Charlton's Flash Gordon!

Charlton Comics is my favorite comic book company. That said I know that many find their comics a bit slapdash and mundane, and truth told a lot of them are. But among all the dross there are many many gems to find and polish and enjoy. For a time Flash Gordon was a part of that operation. It's an uneven effort, but a well if not necessarily fondly remembered outing for the classic King Features space opera. 

The first Charlton issue is really left over from the King Features effort to put out their own comics. This comic by Bill Pearson and fan-favorite artist Reed Crandall carries on directly from the stories being told in the King Comics rendition of the title. In this one we meet Sheng the Savage, a minor-league Ming who gives Flash, Dale and Zarkov some mild problems.

The next issue marks the beginning of the Charlton era but also puts a coda on the King Comics run. Under a cover by Pat Boyette, the first story features another Pearson story and artwork by an up and coming Jeffery Jones.

Jones was tole the comic pages he produced would not see publication since King was on the way out, so he was encouraged to get them done by a certain date which precluded the finest quality. When the story was published he was understandably chagrined, but I for one like the loose approach, though truth told the story telling does waver. Closing out this issue was Pat Boyette's first take on the character. 

The next issue is all Boyette. Now Pat Boyette might seem an odd choice, and I'd agree with that, but his take on the character was certainly distinctive. Using scripts by Pearson as well as Charlton workhorse Joe Gill, Boyette does his typical full-bodied job.

The adventures are fairly typical stuff for Flash Gordon and his allies. They fight to save themselves from the myriad dangers of Mongo. Old favorites like the Witch Queen show up and new foils are developed for Flash to confront.

Even Ming the Merciless returns to go hand to hand with Flash. Boyette's version of the world is absolutely unique. Boyette was a one-man shop doing pencils, inks and letters for his own comics. This auteur approach to making comics seems at first blush to the assembly-line, knock-'em-out attitudes of the Charlton operation, but actually the hands off attitude of editorial was ideal for a creator like Boyette.

He was satisfied with the low page rates if it meant he could do what he wanted in his approach to comics and that's what he had at Charlton.

But despite the distinctive Boyette approach, or perhaps because of it, Flash Gordon didn't succeed. Unlike its King Features counterpart The Phantom, Flash Gordon didn't find footing in the market and lasted on a few issues with Charlton. It would be some many years before there was a Flash Gordon comic book again and when it happened it was with the folks at Gold Key who had once been part of the Dell operation which had given Flash his break in comics to begin with.

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