ALEX RAYMOND'S FLASH GORDON: Vol. 1

This mammoth volume, the first of three, chronicles the newspaper adventures of Flash Gordon from the character's inception in 1934. Flash, of course, rose to fame in the movies, but his origins are these lavish drawings by adventure illustrator Raymond for the newspaper comic strip. Most, if not all, of this material has been seen before, and this edition adds little to the mix. The stories are swashbuckling adventures of Flash, "Yale graduate and world-renowned Polo player," and the lovely Dale Arden, who become stranded on the planet Mongo, a fierce place ruled with an iron fist by Ming the Merciless. Their pulpy adventures went on for years, and Raymond's line work becoming progressively more baroque and overdone. The editors at Checker have made some odd choices for this book, e.g., surrounding panels from the strip in a sea of black ink and rearranging panels from the original strips, reproducing the art at a tiny size, which doesn't do justice to Raymond's lush renderings and stylized fantasy. The reproduction quality is fairly rough as well: panels and colors are frequently muddy and blurry. Readers will hope for better quality in future volumes. (Nov.)