NO FLASH IN THE PAN
A brief voyage through Flash Gordon’s most famous (and infamous) adventures
THE ORIGINAL strip
(1934)
Pre-dating Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, Flash Gordon made his newspaper strip debut in January 1934. With Buck Rogers already a big hit, King Features owner William Randolph Hearst (the real-life inspiration for Citizen Kane) wanted his own piece of the outer-space action. He initially tried to nab the rights to Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter Of Mars, but when that bid failed, he turned to 22-year-old artist Alex Raymond – who created a polo player and Yale graduate by the name of Flash Gordon…
THE MOVIE SERIALS
(1936-1940)
Hollywood leaping on hot comic-book characters is not a recent phenomenon. With the Flash Gordon comic strip a smash hit in depression-hit America, Universal Pictures took Flash, Ming, Dale Arden and Dr Zarkov to the big screen in a successful weekly serial, hitting on a highly addictive mix of swashbuckling adventure and cliffhanger endings. Former Olympic swimmer Buster Crabbe – who also portrayed Tarzan and Buck Rogers – played Flash across three influential serials that were still being repeated on TV as recently as the ’80s.
FLESH GORDON
(1974)
Flash’s adventures get spoofed and eroticised in this randy piece of ’70s space opera. Based on the 1930s serials, it’s most notable for reinventing Dr Zarkov as Dr Flexi Jerkoff and Ming as Emperor Wang the Perverted, pointing his sex rays at planet Earth – yep, it’s that shameless. In the plus column, Flesh Gordon does boast an early credit for future make-up effects legend Rick Baker.
DEFENDERS OF THE EARTH
(1986)
There’s been a pair of other solo Flash cartoons, but this Avengers-like team-up of King Features Syndicate heroes is arguably the most famous. With Ming now relocated to Earth’s north pole, Gordon joins forces with eco-warrior the Phantom, Mandrake the Magician and the super-strong Lothar to thwart him. The storytelling is mercilessly bad but the theme tune (with lyrics by Stan Lee) is an absolute banger.
THE TV SERIES
(2007-2008)
Ditching Ming’s culturally insensitive Fu Manchu stylings is pretty much the only positive to come out of this short-lived TV take on Flash. Made by the Sci-Fi Channel before it became Syfy, it’s a triple threat of terrible script, lousy acting and mediocre execution, set on a low-budget Mongo that looks a lot like a planet from Stargate (yep, a Canadian forest). In fact, this esteemed publication described one early instalment as “possibly the worst episode of anything ever”.