A rejuvenated Flash Gordon comes twenty years after the last new Flash Gordon comics appeared in newspapers and 90 years after the comic strip first appeared in newspapers. The new daily and Sunday adventures will continue with, and be faithful to, the characters of Flash, Dale, and Zarkov … and Ming.
From the King Features Press Kit:
The new Flash Gordon series picks up where the original comic strip left off, the overthrow of Ming the Merciless. Returning to Flash Gordon’s basics … The world will be populated by both new and familiar characters, while the central theme of fighting against fascism and tyranny remains at the comic’s core.
Is it possible that King Features Syndicate has put together plans to distribute a daily and Sunday Flash Gordon adventure comic strip to newspapers in the future? That King Features created a press kit is what leads us to hope the new strip might be syndicated to newspapers around the world, they don’t issue press kits for webcomics. (Okay, it happened one time in the past few years, and Flash Gordon is a major and iconic brand for the syndicate – so, yeah, it’s probably online only) See George Gant’s comment below.
Picked to write and draw the new Flash Gordon series is cartoonist Dan Schkade. His entry in the 2021 Flash Forward online series along with his other comics impressed KFS editors enough to warrant entrusting Dan to revitalize the characters in a new Flash Gordon comic strip.
And yes, it will be a daily and Sunday adventure strip.
The Daily Cartoonist thinks Sunday, January 7, 2024, the 90th anniversary of Flash Gordon’s debut, would be the perfect time to launch this new production, though the recent release of a press kit indicates an earlier timeline. Efforts by The Daily Cartoonist to reach the syndicate and the cartoonist to get more details, including when the strip will be released and if it will be available to newspapers, have proven unsuccessful at post time.
The Gannett cuts are hitting this wee .. It’ll be interesting to see KFS market this – daily and Sunday to a shrinking newspaper market.
Maybe the Tribune owned papers might pick it up? Maybe also the Washington Post?
This just gets better: “A NEW FLASH GORDON COMIC STRIP” -from 1934. Go to Dan Schkade’s site. This kid’s good, he’s got original ideas, strips. But evidently the only ppl reading comics are in nursing homes or the ground.
Mike, I could name a couple of names that are responsible for the “new direction” of comics at KFS.
Is this to attract a new audience? A younger audience? Certainly not in newspapers.
As papers continue to die and more & more strips resort to an online presence, the internet has several portals and countless strips … strips that would never be considered by a syndicate are getting exposure online.
As the online pool grows, some folks are earning a living, and some not.
Nobody launches a new strip, let alone a continuity strip, thinking it will be a big deal in print. There’s no competition at the newsstand, assuming there is a newsstand around somewhere. You launch a strip for online. I don’t know how you monetize that, but as the old Tribune News Syndicate discovered a couple decades ago, you can do your merchandising and licensing without a new strip out there. Annie still makes money, and when Warren Beatty dies so will Dick Tracy. Flash Gordon? Reprint Raymond.
Mike Gold – consider Betty Boop! How much money has been made from merchandising that character (with no strip or film in a loOoo0ong time) – and I don’t think KFS splits that money with anyone!
Yeah, a continuity strip, these days, is probably aimed at the online portal.
I wish Jim Keefe worked on a Flash Gordon reboot strip, but he’s handling Sally Forth nowadays.
I’m so happy. This is a great, great news.
“That one time” is my strip and as of this past January, has been in print. I don’t know where (and if it is affected by Gannett’s uniformity changes,) but it is being printed somewhere.
I’m happy to hear that George. That puts it in a different category for me as a print comic strip. I also don’t know where it appears; does anybody get it in their local paper? Help George and me find it.
That would be great–thank you!
Nice to see a talented fresh take at a iconic IP like this. Dan Schkade is talented and has fans, maybe this will bring some new readers in to Flash Gordon, even if it is outside of newspapers.
IP? Is suppose you think this is all “content” and the most important thing is that it’s copyrighted. The word is franchise.
The art made me think of the Brothers Pander (Jacob and Arnold).
Since when is digging up a superfluous zombie feature from 1934 a “good, new idea“? It’s bad enough that Marvel is turning every half-way marketable piece of decades-old pulp magazine into a massive (multiple hundred million dollar) blockbuster extravaganza, but expensive eye-candy does not alone make for a good story. Now that the writers are back, someone should put them to work to create something good that is actually new, and not just a rehash to enrapture gullible pre-existing fans.
But readers don’t want new things, they want the safe and familiar (being completely reinvented to the point of unrecognizability by people trying to make it “relevant” for the twenty-first century).
Something new? They won’t touch it with a ten-foot pole!
Minor correction; I stopped doing Flash Gordon in 2003, so should be “A rejuvenated Flash Gordon comes twenty years after the last new Flash Gordon comics.” – not thirty.
I knew that Jim, have no idea why I typed thirty. Fixed it, thanks for the notice.
By the way Jim’s Flash Gordon has been rerun for the years since 2003 and
no one has expressed concern over Jim losing his reprint fees. Oh, wait…
Jim will still do art for the Sally Forth comic strip.