used it to
shoot his own horror feature debut, Frostbiter: Wrath of the
Wendigo (1995). Tom still directs horror films today and is now
in production on his latest, The Wind Walker. Although he's
long-since graduated to shooting with state-of-the-art 4K digital RED
cameras (available through his own rental outfit, Fitzgerald Camera),
I'll bet Tom still has Howard's camera sitting on a shelf somewhere.
He may even rent it to you for the right price.
Back to
Flash: Our hero's film premiere was in Universal's 1936 thirteen-part
movie serial, Flash Gordon. This was followed in 1938 by their
fifteen-part, Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars, and in 1940 by their
twelve-part, Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe. Olympic gold
medal-winning swimmer Buster Crabbe stars as the titular character in
all episodes (just as he does in Universal's' own competing 1939 Buck
Rogers serial). In 1996, the Library of Congress selected Flash
Gordon for preservation in the United States National Film
Registry as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically
significant".
Clip - from the 1939 serial, "Flash Gordon"
Clip - from the 1939 serial, "Flash Gordon"