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Flash Gordon by Alex Raymond (Kitchen Sink Press) #3
Flash Gordon - Volume Three 1937-1939: The Tides of Battle
Collects strips 187-290 from August 1, 1937 to July 23, 1939
"Destroy Flash Gordon!" commands Ming the Merciless, Emperor of Mongo, in Alex Raymond's classic color Sunday page. See ho Flash and the freemen of Mongo fight Ming's evil war machine!
"Destroy Flash Gordon!" commands Ming the Merciless, Emperor of Mongo, in Alex Raymond's classic color Sunday page. See ho Flash and the freemen of Mongo fight Ming's evil war machine!
- GenresScience FictionComics
110 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 1992
About the author
Alex Raymond
715 books38 followersAlexander 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 13, 2026
Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon – Volume Three (1937–1939): The Tides of Battle is a stunning reminder of why this strip stands among the foundational works of science-fantasy. At the height of his powers, Raymond blends sweeping adventure, visual elegance, and boundless imagination with an ease that still feels astonishing nearly a century later. Every page carries a sense of grandeur: airborne armadas, alien worlds, and heroic defiance rendered with a classical clarity that modern comics rarely match.
Raymond’s fantasy has the same spirit of wonder found in Verne or Edgar Rice Burroughs—romantic, earnest, and unapologetically epic. The narratives move with serial momentum, yet the artwork invites lingering, rewarding close attention to composition, anatomy, and light. These strips don’t merely tell a story; they define an era of visual storytelling and helped shape everything from later comics to science fiction cinema.
The Tides of Battle is essential reading not only for Flash Gordon fans, but for anyone interested in the roots of imaginative adventure. This volume confirms Raymond as both a master illustrator and a timeless fantasist, whose work continues to inspire awe and admiration.
Raymond’s fantasy has the same spirit of wonder found in Verne or Edgar Rice Burroughs—romantic, earnest, and unapologetically epic. The narratives move with serial momentum, yet the artwork invites lingering, rewarding close attention to composition, anatomy, and light. These strips don’t merely tell a story; they define an era of visual storytelling and helped shape everything from later comics to science fiction cinema.
The Tides of Battle is essential reading not only for Flash Gordon fans, but for anyone interested in the roots of imaginative adventure. This volume confirms Raymond as both a master illustrator and a timeless fantasist, whose work continues to inspire awe and admiration.
May 3, 2018
Fantastically illustrated swashbuckling space opera. Not without some of the perils of this era of comics (yellow terror renditions of Ming the Merciless) but as a historical comics artifact, and as a canvas for Raymond's rich, weird imagination, classic Flash Gordon tales are one of the great springboards for space fantasy.
Curious to read more, particularly of the later volumes where the further reaches of Mongo are explored.
Curious to read more, particularly of the later volumes where the further reaches of Mongo are explored.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews