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Blogging Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon, Part Two – “Monsters of Mongo”

Blogging Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon, Part Two – “Monsters of Mongo”

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200px-blbmonstersofmongo“Monsters of Mongo” was the second installment of Alex Raymond’s FLASH GORDON Sunday comic strip serial for King Features Syndicate. Originally printed between April 15 and November 18, 1934, “Monsters of Mongo” picked up the storyline where the first installment, “Flash Gordon on the Planet Mongo” left off with an unconscious Flash being rescued from Princess Aura by the Lion Men.

Alex Raymond really begins to hit his stride in portraying the diversity of life on Mongo in this second installment. Prince Thun and Dale Arden are prisoners of Ming’s soldiers. Thun’s father, King Jugrid has retaliated by destroying the kingdom of the Shark Men. Ming’s soldiers have, in turn, annihilated much of the Lion Men’s fleet.

monsters-of-mongoJugrid orders Aura’s execution. Flash fights to save her life and the two are rescued by Prince Barin. It is in Barin’s kingdom that Flash is at last reunited with Dr. Zarkov. Flash and Zarkov soon form an alliance with Barin and Aura as the unlikely quartet determine to overthrow Emperor Ming.

Of course, Aura being Ming’s daughter quickly betrays our heroes. The sequence culminates in one of the strip’s iconic images as Barin and Flash power the Electric Mole to burrow their way underground and crash through the floor of Ming’s palace just before he can wed Dale.

The influence of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ AT THE EARTH’S CORE is heavily felt in the Electric Mole sequence, but it is Burroughs’ JOHN CARTER stories that have the greater influence in Raymond’s sophisticated approach in revealing Mongo’s green god, Tao as a hoax.

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Worlds Within Worlds: The First Heroic Fantasy (Part III)

Worlds Within Worlds: The First Heroic Fantasy (Part III)

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William MorrisThis is the third in a series of posts looking at the question of who wrote the first otherworld fantasy: that is, the first fantasy to be set entirely in its own fictional world, with no connection to conventional reality at all. It’s an innovation traditionally ascribed to William Morris, but I think I’ve found an earlier writer who deserves that honor.

In the first post, I considered how to identify a fictional otherworld. I suggested four characteristics, of which a story’s fictional world needed to have at least three to be a true otherworld: its own logic (which might involve, say, the existence of magic), characters who we identified as residents of another world than our own, a coherent history, and a coherent fictional geography. In the second post, I considered ways in which older fantasies were linked to reality — by being set in the past, or in a place beyond contemporary knowledge, or being established as a dream, or as a story within a story, or as a myth. I concluded by discussing what I felt was significant about the idea of otherworld fantasy.

Before going on to present my suggestion for the writer of the first otherworld fantasy, though, I’d like to take a closer look at some past fantasies I thought came very close to presenting self-contained otherworlds. These are works which I don’t think are true otherworld fantasies, but which other people might choose to see as such.

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Dare We Dream? – The Sandman Coming to Television?

Dare We Dream? – The Sandman Coming to Television?

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morpheusMany of my contemporaries believed that one of the most amazing comic book series ever was Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman, which ran from 1989 through 1996 – formative teenage years for me and my peers – originally by DC Comics and (from issue #47) under their Vertigo imprint. Now it looks like The Sandman has been re-optioned for consideration as a television series. Though the series creator isn’t associated with the show, there’s still reason to be hopeful.

A Current Dearth of Viewing Pleasures

The last few years haven’t been great for science fiction and fantasy on television. Heroes started out great, but quickly collapsed for a variety of reasons. The quirky series Pushing Daisies – about a man who could re-animate dead people for 60 seconds – never quite found its audience, despite critical acclaim. Legend of the Seeker was pushing out some impressive storylines toward the end, but was ultimately canceled with its season 2 finale.

Among harder science fiction, great concept shows like Dollhouse and FlashForward suffered from some awkward initial storytelling and were ultimately cancelled, while the lackluster V will return for a second season.

In fact, going into this season there isn’t much in the way of science fiction or fantasy on television.

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Die Hard With Avatars: A review of Surrogates

Die Hard With Avatars: A review of Surrogates

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surrogates-dvdEarly on in this film we see Bruce Willis with hair and looking young, and not Die-Hard bashed up, and we wonder absently if this time he’ll actually finish the film as scar-free as he began it. The Willis we begin with is quickly established as a ‘surrogate,’ the robot avatar of the real Willis character, Tom Greer, and it doesn’t take long for both Greer and his surrogate to get bashed up in familiar form.

The problem for the inhabitants of near-future Boston — as well as of the rest of the world — is that mind-boggling economies of production have resulted in custom made, universally affordable, avatars brought to market for just about anyone who wants one, and now real people are vegetating alone in their homes while vicariously carrying on social interaction with each other through their surrogates.

The two inventors have had a falling out as to how much of a good thing surrogates really are. The ousted partner, Lionel Canter (James Cromwell) has decided they are robbing humankind of their humanity and has taken steps to sink the business.

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Blogging Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon – Part One: “Flash Gordon on the Planet Mongo”

Blogging Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon – Part One: “Flash Gordon on the Planet Mongo”

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Alex Raymond created Flash Gordon for King Features Syndicate to compete with the successful science fiction strip, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. Raymond’s creation was decidedly more space fantasy than science fiction, combining elements borrowed from Edgar Rice Burroughs, Sax Rohmer, Alexandre Dumas, and Anthony Hope to great effect. Flash Gordon debuted January 7, 1934 with the strip, “Flash Gordon on the Planet Mongo” which would be serialized each Sunday through April 15, 1934.

fg-blb-1The strip kicked off with an exciting documentary-style depiction of an unforeseen catastrophe assailing our world. An unknown planet mysteriously appears in our solar system and is hurtling rapidly toward Earth. Destruction seems unavoidable. We are quickly introduced to a scientist, Dr. Hans Zarkov who is rapidly completing a rocket ship which he plans to man on a suicide mission to try and divert the oncoming planet from Earth’s trajectory.

“Flash” Gordon is a Yale-educated world-renowned polo player (I’m sure we can all name a handful of world-renowned polo players). He and a young woman named Dale Arden are the only known survivors of a plane struck down by a meteor heralding from the approaching planet. Flash and Dale parachute just outside of Dr. Zarkov’s observatory. Paranoid from overwork, Zarkov pulls a gun on the startled plane crash survivors and forces them to accompany him on his suicide mission to space. The first installment ends with Zarkov’s rocket ship on a collision course with the rapidly hurtling planet.

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Goth Chick News: Best In Show; The Chicago Comic Con

Goth Chick News: Best In Show; The Chicago Comic Con

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wizardworldHave you ever woken up in an extremely good mood, found you were left enough hot water for a skin-peeling shower, stepped on the scale and found it down two pounds in spite of the bacchanalia of the night before? Have you ever leapt out of bed feeling euphoric and thought, “I really love my life?”

For me, the sun rose over the Chicago skyline last Saturday and found me gleefully clutching my press pass to the Chicago Comic Con.

It was about to be one of those days.

Last weekend, Wizard World made the Chicago stop on its nationwide tour, bring pop culture, comic books, toys and general weirdness to the Windy City. I brought my good friend and photographer Mr. Disney along, not only to help capture every precious moment on film, but to assist in with the non-stop stream of snarky commentary that was unavoidable at an event such as this.

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Goth Chick News: My Inner Geek’s Night Out

Goth Chick News: My Inner Geek’s Night Out

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interviewHas anyone ever asked what you would grab out of your house if it was on fire and you could only make one trip? Or maybe the question was, if you knew you were going to be stranded on a deserted island, what would you take with you?

If it comes up in conversation and it’s focused on food, that one’s easy.

Pez.

However, when it comes to actual items, the answer becomes a bit more complicated and largely depends on who is asking. If it comes up at a family gathering, I usually can say “my photo albums” with a straight face. But as I’m among friends here, allow me to lay out the real list (in no particular order):

  • My complete set of 1 – 12 Interview With a Vampire comics, with issue number one signed by Anne Rice
  • An unopened Monty Python and the Holy Grail collectible card game.
  • My Black Adder DVD collection
  • The set of Universal Studios movie monsters Pez dispenser set (got to have something to eat the Pez out of)

Having read this list it should come as no surprise at all that I’m counting the days to the Chicago Comic Con this weekend. Yes, this is the Chicago version of the biggie in California, but the line up is still good.

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Superman Saves Couple From Foreclosure

Superman Saves Couple From Foreclosure

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action-1ABC News is reporting that an American couple in the South, who have asked to remain anonymous, discovered a copy of Action #1 while clearing out their home in preparation for a foreclosure sale. 

It’s not clear if the couple immediately knew what that had.  They did have the presence of mind to contact an expert, Stephen Fishler, who brokered the record-breaking $1.5 million sale of a copy in March of this year.

Action #1, featuring the first appearance of Superman, is perhaps the most valuable comic in existence, and certainly one of the rarest. It appeared in June 1938, and while millions of copies were printed, only a handful are known to still exist in good condition.

The comic was part of a stash of old magazines and old comics the couple found as they were searching for boxes in the basement and preparing to move. Although Fishler reports he was initially dubious, he quickly became convinced when the couple texted him a photo.  He took the comic to the San Diego Comic-con in July for a valuation.

The comic was appraised at “Very Good” (5/10 on the strict comic grading scale), which is exceptionally high for a 72 year-old comic.  It is expected to net $250,000 or more when it goes up for auction through ComicConnect on August 27th.

As for the couple, ABC News reports that Fishler had to make a series of calls to the bank to convince them to hold off on the foreclosure while the auction goes forward.

Reports that a house down the street that discovered two dozen copies of Youngblood #1 in the basement was immediately bulldozed, have not yet been confirmed.

The Pre-Raphaelite Barbarian

The Pre-Raphaelite Barbarian

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The first thing you notice about Barry Windsor-Smith’s Conan comics is their beauty.

Starting in 1970, Smith drew almost two dozen of the first issues of Marvel Comics’ translation of Conan into a monthly color comic book, and added a few more stories in the oversized black-and-white companion magazine Savage Tales. Scripts for those stories, often direct adaptations of Robert E. Howard tales, were by Marvel veteran Roy Thomas, but Smith has stated that he had a prominent role in the plotting of the comics, sometimes even providing dialogue.

barry-conanSmith’s work has an elegance and power to it unusual in comics, then or now. His line-work is detailed, expressive, and precise: the right marks in the right places. Compositionally, his work is always clear, always energetic.

And it’s alive, because his characters are alive; they move through three-dimensional space, they have realistic body language — more than that, their forms express what they feel and think.

Perhaps above all, Windsor-Smith’s design — of clothes, swords, balustrades, towers, armour, even ships and stone walls — is constantly inventive, deriving from the organic forms of art nouveau and the near-hallucinatory realism of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

This has the crucial effect of building a world for Conan and his adventures, a setting with texture and, implictly, a history. We see the shining kingdoms and the jeweled thrones about to be trodden under sandalled feet, and we believe in them.

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Bram Stoker’s Dracula in Comics, Part One – The Novel Adaptations

Bram Stoker’s Dracula in Comics, Part One – The Novel Adaptations

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compdracWhile Bram Stoker’s infamous vampire count has been prevalent in comic books whenever the prevailing bluenoses of each generation have deigned to allow horror books to be printed, there have been surprisingly few attempts to faithfully adapt the classic novel in comic book form.

Classics Illustrated tackled the book shortly before Dr. Frederick Wertham got his dirty little hands on the comic business and did his best to keep the children of the world safe from twisted people just like himself. The Classics Illustrated adaptation was professionally produced, if somewhat anemic.

Marvel Comics would later reprint it in the 1970s with new cover art to make it appear consistent with Gene Colan’s magnificent portrayal of the character for Marvel’s long-running Tomb of Dracula title. Happily, a superior adaptation was brewing in Marvel’s companion magazine, Dracula Lives.

Roy Thomas and Dick Giordano teamed up to provide a faithful, elegant, and leisurely-paced adaptation of the Stoker novel as an ongoing feature in the black & white comic magazine.

Unfortunately, sales were not on their side and the title was cancelled. The one unpublished chapter they had completed turned up in the pages of another magazine title, Legion of Monsters, before it too was cancelled. Their masterful adaptation was left incomplete for nearly thirty years.

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