It’s a new year so I reckon it is time for a new thread.
My brother got me this book of the original Flash Gordon comics for Christmas.
I was not terribly familiar with Flash prior to this beyond knowing he was a character that existed in the periphery of my mind and that the comic was an early adventure/pulp tale. I hope the below image does some of this work justice because the comics is wild fun.
Flash is a Yale graduate and world renowned polo player–I love that this is all we are given for a biography–who, in the opening page, parachutes out of a plane with a woman (who is later ret-conned to be his love (or maybe she was always his love… the comic is not really big on characters or backstories)), and then abducted by a scientist in a spaceship that the scientist plans to fly at a meteor that is going to crash into the earth. They stop the meteor, crash land on a planet, and things basically never slow down from there. I have read maybe twenty pages and Flash has fought like a dozen dragon-like creatures, numerous men, and taught himself how to fly a spaceship or two.
Extremely casual 1930s racism aside (the villainous emperor of the planet Mongo is described as “yellow” along with his general presentation while the noble, primitive group fighting the empire are all white and celebrate Flash’s whiteness) this has been a fun weird read.