The Time Trap of Ming XIII

Alex Raymond's Flash Gordon #4

by Alex Raymond, Con Steffanson, Johnny Heller (Narrator)

Fourth in a series of novels adapted from Alex Raymond's original comic strips. This one was written by Ron Goulart, under the pseudonym *Con Steffanson.*
This has to be one of the greatest storylines from the historic comic strip! From centuries in the future, a descendant of Ming the Merciless sends a crew of assassins back through time, to change the course of history by killing Flash Gordon!!

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction

Audio CD

First published January 1, 1974

About the author

Alexander Gillespie Raymond was an American comic strip artist, best known for creating the comic Flash Gordon in 1934. The serial hit the silver screen three years later with Buster Crabbe and Jean Rogers as the leading players. Other strips he drew include Secret Agent X-9, Rip Kirby, Jungle Jim, Tim Tyler's Luck, and Tillie the Toiler. Alex Raymond received a Reuben Award from the National Cartoonists Society in 1949 for his work on Rip Kirby.

Born in New Rochelle, New York, Alex Raymond attended Iona Prep on a scholarship and played on the Gaels' football team. He joined the US Marines Corp in 1944 and served in the Pacific theatre during World War II.

His realistic style and skillful use of "feathering" (a shading technique in which a soft series of parallel lines helps to suggest the contour of an object) has continued to be an inspiration for generations of cartoonists.

Raymond was killed in an automobile accident in Westport, Connecticut while driving with fellow cartoonist Stan Drake, aged 46, and is buried in St. John's Roman Catholic Cemetery in Darien, Connecticut.

During the accident which led to his untimely demise, he was said to have remarked (by the surviving passenger of the accident) on the fact that a pencil on the dashboard seemed to be floating in relation to the plummet of the vehicle.

He was the great-uncle of actors Matt Dillon and Kevin Dillon.

Reviews

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the fourth prose novel featuring Alex Raymond's iconic comic strip character Flash Gordon that Avon published in the 1970s. The first three were written by Ron Goulart under the house pseudonym Con Stefansson, and though this one also appears with the Stefansson moniker it, as well as the last two books in the series, were written by Bruce Cassiday based on Raymond's story and characters. This one was kind of fun, but in many ways is the weakest of the lot. It's a time travel story, as one can obviously see from the title, in which Ming the Merciless #XIII sends his henchmen back in time to eliminate Flash from the time stream. Mixing time travel with space opera rarely works logically or well (Roddenberry notwithstanding), because there are just too many variables and loopholes and paradoxes inherent. This one focuses too much on the henchmen and not enough on Flash, Dale, and Zarkov. Entertaining but not, for me, canon.

[John · Rating 1 out of 5]

Total nonsense from beginning to end, THE TIME TRAP OF MING XIII is as boring as it is stupid. For goodness sake, Flash Gordon barely even shows up in the first dozen chapters (which was as far as I read); instead, we mostly follow around two idiotic henchmen as they time-travel to stop Flash from appearing at a historically pivotal meeting. The sudden onslaught of pathetically lowbrow humor makes me think a new ghostwriter took over the series at this point, though it's always hard to say with comic strip adaptations such as this. Maybe all the book's problems originated with its source material. Either way, THE TIME TRAP OF MING XIII is a steaming pile of dreck.

[Benjamin Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

This entry in the Flash Gordon book series is, once again, adapted from the original comics and put into novel form and published in 1974-75. This is the fourth and last one adapted by Con Steffanson (pen name of Ron Goulart) and unfortunately, falls short of previous efforts.

Here, Ming XIII, a descendant of Ming the Merciless (presumably, Ming I) attempts to use time travel technology to send two-man assassination teams back in time to kill off Flash Gordon and Prince Barin, clearing the way for the Ming dynasty to rule planet Mongo throughout history. I thought the time travel aspects were actually handled rather well considering all of the innate pitfalls of time travel stories in the first place. But the major problem for this book is the nature of the assassination teams. The focus, as one might expect, is on the duo targeting Flash and Dale, allowing them most of the action scenes in the book. This henchmen duo, whose names are Kial and Lari, are just flat-out obnoxious. I think they are meant to be funny in the style of Abbot and Costello or Laurel and Hardy, but they come across merely as idiotic. They weren’t funny, just inept and annoying. Far two many scenes in the book were devoted to their stupid attempts to eliminate Flash, only to get confused when Flash outsmarted them by using their own time-travelling device. The result was almost an easy vacation-adventure for Flash and Dale.

Flash Gordon, like heroes of all stripes needs intelligent and competent bad guys to go up against. Without that, the novel fell flat.

A side plot involving Dr. Zarkov and a spy-organization interacts with the main story at a few points but seemed more like a separate story altogether. It probably would have been better if it had been a stand-alone book and not been forced to merge with this one.

On to the next two books, adapted by “Carson Bingham”, reportedly the pseudonym of Bruce Cassiday.

[Anton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Den här boken är baserad på en serie i en serietidning, och det märks på det enkla och komiska språket. Händelserna i boken snuddar på nästan löjliga ibland, speciellt i hur karaktärerna pratar eller hur de löser problem, men det blir mest bara roligt. Då och då blev jag dock lite imponerad av beskrivningarna och de sci-fi inslag som boken ändå kretsade kring. Slutet kändes lite otillfredsställande och jag hade förväntat mig en större mer dramatisk fight, men boken underhöll mig ändå under hela storyn och var i sin helhet lättsam och rolig. Bra bok 3/5

[Joan Lloyd · Rating 1 out of 5]

I like Flash stories but this one is totally dopey. Don't bother

[Clark Day · Rating 2 out of 5]

The 2 Laurel and Hardy styled henchman ("Who's on first...) threw this one off for me.

[Ronald]

actually read this edition between fall 1974 & spring 1975; author was Con Steffanson