I'm gonna
TRY and be as spoiler-free as I can in this. Here's the solicitation copy, from Ardden Entertainment:
"THE INVASION BEGINS! After the apparent demise of 'Ming the Merciful,' Flash Gordon, Dale Arden and Dr. Hans Zarkov continue their attempts to return to Earth. Meanwhile, Prince Barin, King Thun and Prince Vultan are hard at work trying to create a peaceful new environment on Mongo. However, when a mysterious group of Earth soldiers violently invade the planet, our heroes are separated and must band together once again to save the lives of every race on Mongo!"
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THE GOOD: EVERYTHING! And really, that about sums it up. One of my favorite hooks in this comic *SPOILER* is that Mongo's Global Translator breaks, causing Flash and his team to not be able to speak to each other. And instead of falling into "Lassie" mode(where one character speaks, and the other impossibly knows that there's a bridge out up ahead), the characters actually communicate through different means and actually are able to pick up bits and pieces of each others language. Brilliant!!!
-For the most part, I just couldn't get over how much F-U-N this comic was. Writer Brenden Deneen has got the characterization down pat. His best work is with the character of Flash Gordon himself. Just a decent, good guy hero. There are NONE of them in comics right now. There's no angst, no "I wish I wasn't in this situation" thing going on, he's just a guy trying to help people. Let's face it, how many people REALLY know the Flash Gordon characters beyond what they've seen in the 1980 movie or the 1979 Filmation cartoon? Yeah, not that many. The writing familiarizes the reader with the characters in about 2 pages and you feel like you've been reading this for years. VERY well done!! In the art department, Eduardo Garcia steps up to the plate and does a SPECTACULAR job. No complaints.
THE BAD: Well, this book was supposed to be out last October. OCTOBER. Yes, "Raise Your Glass" by Pink was on the radio, the San Franciso Giants were on their way to becoming World Series champs and......OK, it's not "Battle Chasers" late, but still. That's a 4 month wait.
THE VERDICT: BUY IT!!! NOW!!! GO!!!
-It's getting hard to keep writing good stuff about this comic. In this second chapter of Arddens's second Flash Gordon mini series, the story gets moving. Not to say that it didn't hit the ground running in the first issue, but this issue really picks up the pace. Tremendously. I hear a lot of complaints about the price of comics, but story-wise, writer Brenden Deneen packs about six months worth of a Marvel comic into this one issue of Flash Gordon. There's massive amounts of cliffhangers, a great many mysteries are set up, and the team of Brenden Deneen and artist Eduardo Garcia have really hit a home run with this series. Remember how comics used to have you holding your breath when you were a kid? Yeah, it's like that.
