Flash Gordon is Back! (Sci Fi Channel)

Flash Gordon is coming back. The Sci-Fi channel is premiering its new 22-episode Flash Gordon series starring Eric Johnson August 10th with a 90-minute lead-off episode.

FLASH GORDON's DEBUT

The veteran space jockey first appeared in 1934, created by veteran cartoonist Alex Raymond, whose work include Jungle Jim, Secret Agent X-9, Rip Kirby, and even a police story by legendary Dashiell ("Maltese Falcon") Hammett who provided the script.

Flash Gordon was created to compete against Buck Rogers put out by a competing syndicate, amd eventually eclipsed Buck.

It was Raymond's greatest work, a newspaper comic strip featuring the adventures of Flash Gordon, Yale graduate and polo player, girlfriend Dale Arden, mento Dr. Hans Zarkov, and his space adventures featuring a host of characters from Ming the Merciless and Prince Baran to Princess Aura and Vultan, King of the Hawk Men. The strip became a daily in 1940 and continued until 1993. Raymond successor Jim Keefe's final original Flash Gordon strip ran in 2003.

BUSTER CRABBE

Buster Crabbe played both Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers in highly popular movie serials. Universal paid $350,000 to film the Flash Gordon serial in 1936, featuring Flash, Dale, Dr. Zarkov, and Charles Middleton as Ming the Merciless. The special effects were archaic but they entertained their young audience so well two more Flash Gordon serials were shot and released.

Introduced into an episode of the early 80's Buck Rogers TV series as "General Gordon," Crabbe tells Buck that he's been flying since before Buck was born. Buck, who figures Gordon doesn't realize he was born in the 20th Century, responds with something like "Oh, yeah?" Gordon comes back: "You have no idea."

The first of two Flash Gordon radio series started in 1934 with Gale Gordon as Flash (later Mr Mooney, Lucy's boss in The Lucy Show.) In 1954, Flash went on television with a syndicated series shot in Germany starring Steve Holland whose Flash. There was also an animated Flash Gordon series in the 1970's..