Mongo's Lost Continent

Not to take anything away from Flash Gordon as a hero--because he's a kick-butt hero--but the man simply could not settle on a single comic book company to recount his adventures.

King Comics, an offshoot of the syndicate that distributed the comic strip, started its own comic book line in 1966, offering (among others) a Flash Gordon comic book. This was actually quite excellent, featuring the work of artists such as Al Williamson and Reed Crandall and giving us some pretty strong stories.

This lasted 11 issues. Then Charlton comics took over the character, keeping the same numbering in a series that ran through issue #19. Gold Key picked it up--once again keeping the same numbering--and kept it going through issue #37.

The best of these runs probably is the King Comics, simply because of the quality of the art and writing. Flash Gordon #4 (March 1967), for instance, was written by Archie Goodwin and drawn by Al Williamson.

There's a 13-page story titled "Lost Continent of Mongo," in which Flash, Dr. Zarkov and Dale decide to explore... well, Mongo's Lost Continent. Once there, they enter a thick fog and clip a wing of their ship on a building in a ruined city.

They are forced to crash land, at which point Dale is kidnapped by someone. Why Flash is surprised by this is beyond me. That woman is always getting kidnapped.

Zarkov is captured by soldiers soon after. Ming the Merciless turns out to be behind all this. When Zarkov is brought before him, he conveniently explains his latest evil scheme.

This is, of course, necessary in order to fit the story into 13 pages, but to be fair, egotistical rants are an established part of Ming's character, which helps tone down (if not completely eliminate) a sense of contrivance.

His plan, by the way, is to use a thought machine to generate a massive army of illusory soldiers, who seem so real that their weapons can really kill. As Flash puts it later in the story, those hit by the weapons of the make-believe soldiers are literally frightened to death.

I wonder if Goodwin or Williamson was deliberately lifting this idea from Edgar Rice Burroughs' novel Thuvia, Maid of Mars?

Flash is captured by a local tribe of barbarians who ride gigantic birds. By out-wrestling their chief, he becomes the leader and immediately leads them on an attack against Ming. This doesn't end well for his new allies--they are massacred by a barrage of make-believe arrows.

Flash seems to fall before the arrows as well, but he has realized the weapons were illusions and was thus unhurt by them. Faking his death allows him to get close enough to Ming to attack the villain. Zarkov, in the meantime, has wrested a raygun away from a guard and blasted the thought machine.

The story ends with Flash defeating Ming in a sword fight and Ming apparently committing suicide by throwing himself into a radiation pit. I have a feeling that its pretty foolish of the good guys to assume Ming is dead. He's been "dead" before, hasn't he?

Williamson may have been the best artist this side of Alex Raymond to work on Flash Gordon and the story looks fantastic. Goodwin's script is also good, though the need to fit it into 13 pages does show in a few overly rushed moments.

There's a five page "Secret Agent X-9" story (also by Goodwin and Williamson), then we jump back to Mongo for the 10-page "The Sentries of Dark Mountain." In this one, the heroes are marching across the Lost Continent, hoping to get home. They are attacked by a pterodactyl-like monster, which injures Dale (who at least doesn't get kidnapped this time). Flash zaps the monster, which turns out to be a robot.

Zarkov needs medical supplies to treat Dale's injury. On the theory that anyone who can build a complex robot probably has advanced medicine, Flash backtracks the monster. What follows is a succinct and well-scripted tale (no overly rushed moments this time) in which Flash meets two apparent humans who are guarding the entrance to their civilization. Only after various shenanigans that leave both the guardians dead does Flash realize they were androids, guarding the path to a long-dead people.

Williamson's art continues to look stunning. I once made a case that Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars is the perfect World of Adventure, because its premise allows for such a wide variety of threats and dangers. But the same argument can be made for Mongo. The many different alien races with various levels of technology, combined with the existance of so much super-science, pretty much means any writer playing in that sandbox can make a wide variety of stories fit comfortably into the premise. Like Barsoom, Mongo is designed to be a perfect World of Adventure.

Next week, we'll join Marvel Comics' Falcon as he plays detective to solve a murder.