Flash Gordon and Epitaphs from the Abyss

Two venerable franchises were resurrected in comics in July: Flash Gordon and EC Comics. Here's what I thought of both. 

Flash Gordon #1 begins after the credits have rolled on most Flash stories. Mongo has been destroyed and Ming has been defeated. But instead of celebration and jubilation, the title character wakes up on a prison planet with robots for jailers. Judging by the length of his golden tresses, which make him look more like Robinson Crusoe (or maybe Oliver Quinn) than the clean-cut Gordon of old, Flash has been incarcerated here for some time.  

A flashback reminds our hero of his last battle with Ming, where he tried to stop the interstellar despot from bringing his latest scheme—an "unraveller" machine with the power to destroy planets—to fruition. Along the way, it appears the hero won the battle but lost the war. Later revelations, courtesy of a fellow prisoner, set up a situation much different from the typical Flash Gordon scenario. 

Still, writer Jeremy Adams and artist Will Conrad hit familiar beats—Flash's indefatigable confidence, Ming's irredeemable villainy, ray-gun battles (with sentient dinosaurs, no less), and hairbreadth escapes against impossible odds. It all goes down smoothly, with the previously mentioned uncertainties about Flash's overall situation adding a layer of novelty. 

The issue comes with a QR Code to download the #0 issue, which I read only after this first issue. I'm glad I read them out of order, frankly, as the unique in medias res mystery of the premiere issue is all but destroyed by the freebie. I prefer how the unraveller plot, well, unravels in the first issue, presented as a series of fragmented memories for Flash. I wonder how many readers of the zero issue found a well-told but conventional Flash Gordon story and decided to pass on the regular series, only to miss what was a more original narrative there? 

One of the problems with this current iteration of Flash, which applies to all versions of the character since his comic-strip debut in 1934, is that he is a one-story hero who must be locked in endless battles with Ming the Merciless to be interesting. Once that battle is over (or at least as over as any conflict in comics can ever be), no version of Flash I've read has made him interesting in other stories. The old adage that a hero is only as good as the villain is seldom as true as it is with Flash Gordon. 

It remains to be seen, then, if the current team can continue to differentiate Flash Gordon and his world enough to draw and maintain a steady audience with so many other choices to scratch the space-opera itch. 

Still, Conrad's art is stunning, as befits the property's long and storied list of illustrators, Alex Raymond and Al Williamson among them. And Adams's first issue story is intriguing enough to make readers hope he can walk the tightrope between giving readers what they've come to expect from the ninety-year-old character and still finding a way to make it all seem new. 

Flash Gordon #1 is published by Mad Cave Studios, written by Jeremy Adams, drawn by Will Conrad, colored by Lee Loughridge, and lettered by Taylor Esposito.  

Al Williamson is the connective tissue between these two reviews. The renowned artist of Flash Gordon did seminal work for EC Comics in the 1950s, along with a murder's row of phenomenal creators. 

Born in the late '60s, I learned of the company through a few reprints in the 1970s and constant references to Tales from the Crypt, Weird Science, Crime SuspenStories, and the rest by comics fans and professionals over the years. The Gladstone reprints in the 1990s showed up when I had enough discretionary income to buy them all. Hunter Gorinson, president and publisher of Oni-Lion Forge Publishing Group, current holders of the EC license, also discovered EC via the Gladstone reprints, according to a text piece in the back of Epitaphs from the Abyss, the debut issue in the company's revival of EC. 

Epitaphs is an earnest, although uneven, start. The premise here, Gorinson explains, is to create the kinds of stories EC would be publishing today if the line hadn't been the victim of censorship in the mid-1950s. The results, at least based on this first issue, are stories that wade as deeply into social problems as the old ECs did into blood and guts. 

"Killer Spec," written by J. Holtham, drawn by Jorge Fornés, and colored by Dan Jackson, is a familiar tale of an untalented hack who nonetheless believes he will write the next genius screenplay ... if only he weren't surrounded by idiots who fail to recognize his brilliance. When his roommate writes a brilliant spec script almost as an afterthought ... well, this is an EC story, after all. 

"Senator, Senator," written by Chris Condon, drawn by Peter Krause, and colored by Michelle Madsen, is the most overtly political of the four stories in the book. The story takes a horror-tinged look at politicians who abandon long-held stances in election years and speculates why this might be. The story has an X-Files vibe, especially in a late-night scene outside the Capitol where zombie-like elected officials roam. 

"Family Values," written by Stephanie Phillips, drawn by Phil Hester, inked by Travis Hymel, and colored by Marissa Louise, is the most disturbing story, which makes it the winner, right? If intruders broke into your house and forced you to choose between killing yourself or a member of your family, which choice would you make? Like the Saw movies, the story explores how stressful outliers can force people to clarify their values. Or not. 

Finally, "Us vs. Us," written by Brian Azzarello, drawn by Vlad Legostaev, and colored by Brittany Peer, is the story that leans into the old EC vibe of body horror the most. Unfortunately, the story is horribly confusing, with a vax vs. anti-vax controversy making it feel more dated than almost anything in the original ECs. 

Overall, the book gave me more of a House of Mystery vibe than anything from Tales from the Crypt. Nothing wrong with that, since the former was DC Comics' long-lived imitator of EC that stretched across many of the decades that Gorinson speculates about in his hypothetical "EC never died" universe. 

It's important to remember that even EC didn't become EC overnight, that some of the earlier issues showed creators struggling with the format and delivering a few clunkers along with the gems. If readers come to Epitaphs with this mindset, they may be more forgiving of a book that fails to encapsulate the best of the venerable company right out of the gate. 

Like the Flash Gordon title, I'm willing to give Oni-Lion Forge time to find its voice with this title and the upcoming Cruel Universe, which attempts to recapture the glory of EC's science fiction offerings.