The Sunday Funnies - Flash Gordon 1939-1941!

Flash Gordon is properly remembered as one of the finest adventure comic strips of any era. The story of three desperate people rocketing to an unknown planet hurtling toward Earth to save that Earth is the stuff of legends. But once Flash Gordon, Dale Arden and Professor Hans Zarkov are stranded on the planet Mongo and this planet is safe they must still fight hard land long to free the various peoples of that world from the grip of an evil tyrant Ming the Merciless. It is in the later Sunday pages that the struggle against an evil military force finds it more complete development.

My gripe about these Flash stories which detail Flash's second victory over Ming (albeit as always temporary) is that the episodes themselves seem to take a dang long time to unfold. (Actually now that I reflect on it, the first time Flash came to an accord with Ming when the latter made Flash the king of the cavern territories.) At one point Flash, Dale, Zarkov and their allies are trapped inside a glacier by a dangerous ice worm (an utterly fantastic monster by the way) and spend an enormous time trying to escape. It gets more than a bit monotonous after a time.

Another thing about Flash, and I've alluded to this before, is his tendency to reward with mercy those undeserving of mercy and he ends up getting his faithful allies killed as a result. In actuality Flash is a fine inspirational leader but his tactics often fall short and his skill as pilot must be called into question because I'm not immediately aware of any safe landings. He is always crashing into some snow bank or some overgrown giant forest or such. Flash is a good and noble man and we admire him for those traits but reading his adventures we have to make note of his weaknesses as well. Heck even when Flash, Dale and Zarkov do get back to Earth briefly to confront a new menace there, one remarkably out of the headlines of a nation on the brink of war. As it turns out Flash wrecks the space ship on their return yet again. Some things are a constant.

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