Flash Gordon: Dailies, Vol. 2

by Austin Briggs

Briggs, Austin

112 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1993

About the author

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Reviews

[Robert Garrett · Rating 3 out of 5]

FLASH GORDON began as a Sunday-only strip in 1934. In 1940, a daily strip was added. As famed Flash Gordon artist Alex Raymond continued to draw the Sunday strips, Austin Briggs provided art for the dailies. This volume and the previous one reprint the earliest daily strips – from May 27, 1940 to August 21, 1941 (The covers say “1940-1942,” but that is incorrect.).

These early daily strips are in an entirely different continuity from the Sunday strips. Flash, Dale and Zarkov are here, as is Ming the Merciless, and they’re the same characters acting in the same manner, but the Sunday strips leave no “room” for the daily adventures to have happened. I suspect that this sort of thing would bother modern readers more than it bothered contemporary ones.

Raymond’s Sundays get more attention, but there are good things to be said for these daily strips, as well. I found them to be more briskly paced than the Sundays, and Briggs is a good artist in his own right. On the minus side, the smaller uniform panels don’t showcase the art nearly as well.

As with the Sunday strips, some odd and/or outdated moments occur. In one storyline, Flash and a group of followers set out across the ocean and discover a new land. Here, they encounter aborigines who dress and act like stereotypical Native Americans (Flash calls them “white Indians” at one point.). These “Indians” wage war against Flash and his settlers. Captions frequently refer to the “Indians” as “savages,” while it is stressed that Flash and his followers “only want peace.” In one oddball sequence, the “Indian” princess falls for Flash, angering a potential suitor. Flash solves the problem in an ethically questionable manner by giving the princess a love potion, thus causing her to fall for the potential suitor and forget Flash.

There’s no question about it: these strips are a product of their time. I am a history buff, though, so to me, those outdated elements do hold an odd fascination.

[Michael P. · Rating 1 out of 5]

Oh, what a let down. All the story cliches that made the Alex Raymond years so bad are still in place, but, if anything, the characters all less mature than before. The cliches are bad enough, but when adult characters behave like eight year olds, you have a disaster. These stories are terrible.