Als Comic..!
Faithfully adapted by Bruce Jones and supported by amazing art by award-winning Al Williamson, the Flash Gordon comic of the movie would appear in various guises all over the world. Arguably most common Stateside was the softcover album by Western Publishing on newsstands as the film hit theatres – Hardcovers were to follow as the release travelled across the pond to the UK and beyond. The adaptation would last be seen across three issues of the Whitman comic book…
While most of these publications would feature a cluttered cover of movie stills combined with splash panels, the German release (above) utilised the poster artwork by Renato Casaro to much greater effect. Beneath it lay a black & white filmreel of stills to introduce the characters before launching into the standard reprint. The quality of these could never be described as more than adequate (with many pages misprinted to the point of illegibility) but the artwork still shines. Williamson would later say about drawing Flash –
“I was paying homage to Alex [Raymond], you know. I tried to treat his creation with respect and dignity and tried to do it to the best of my ability. I find that other artists who have done Flash Gordon just don’t seem to get the feeling of the strip, you know. Flash is a noble guy and it’s kind of nice to have that kind of a hero…”
