FLASH! Ah-ah! He'll save every one of us!
lol Wednesday is my Friday. No school, no responsibility to anyone but to the comic book pantheon a generous portion of my stipend goes to. After reading Mark Millar and Goran Parlov's brilliant Starlight, I tithed to the gods and prayed that Flash Gordon would not be super campy and put me off the sci-fi comic genre. It did not.
Dale Arden is the new Lois Lane, assertive and sexy at the same time, defamiliarizing long-time fans of Alex Raymond's brainchild from the mental image of her as a shrinking violet in need of frequent rescue. I love Zarkov, willing to go to terrible lengths for science but underscored by a compassion and morality Reed Richards and the other test tube jockeys of comic books could never aspire to. And then there's the titular character, who is a man's man through and through, but in this comic does not act as if he's 100% in control of the situations he encounters. ...For example, there's a tense confrontation after Flash's "airship" is discovered and the trio find themselves surrounded by, well, a bunch of someones (No spoilers, sweetie); Flash's first impulse is machismo, but Dale silences them and takes control of the situation. Exasperated, he follows her lead and has Zarkov do the same. It's great!
The art is fantastic, and shy of Raymond or the late Al Williamson, Evan Shaner's illustrations coupled with Jordie Bellaire's colors give Jeff Parker's story a new dimension. Barin is one of the characters herein, and I have to say that I thought he looked like a blue-skinned Timothy Dalton...but no worries; Flash looks nothing like Sam Jones. In fact, though a cool, re-envisioned costume/uniform is forthcoming, I liked the Xenozoic Tales-ish look of Flash in the first issue.
Published by Dynamite and sporting a reasonable $3.99 cover price (more reasonable if your store of choice has a sweet subscriber discount as mine does), I'm adding this to my pull list, a wonderful compliment to Starlight. The gods have served me well.
-O. from the Isle of Manhattan, 18 April 2014