...Wait a minute: A CABLE network cancelled a "girl-centric" cartoon with fangirl-ship overtones, because it wasn't "boyish" enough??
There may be hope yet for our dying cartoon generation.
comic strips discussion
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- AV Forum Member
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Re: comic strips discussion
There may be hope yet for our dying cartoon generation.
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Re: comic strips discussion
The Comics Journal has a pretty in-depth interview with Dan Schkade, who relaunched the Flash Gordon newspaper comic strip 8 months ago.
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Schkade's take on the Flash Gordon mythos is very faithful to the spirit of the original Alex Raymond strips .. but is likewise informed by later incarnations of the strip and its various movie & animated adaptations, as well .. while still treading fresh storytelling ground with new 'ground-level' characters that help to view the world of Mongo from different perspectives than were possible before -- and also being unafraid to cast some of the classic secondary characters in an unsavory light.
Schkade's artwork is bold, stark, clean & stylized; very evocative of Batman: The Animated Series. Color, too, is used in a bold graphic way .. to convey emotion and atmosphere, almost apart from the lineart itself.
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The storylines move at a breathless pace, compared to most legacy newspaper strips .. but the storytelling is clear and concise enough both to follow day-by-day, and to keep a reader interested to return the next day (which is a concept that seems simple, but is actually very difficult to achieve, and rare to find done so consistently well).
As a bonus, each FG strip episode has an individual title -- something that most newspaper strips 'phased-out' in the 1950s! -- though a key difference is that those titles are given in the form of a brief caption, at the end of the previous strip.
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Sunday FG strips offer a recap/summation of the events in that week's six daily strips .. but always from the POV of a specific character (and it's not always the 'main' ones) .. which helps to keep even those 'recaps' feeling fresh.
Dan Schkade's Flash Gordon appears daily online on Comics Kingdom, which is King Features' archival website. The strip is archived from its beginning on October 22, 2023 .. but -- iirc -- non-subscribers to Comics Kingdom are limited in how far back they can access individual strips.
However, the strip is so well-done -- and seems (IMO!) to lend itself well to the 'graphic novel' format -- such that I assume a book collection of the strip will eventually be offered; so -- hopefully -- we'll hear of one, soon..!
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- FlashGordon_2023-11-20.png (77.83 KiB) Viewed 5251 times
Schkade's take on the Flash Gordon mythos is very faithful to the spirit of the original Alex Raymond strips .. but is likewise informed by later incarnations of the strip and its various movie & animated adaptations, as well .. while still treading fresh storytelling ground with new 'ground-level' characters that help to view the world of Mongo from different perspectives than were possible before -- and also being unafraid to cast some of the classic secondary characters in an unsavory light.
Schkade's artwork is bold, stark, clean & stylized; very evocative of Batman: The Animated Series. Color, too, is used in a bold graphic way .. to convey emotion and atmosphere, almost apart from the lineart itself.
.
- FlashGordon_2023-12-19.png (79.66 KiB) Viewed 5251 times
The storylines move at a breathless pace, compared to most legacy newspaper strips .. but the storytelling is clear and concise enough both to follow day-by-day, and to keep a reader interested to return the next day (which is a concept that seems simple, but is actually very difficult to achieve, and rare to find done so consistently well).
As a bonus, each FG strip episode has an individual title -- something that most newspaper strips 'phased-out' in the 1950s! -- though a key difference is that those titles are given in the form of a brief caption, at the end of the previous strip.
.
- FlashGordon_2024-04-01.png (85.57 KiB) Viewed 5251 times
Sunday FG strips offer a recap/summation of the events in that week's six daily strips .. but always from the POV of a specific character (and it's not always the 'main' ones) .. which helps to keep even those 'recaps' feeling fresh.
Dan Schkade's Flash Gordon appears daily online on Comics Kingdom, which is King Features' archival website. The strip is archived from its beginning on October 22, 2023 .. but -- iirc -- non-subscribers to Comics Kingdom are limited in how far back they can access individual strips.
However, the strip is so well-done -- and seems (IMO!) to lend itself well to the 'graphic novel' format -- such that I assume a book collection of the strip will eventually be offered; so -- hopefully -- we'll hear of one, soon..!
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Re: comic strips discussion
While I like the art, it is such a big step away from the Raymond/Raboy/Barry/etc. style that it is hard to recognize it as Flash Gordon. That doesn't make it bad, of course. Just different. Very different.
And we have seen Flash (and other Golden Age classic characters) reinvented so many times... I'm tending to just fall back on the originals to enjoy them instead. Still, I can't argue against bringing back classic characters in new stories.
And we have seen Flash (and other Golden Age classic characters) reinvented so many times... I'm tending to just fall back on the originals to enjoy them instead. Still, I can't argue against bringing back classic characters in new stories.