Flash Gordon Comic Book Archives Volume 1

by Paul Norris, Frank Thorne

Flash Gordon's classic era in comic books returns in a new archival collection from Dark Horse! Join the handsome and fearless Flash, his clever and capable companion Dale Arden, and eccentric scientist Dr. Zarkov as they face peril and danger in the wild landscapes of the planet Mongo and go head-to-head with the villainous despot Ming the Merciless! This archival collection, reprinting seven complete comics originally published from 1947 through 1953, makes a fine addition to any comics library. Ray guns, spaceships, and Silver Age storytelling — it's all here and it's all action!

Genres: Graphic Novels

312 pages, Hardcover

First published August 24, 2010

About the author

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There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name

Paul Leroy Norris was an American comic book artist best known as co-creator of the DC Comics superhero Aquaman,...
(source: Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Little Timmy]

I was a huge Flash Gordon fan as a kid. Reading this collection really took me back to simpler days. Recommended

[Dominick]

The earliest Flash Gordon comic books, collected and reprinted here, in sequence, for the first time, are a pretty pale reflection of the newspaper strip. The first few issues, especially, seem written by someone with no idea how to construct a long story, and who seems to think that a comic book should have rhythms similar to those of a newspaper comic, with some sort of climax or cliff-hanger occurring every few panels. This leads to wearisome patterns of characters doing stupid things (Dale Arden, especially, comes off very badly), schematic reversals of fortune, and so on. The later issues are somewhat better, at least being constructed as coherent thirty or forty page stories, but even they don't rise above mediocrity, either narratively or artistically. Characterization is flat, plots are programatic, concepts are unimaginative (an ice planet called Arctico! Peopled by folk who all have wintry-sounding names! sheesh!). The art is decent but rarely inspired, though some of the later issues include some nice work (notably a space station crashing on Mercury). Overall, though, very disappointing.

[Morbus Iff]

"Flash! ah-ahh! He'll save everyone of us!"