Flash Gordon On The Planet Mongo
The Complete Flash Gordon Library, Vol. 1
Hardcover
By Alex Raymond and Don Moore
Introduction by Alex Ross
Titan Books
206 pages
Release Date: September 25, 2012

I grew up reading the comics section of my local newspaper every day and on Sundays I anticipated my parents getting that day’s paper on our doorstep bright and early so I could tear into that brick of smudgy newsprint and pluck the full-color comics supplement from its depressing clutches. Back then I cared little for what was happening in the world because kids didn’t really need to know; we had plenty of time to fret over foreign wars, rigged elections, and skyrocketing gasoline prices when we got older. When I began my decade plus-dalliance with comics it was the funnier strips like Blondie, The Family Circus, Hagar the Horrible, Funky Winkerbean, and of course Beetle Bailey that I favored above all others.

Back then it was not necessarily my choice because the superhero, sci-fi, and adventure strips that my peers from decades before the birth of my own parents thrilled to on a daily basis were all but a distant memory. At least in my city’s newspapers they were. I had to venture to my local public library to check out volumes of the collected comic strip escapades of Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy, a boyhood hero of mine for a short while following the release of the 1990 movie directed by and starring Warren Beatty. Once I entered my teen years and embraced comic books I stopped reading the daily comics section almost completely, with exceptions made for certain rare days when I would be having breakfast and only lacked decent reading material within my grasp.