The library is a great place for readers to discover comics, and it’s a great place for comics readers to check out things that they want to try without spending their hard-earned cash. I’m looking at comics that I find in the New York Public Library system.
It was probably a year ago that I took the first volume of Checker Books Flash Gordon reprint series out the library, and I enjoyed it considerably. Efforts to take out subsequent books have all met with similar fates: two or three months of the book being “on hold,” only to receive notice that the last remaining copy is no longer available. So, New Yorkers who’ve destroyed Flash Gordon vols. 2 through 4, I say thank you with all my considerable sarcasm. However, I got to volume 5 before you could destroy it. So suck it.
Without knowing what occurred in the three volumes I’ve passed over, I must admit, I had absolutely no difficulty diving right into the fifth collection of Alex Raymond’s classic Sunday newspaper strip, compiling material from 1940 and ’41. Regular comics readers will likely find at least one peculiarity to these comics – there are no dialogue balloons. Each strip is six panels with accompanying text – often with dialogue in the narration.
Every single panel moves the plot along. These strips, I’m not kidding, move like lightning. The pace is relentless, danger dogs Flash in every strip, and somebody’s always scheming against him. The blocks of text slow the reading down, but you read only four pages and you can’t believe how much has happened.
If I’m going to recommend a classic adventure strip, Caniff’s Terry and the Pirates is still the gold standard. Raymond doesn’t give his characters the emotional depth, nor does he add natural and believable elements of humor, but Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon certainly deserves recognition. It’s pure plot, pure cliffhanger excitement, restless, excitable and explosive, and Raymond draws the hell out of it. Each page is packed with images of Flash’s lady-love Dale Arden in exotic bikinis, shirtless Flash demolishing Ming’s guards, and iconic sci-fi spaceships and citadels. As an added bonus, in vol. 5, the inflexible status quo of traditional adventure comics is pulverized, as Flash’s revolution against Ming reaches its great culmination. But don’t worry, Raymond has plenty more drama in store for his heroes.
Any reader looking for a solidly crafted, juggernaut paced good time is going to find plenty of pleasures in Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon comic strips. And, if you’re really lucky, you can find several of these adventures in your local library.
