Flash Gordon (comic strip) (1934)

Alex Raymond's Sunday pages, from 1934, in Titan's Complete Flash Gordon Library The rocket-man fantasy at its purest. King Features built the strip to rival Buck Rogers, and Raymond answered with a planet, Mongo, crammed with the flying city of the Hawkmen, the Lion Men, the undersea Shark Men and the theatrical tyrant Ming the Merciless. Flash, Dale Arden and Dr. Zarkov lurch from cliffhanger to cliffhanger, so no wonder it became three Buster Crabbe serials. The reason to read it now is Raymond's drawing, which ripens into some of the most polished brushwork in newspaper comics. Start with the first volume, On the Planet Mongo. Ming and his court are drawn as 1930s Yellow Peril stereotypes, which later versions tried to soften.