A whiplash amount of fun!
Creative Staff:
Story: Jeff Parker
Art: Jesse Hamm
Colors: Grace Allison
Letterer: Simon Bowland
What They Say:
The Phantoms, Mandrake The Magician and Flash are on the run from forces they don’t understand! Do our on-the-run titans stand a chance against spiders made of apes!?!?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The opening installment of this miniseries pleased me since I wasn’t sure how connected it would be to the Kings Quest series that I had read, my first in this collection of Kings related titles. The property is fun as it brings together such different characters while also mixing in some fresh things, such as the younger Phantom. The big thing for me was carrying on where the previous series left off and that meant getting to see former Empress Dale Arden back on Earth along with the others. Having her fully on their side this time around adds a little extra juice to the dialogue, particularly considering her relationship with Flash.
Mings plan to deal with Earth now that he’s reassumed control of his empire is certainly an amusing one and one that makes a lot of sense. As we learn from his exposition towards our heroes, he discovered a lot when he was whisked back to Mongo thanks to Mandrake and discovered other ways to utilize the pathways that binds his empire together. With that, we saw the arrival of the island of Nova in the Pacific Ocean, which is roughly the size of Greenland. That’s taken down quite a few ships so far and Flash and the gang are there to try and figure out how to deal with it. The scale of the problem is large to be sure but we get it in more accessible form thanks to the group. Of course, the governments of the world have a different view of how to deal with the island, but that’s for the next installment.
What we get here is definitely fun as it’s basically old school Flash Gordon. With a lot of great artwork and design work from Hamm with layouts and creature design, the group has to cope with an array of creatures as they search for a path to get to the location where Ming will be running this operation from in order to stop him. That means a host of angry apes, beef jerky that comes to life, giant bats, and a whole lot more along the way in big and small form. It’s such a constant piece of movement once Mings exposition is done that it can be a bit exhausting to read, but Hamm delivers such great looking and fun pages here that it’s positively addictive and you just want to keep the ride going.
In Summary:
Flash Gordon: Kings Cross is a book that’s just plain fun. It has all the right elements from the original works in its own way while managing them with modern storytelling and character quirks so that it feels fresh and fun. Parker definitely handles the dialogue well and while he may be moving things at a really brisk pace, he’s delivering some really fun things. All of it is elevated thanks to Jesse Hamm’s artwork as it’s just an absolute blast to take in, especially the facial expressions and the creativity in the creature design. Very fun stuff all around and hopefully things stay alive long enough in the next issue for there to be more!
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dynamite Entertainment
Release Date: December 7th, 2016
MSRP: $3.99
