Flash Gordon proved to be one of the most successful adventure comic strips of any era. But unlike Prince Valiant it quickly fell into other hands after Alex Raymond departed during the war and beyond. The potency of the strip though had already weaken before Raymond's departure.
In this final of four over-sized volumes we get Flash Gordon's last Raymond drawn adventure. After a brief stay on Earth to help defeat an all too familiar foreign enemy, Flash, Dale and Zarkov seems all too ready to jump into a rocket and get back to Mongo. The expressed reason is to get radium to help with the war on Earth but when Flash crashes the rocket (his patented landing technique) that is quickly forgotten as they try to survive in the land of Tropica.
Tropica is ruled by Queen Desira who is quickly deposed by her general Bazor and the next two years are swallowed up by the struggle to put Desira back on the throne, in the name of freedom no less. I've always been struck by how monarchies are the default governmental form in these stories, but that's owing to their fairy tale roots I suspect. Without Ming to tussle against Flash is clearly a hero in need of an antagonist and we get Brazor, a remarkably bland wannabe dictator. The strip becomes nearly pure adventure for a few years with almost no real science fiction elements present save for the random appearance of a peculiar creature or vehicle. Flash owes as much to H. Rider Haggard as to Edgar Rice Burroughs in these final Raymond stories.
Frankly it all gets a bit stale and more than a little bit dull. Flash and Dale seem to have finally moved passed her getting jealous of his every encounter, though shadows of that do surface and the villains and turncoats in the comic are dispatched with as little concern as they are developed. It's all been done before and with more dash and spirit, but eventually Desira is returned, the land of Tropica is happy and our heroic trio head off to new adventures which will alas be more of the same.
I possess the Flash Gordon comic strip adventures in three forms. The first is the amazing Nostalgia Press volumes from the 70's which I still remember seeing ads at the time and lusting after. I got them pretty quickly and enjoyed the stories and tucked them away.
Much more recently I found the Checker Publishing volumes for exceedingly discounted prices and went ahead and picked them up since my Nostalgia Press tomes were showing the wear and tear of age and sometimes indifferent storage due to the hazards of daily life. That series offers up one more Flash Gordon adventure, his trip to Marvela after leaving Tropica. (I note that Flash leaves the rocket in Dale's capable hands and she doesn't crash. Hmm.) In Marvela Flash and Dale match wits with a devilish pair named Lura (beautiful with designs on Flash...check) and Ardo (scientist who makes monsters...check). By the end we earn Lura and Ardo are siblings (shades of the Skywalker twins) and are pawing each other before Flash and Dale can get into the air for more shenanigans in another land.
The drop off in the allure of the strip is quite remarkable, especially comparing it to the rip-roaring wonder of those earliest adventures. Reading it alongside Hal Foster's Prince Valiant it is clear that the quality of the latter is much more refined and much more satisfying over the long stretch. Flash Gordon was printed for many years, and I'm positive some of those adventures are dandy, but once they were glorious and mythic.
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