In many ways the story of Flash Gordon starts with the August 1928 issue of Amazing Stories, which included a novella by Phillip Francis Nowlan titled Armageddon 2419 A.D.. The March 1929 issue of the same magazine included Nowlan’s sequel, The Airlords of Han. The stories caught the attention of many readers, including the head of National Newspaper Syndicate John F. Dille. He contacted Nowlan and negotiated a deal to turn the science fiction stories into comic strips. Illustrator Dick Calkins was brought aboard and the first strip appeared in papers on January 7, 1929. It was a runaway success and the strip’s hero, Buck Rogers, became a household name. 

King Features Syndicate, wanting a science fiction feature of their own, negotiated with Edgar Rice Burroughs for the rights to his John Carter character after United Features (the syndicator of Burroughs’ Tarzan comics) failed to secure the license. Unfortunately, a deal could not be struck (although United Features would eventually produce a  comic strip of John Carter’s Martian adventures from 1941 to 1943). King Features did not give up on the idea of a science fiction yarn if their own, though. Tapping staff artist Alex Raymond, who had been working on Dashiell Hammett’s Secret Agent X-9 strip, to create an original character. 

On January 7, 1934 Raymond unveiled the Flash Gordon Sunday strip. Earth was under threat from a planet on a collision course called Mongo. Brilliant, but possibly insane, scientist Dr. Zarkov constructed a rocket to travel to the rogue planet. Basically kidnapping Flash and a young woman named Dale Arden, the trio blast off for Mongo. The strip was a huge hit.

Flash Gordon, the comic strip, would run every Sunday until 2003. It was joined by a daily strip which first ran from 1940 to 1944 and then again from 1951 until 1992. Just as Flash Gordon could not be held down by Earth’s gravity he could not be constrained by newsprint. 

On April 22, 1935, barely a year after the newspaper strip debut, The Interplanetary Adventures of Flash Gordon hit the airwaves. For 26 episodes the radio show more or less followed Flash’s Sunday newspaper strip adventures. The radio show ended, though, with Flash and Dale returning to Earth and getting married. Landing in the jungle they met another Alex Raymond newspaper strip character, “Jungle” Jim Bradley who took over the weekly time slot of the Flash Gordon radio show. Just two days later, though, Flash, Dale and Dr. Zarkov returned to the radio in a new four day a week serial called The Further Interplanetary Adventures of Flash Gordon which ran until 1936.

1936 also saw Mongo come to the silver screen when Flash Gordon, the movie serial, premiered on April 6. The United Pictures serial ran 13 weeks and starred Olympic swimmer Buster Crabbe in the title role. The gold medalist had transitioned to acting after retiring from competition and had already starred the serial Tarzan the Fearless. Charles B. Middleton portrayed Mongo’s evil ruler Ming the Merciless, Jean Rogers played a blonde Dale Arden, Frank Shannon was a toned down Dr. Zarkov and Priscilla Lawson brought Princess Aura, Ming’s daughter and Dale’s rival for Flash, to life. The serial did its best to capture the exotic trappings of comic strip. The special effects were admirable for the time, ranging from miniatures to create rockets and rocket battles to overlays of real lizards fighting to portray dinosaur-like monsters. The exotic dress of Mongo proved to be a little bit more of an issue, though, as Hollywood legend is several scenes of the first couple installments had to be re-shot with the voluptuous Priscilla Lawson donning more modest costumes!

In 1938, Buster Crabbe, Jean Rogers, Frank Shannon and Charles B. Middleton all returned for a second serial, Flask Gordon’s Trip to Mars. Spoiler alert: Flash and company trace a ray beam threatening Earth to Mars where they find Ming has allied with Azura, Witch Queen of Mars (Beatrice Roberts). The thrills stretched through 15 weekly episodes and was popular enough to lead to a third serial, 1940’s Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe. This 12 episode adventure reunited the familiar cast except for Jean Rogers, who had apparently grown to dread another turn as Dale Arden so Carol Hughes took over the role. All three serials in the Flash Gordon series would see second lives after first being re-edited into movie adventures and eventually re-purposed as television series. It is worth noting Buster Crabbe also starred as the title character in the 1939 Universal movie serial Buck Rogers. Not only did Buck borrow Buster Crabbe, it used some sets and props from the Flash Gordon serials!

Television, as previously mentioned, gave new life to the Flash Gordon serials but also spawned several original Flash Gordon television series. Steve Holland was the first live action Flash for Dumont’s Flash Gordon, a 1954 series which transported Flash and company to the year 3203 AD where the good guys work as agents for the Galactic Bureau of Investigation. It also transported the cast to Europe as most of the series was shot in West Berlin (so most aliens have a distinct German accent) although the final episodes were filmed in France. The show only lasted a single season. It has slipped into public domain (as most of DuMont’s shows have) and 26 episodes are known to exist. Steve Holland, by the way, was the model for the Fawcett Comics cowboy character Bob Colt. He also was the model for several paperback covers in the Doc Savage, The Avenger and Mack Bolan series. After the DuMont series Flash would not return to TV with original episodes until the late 1970s.

Flash did not entirely disappear, though. Buster Crabbe returned to the role of Flash Gordon briefly in 1966 for a record album titled The Official Adventures of Flash Gordon which had a new audio play on each side. The comic strip was still running every Sunday in newspapers across the country (and in paperback collections) and the serials (in their original form or in their movie feature re-edits) played Saturday afternoon and late night TV. In 1973 Avon brought Flash and friends to print with a new novel series. It had been tried before, first in Big Little Books which printed 15 books featuring Flash Gordon between 1934 and 1948, but these were children’s books. There had been an attempt to launch a pulp magazine in late 1936, but only one issue was ever released. Grosset and Dunlap published Flash Gordon in the Caverns of Mongo, the first Flash Gordon novel, the same year although it failed to launch a series. Riding a wave of sword and planet nostalgia, Avon found success. They released six titles (Lion Men of Mongo, Plague of Sound, Space Circus, Time Trap of Ming XIII, Witch Queen of Mongo and War of the Cybernauts) which, like In the Caverns of Mongo, were all credited to Alex Raymond for the stories with Con Steffanson or Carson Bingham co-writing. Ron Goulart actually wrote the first three books and Bruce Cassiday penned the final three. All six Avon novels were released as audio books in 2019.

In 1979 Flash Gordon returned to television in a self titled animated series from Filmation. Running from September 22, 1979 through November 6, 1982, the Saturday morning cartoon captured the look of the comic strips with more monsters and spaceships than any of the previous live action efforts could muster. Towards the end of the run NBC ran a Filmation animated movie in prime time called Flash Gordon: The Greatest Adventure of All, which saw Ming the Merciless supplying weapons to the Nazis in World War II. Filmation would bring Flash back as part of the 1986 animated series Defenders of the Earth along with his son, Rick, and King Features’ other popular newstrip characters the Phantom and Mandrake the Magician.

1980 saw Sam J. Jones star as Flash with Melody Anderson as Dale in Flash Gordon. Remembered for its soundtrack, by Queen, and a campy, colorful, cartoony style, Flash Gordon actually was a strong effort to recreate the exotic look and locales of the comic strips along with the excitement of the movie serials. The cast included Max von Sydow as Ming, Topol as Zarkov Brian Blessed as king of bird men and future James Bond Timothy Dalton as the Robin Hood-like Prince Barin. There was also a movie novelization by Arthur Byron Cover.

Tempo books started a new series of novels in 1980 which was not related to the film and only nominally related to newspaper comic strips. Still, they managed six titles in their series (Massacre in the 22nd Century, War of the Citadels, Crisis on Citadel II, Forces from the Federation, Citadels Under Attack and Citadels on Earth) all written by David Hagberg. There were a video game or two and a role playing game in the 1980s but after Defenders of the Earth Flash faded away for a while. In September of 1996 a new animated Flash Gordon hit syndication. In this version Flash and Dale were hoverboard riding teen-aged children of astronauts accidentally transported to Mongo. A decade later Flash and Dale, played by Eric Johnson and Gina Holden, returned to live action TV in a SyFy series which ran for a season.

There has been talk of a new Flash Gordon project in development for several years. Twentieth Century Fox currently holds the rights and What We Do In Shadows’ Taika Waititi as been attached at times to rumors of a new live action film. Mad Cave Comics is currently producing a Flash Gordon comic book and King Features offers both classic comic strips and a new strip to newspapers and through the Comics Kingdom website so, to quote Brian Blessed’s Prince Vultan, Gordon’s alive. Although there is nothing firm to report it is safe to bet there will be more Flash Gordon projects before the character turns 100.