News-Record.com

A science fiction hero from a time before Science Fiction was a term. Your grandfather's boyhood hero.

Flash has been through a staggering number of redesigns, relaunches and regurgitations over the years. But essentially he's a brave, athletic young American man who travels into space to prevent the weird asteroid planet called Mongo from crashing into the earth. Accompanied by the strange Doctor Zarkov and the beautiful Dale Arden Flash ends up stranded on Mongo and pursued by its evil ruler, Ming the Merciless.

Who is, by the way, one of the coolest looking villains ever and an inspiration for both Darth Vader and The Emperor from the Star Wars films:

The cool thing about the Flash Gordon story, in most of its iterations at least, is that none of the characters are terribly interesting on their own. They're just archetypes. The star of the property is really the planet Mongo itself -- its weird oceans, its dangerous jungles, its strange creatures, warring tribes, army of Hawkmen and underground ice lands. It's really one of the first and best space operas.

Flash began as a comic strip hero, became a radio star, moved to the movies, became a cartoon character, returned to the movies for a 1980 cheese fest that was so bad it was good (and gave us the theme song, by Queen), was relaunched in the comic books, became a soft core porn parody, was briefly reborn as a teenage cartoon star and is now coming to cable.

The new series debuts August 10 -- but they sent a DVD of the pilot episode to the office. I'm going to watch it tonight, as soon as I get out of here and will let you know if Dale is still beautiful, Ming is still Merciless and Mango is still maddening.

In the meantime, check out this 1960s cartoon version which, I swear to you, sticks pretty close to the original newspaper strips and isn't just an animated acid trip:

Flash Gordon: "A Planet in Peril" part 1

Flash Gordon: "A Planet in Peril" part 2

Flash Gordon: "A Planet in Peril" part 3