Broken Frontier

You may think you know Flash Gordon but this is a whole new hero for the 21st century.

There has been something of a recent resurgence of classic sci-fi and sci-fi characters and you don’t get much more classic that Alex Raymond’s 1934 creation Flash Gordon. The character has survived and even occasionally thrived with updates and shake-ups and new hooks to try to bring in a new generation of readers. Now writer Brendan Deneen takes a crack at the character…

Flash Gordon is a bit of a jack of all trades – a Yale professor, a star athlete, a daredevil… and a guy who got kicked out of the CIA training academy. It is the latter bit of background that gets him in trouble as fellow CIA classmate, now full-fledged agent, Dale Arden comes to Flash for help. A former friend and fellow scientist Hans Zarkov has gone off the deep end. He’s built a weapon of mass destruction and is threatening to use it! Flash agrees to help find Zarkov but things may not be what they seem and what started as a simple mission may turn out to be the greatest adventure on Earth… or off it…

Only one issue in, it is a little hard to judge Deneen’s take on the characters. He manages to remain true to a lot of the core concepts of the characters even while updating them for modern times. There is a feeling of respect for Raymond’s original work that is greatly appreciated by this reader at least. Flash and Zarkov remain largely the same at the core but there are some aspects of Deneen’s take on Flash that make the character occasionally come off as egotistical and a bit of a jerk. Hopefully, those things will smooth out as the story goes along. Out of all of the characters however, Dale Arden is probably the one who gets the biggest make-over. Originally a stereotypical damsel in distress she has now become a capable, tough fighter and a strong, independent minded woman. There is a bit of a discordant note sounded by the CIA and spy overtones. Hopefully Deneen will eventually tie these into the larger story but for now they remain a little strange – almost feeling a bit tacked on to the original basic plot.

The art, provided by Paul Green is both amazing… and a little off-putting. Green’s figure style goes for exaggeration – barrel chests on top of wasp waists and hair that defies the law of nature – and takes some getting used to. On the other hand, the effects on the page include things like lens flares and light reflections that one expects to see from TV shows. The smooth line work and popping color, combined with the computer effects can easily make one think that you are looking at cel animation stills from an animated TV series. The panel layout, however, is a bit odd and after a while I found it actually distracting to read.

The new Flash Gordon is a bit of a mixed bag. It is well done re-imagining of the classic character that doesn’t throw out the old in favor of the new but still manages to seem very "new". This is, perhaps, one of the best of a recent rash of re-imaginings of classic characters and hopefully things will keep getting better. There is a shortage of classic "rockets and ray guns" type of pulpy sci-fi heroes out there so seeing a new return of a familiar name is more than welcome. Now, if we can just get jetpacks….