Alex Raymond drew the Flash Gordon Sunday page from 1934 through 1944. From 1990-1993, Kitchen Sink Press reprinted the entire series in six hardcover volumes, on slick paper, in horizontal format. From 2011-2014, IDW reprinted the series in four large harcover volumes, on "soft" paper stock, in vertical format and complete with the Jungle Jim "toppers." I read the KSP and IDW reprints in "real time" as they were were being published, plus I re-read the KSP series once on the "OB" (old board). Now I am preparing to read the entire series again for a third time, but the second more-or-less straight through without having to wait between volumes, and the first including Jungle Jim.
Replies
No one knows who wrote the earliest Flash Gordon pages before Donald Wyncoop took over, or indeed, exactly when he took over. The early strips go from cliffhanger-to-cliffhanger with virtually no time to take a breath between. I've posted something like this once before (on the O.B.), but here again, because absolutely no one demanded it, is...
FLASH GORDON'S FIRST DAY ON MONGO: Dr. Zarkov's spaceship crash lands on the planet Mongo, knocking Zarkov and Dale Arden unconscious. Leaving Zarkov behind, Flash carries Dale towards a nearby city. He is attacked by a monster, but is saved when a different monster attacks the first tone. He and Dale are captured and brought before Ming the Merciless, Emperor of the Universe. Ming is smitten by Dale and declares that she will be his wife, but Flash is thrown into the arena to fight four Red Monkey Men of the planet Mongo. He defeats them and leaps out of the arena into the box of Ming's daughter, Princess Aura. Aura has decided that she wants to marry Flash, but he falls through a trap door and she leaps after him. They plummet into a pit, but flash manages to grab ahold of a protruding pipe and cath Aura as well. Below them are several water dragons, but Flash swings to a nearby passageway and the dragons obey Aura's commands. Aura locks Flash in a spaceship, but he takes off and is attacked by space-gyros. For defying Ming's wishes, Aura is sentenced to six months with the warrior women in "their country of ice and cold and bitter snow." Then Ming subjects Dale to his "dehumanizing machine," but Flash puts the kibosh on that by attacking Ming's palace. Flash's ship is shot down and he is knocked unconscious. He is found by Thun, the Lion Man, who is about to kill him, then changes his mind. Thun hooks Flash up to a "though projector" so he can get a message through to Dale. On their way to the palace, they are attacked by Tsak, the "two-headed guardian of the tunnel of terror." Flash kills it, but Thun is knocked unconscious. Carrying Thun into a large underground room, Flash is confronted by two Droks. Suddenly, an unconscious, yellow-skinned man is dropped into the room through a secret panel. Regaining consciousness, Thun helps Flash defeats the Droks. Meanwhile, the wedding ceremony of Ming and Dale begins. Making their way into the chamber, Flash and Thun overturn a large idol, disrupting the ceremony. Beneath where the idol stood is a trapdoor through which Flash, Dale and thun escape. The descend a rope ladder, but one of Ming's soldiers cuts it and they fall into a whirpool. Emerging from the underground river in a waterfall, Flash and Dale are separated from Thun and Dale is dragged underwater by two powerful Sharkmen. She is taken to Kala, their leader, who plans to return her to Ming. Then he challenges Flash to a duel in the underwater arena. Flash wins, and when Kala regains consciousness, he orders Flash brought to him. No one has ever beaten Kala in a match before, so Kala decides to release him. He orders Flash taken to the south chamber, there to await Dale, but Kala lied and the chamber begins to fill with water. Just then, a yellow arm appears through a panel in the wall and drops underwater breathing apparatus. Flash escapes and swims to Dale's chambers, only to find the chamber flooded and Dale already gone. (Flash doesn't know it, but Thun has already found and resued her.) Just then, Aura (who has escaped from the warrior women) comes swimming up. It was she who slipped Flash the breathing aparatus so he could escape. Then they witness the underwater city detatch itself from the bottom, rise to the surface and settle atop a great mountain. By this time, Thun and Dale have already been captured by Ming's forces. The city of the Sharkmen explodes in a blinding flash of light! The Lionmen, led by King Jugrid (Thun's father), have destroyed it from afar in their search for Thun. From their vantage point, Flash can see that Ming's forces are about to attack the Lionmen, but when he tries to warn them, Aura ambushes him from behind. Thun's people are scattered, but some of them sneak up on Aura and the unconscious Flash from behind. As Ming's troops advance, Aura throws heself off a cliff rather than be taken captive by Jugrid's men, but she is caught in the fronds of a constrictor plant, and Flash climbs down to save her. The Lionmen attempt to help, but are frozen by ice-guns fired by rebel troops led by Prince Barin. Prince Barin then orders Aura taken to his quarters, and sets up a death duel between Flash and another white man. Flash is blindfolded and his opponent is wearing a hood. Their left arms are bound together and they are each given a poison-tipped dagger. Flash immediately drops his dagger, yanks his opponent off balance, and subdues him without killing him. He removes his own blindfold and the other man's hood to reveal Dr. Zarkov (whom Flash has not seen since leaving him behind in the spaceship earlier that morning, 15 weeks ago). Barin decides he now likes Flash and Zarkov. He takes them aboard his undeground electronic "mole" (which softens the soil to a semi-liquid state and moves through it like a submarine) to attack Ming's palace, leaving Aura behind, a prisoner. On the way they are attacked by a Gocko (an undergropund dragon). Flash dons an underground "diving suit" and tries to drive the Gocko off. He is defeated, but Barin drive the Gocko off by backing his ship into it. Flash recovers, and they resume their jopurney to the palace. Meanwhile, Aura has convinced her guard to help her escape. He does so, but is killed by Ming's forces in the process; Aura is returned to her father. Barin, Flash and Zarkov emerge in Ming's palace and are met by armored guards armed with ice-guns. They are captured, and sentenced by Ming to die by firing squad. Ming's high priest, Zogi, points out that even a traitor has the right to choose between "the two terrible tests" and the firing squad. Ming agrees, and Flash is pitted against Barin atop a plank spanning a pool of water. Both men are armed with whips. Flash quickly knocks Barin off balance into the pool, then immediately dives into save him. Barin is being attacked by an Octosak, but Flash snaps its neck. When he tries to climb the ladder out of the pool, a metal sheet slides over their heads. The water is drained from the pool and three Tigrons appears. Flash kills one of the beasts and the other two fight each other over its body. Above, Thun's guards taunt him with the knowledge of his friend Flash's fate. Thun breaks free and slides the transparent matal covering awy from the pit just in time. Meanwhile, for the second time that day, Ming attempts to marry Dale. Flash, Barrin and thun enter the back of the temple idol (a kind of "Wizard of Oz" type affair) and, pretending to be the god Tao, interrupt the ceremony. Ming orders his guards to attack, but once again Zogi interrupts saying that even Ming cannot execute a man who has passed the test of the Tigrons, so Ming kills Zogi instead. He then declares that the three men are to be sent to the prison city of the Hawkmen. "Doomed to a fate worse than death among the cruel Hawkmen!" the caption reads. "What terrifying adventures await our friends? This New Story Begins Next Week." Thus ends Flash Gordon's first day on the planet Mongul.
It has taken 23 weeks of continuous action, but this is the first natural break in the story. And lest you think Jungle Jim is any better in terms of pacing, in the first five installments, Jim encounters, fights and defeats a tiger, a black panther, a gorilla and a leopard, back-to-back; in 6-7 a lion; a shark in 9-10; and a fabled black lion in 11-14. There's not much in either feature, at this point, to appeal to adult sensibilities. Both strips are drawn by Alex Raymond, but the artwork is not yet as stylized as it would become.
"Don't know. Mongo only Pawn in Game of Life!"
Mongo knocks out a horse!
The Jungle Jim serial starring Johnny Weismuller was part of a local morning kiddies show that ran in the Detroit area when I was a child. It was decades later that I learned that Jungle Jim was based on a newspaper strip by Alex Raymond. I've read some of Raymond's Flash Gordon work but I don't believe I have ever seen an example of his J J strip.
Supposedly, with Weismuller getting older and putting on weight, the Jungle Jim series allowed him to get out of the loin cloth and continue as a jungle hero fully clothed.
[Inserting these posts here.]
FLASH GORDON and JUNGLE JIM v2 (1936-1939):
I just finished volume two in IDW's "Champagne Edition" format (June 7, 1936 through March 5, 1939) and I must admit, reading both "Jungle Jim" and "Flash Gordon" really breaks up the flow of both stories. This is probably the last time I will read the Jungle Jim Topper; it just isn't given the space to develop properly. Jungle Jim gets approximately ⅓ of the page (actually a little less in most cases). Then it is further subdivided into two tiers, whereas Flash Gordon gets two tiers, ⅓ page each. It looks almost as if Flash gordon and Jungle Jim are drawn by two different artists, or rather by the same artist at two different stages in his career. That's not the case, though; Jungle Jim just simply doesn't have the space for the lavish illustrations Alex Raymond gives to Flash Gordon. Furthermore, even at its best, Jungle Jim isn't as good as other contemporary "action" strips such as Captain Easy or Buz Sawyer or Terry and the Pirates. In 1938, Raymond largely drops the second tier of Jungle Jim giving him one tier to Flash Gordon's two, and the art improves but the story suffers.
The end of this volume ends a storyline for Flash, so volume three with begin with a new story.
FLASH GORDON and JUNGLE JIM v3 (1939-1941):
This is the best volume yet. Even Jungle Jim has stepped up to Flash Gordon levels. I had previously decided that I would likely never read Jungle Jim again, but now I've modified that decision not to read them both simultaneously ever again; each one interrupts the flow of the other. I somewhat countered that this time by reading one JJ, three FGs, four JJs, four FGs, and I continued in that manner through the entire volume. By June 1941, Flash has overthrown Ming the Merciless, and in July he, Dale and Zarkov return to Earth. He joins WWII even before the United States did, and using the weapons of Mongo, he soon thwarts a surprise attack against the U.S. launched by "The Dictator." Flash becomes an honorary major in the Army air Corps, and on December 28, 1941, is granted the Medal of Honor by FDR and promoted to Colonel Gordon.
FLASH GORDON and JUNGLE JIM, Vol. 4 (1942-1944):
With volume four, the action of Flash Gordon returns to Mongo, and Jungle Jim shifts to wartime footing, with Jim Bradley undertaking a series of secret missions for the War Department. The art on both features is impeccable. when I was reading v3 I thought I would probably never read Jungle Jim again, but I think I'm going to change that assessment to never again trying to read them both at the same time; each is a distraction from the other. With Ming the Merciless defeated (in v3), Flash Gordon has lost a bit of it's "zing"; if a hero is defined by his arch nemesis, few are on par with Ming.
On February 13, 1944, Jim Bradley requests combat service but is denied. Jim's patriotism is a refection of Alex Raymond's own. "Call it patriotism if you like," Raymond told Tom Roberts of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, "but I just had to get into this fight. I had three kids. I wasn't young. [He was 43.] And comics artists were getting easy deferments because they were considered necessary for marale at home. But I've always been the kind of guy who gets a lump in his throat when a band plays the Star Spangled Banner and the flag goes by." He was determined to join the U.S. Marine Corps and formally enlisted in mid-February of 1944.
He had simplified his line throughout 1943, so by the time he stepped away, his artwork was no longer as lush as it had been (although I'm quick to point out it was still the prettiest strip of the day, except perhaps for Hal Foster's Prince Valiant). Austin Briggs replaced Raymond on Flash Gordon on May 7, and John Mayo replaced him on Jungle Jim on May 28. (Volume 4 of this series goes through August 13, the end of the current storyline.) Raymond intended to return to the strip after his service, but King Features claimed it lost no papers after the switch, and refused to allow him to return to his former assignments after the war, but offered him the opportunity to create an entirely new strip for the syndicate.
The public gave no sign of spotting a decline in either strip, but Raymond himself didn't feel that way, and looked forward to returning to his creations and bringing them back to the high level of artistic quality he demanded from himself. Unfortunately, because he was a military volunteer, he was exempt from the Federal law that required employers to give back to draftees the jobs they had vacated in order to join the armed forces. King Features had the opportunity to "have its cake and eat it, too" by keeping Flash Gordon and Jungle Jim, and getting a new strip, Rip Kirby, from Raymond. Raymond agreed to do the new strip only because co-ownership was offered as part of the deal, but he carried his resentment toward King Features Syndicate to his grave.