Wednesday World of Wonder FLASH GORDON "and the Mole Machine" Starring BUSTER CRABBE!

Think of This as a Podcast with Pictures!

In the 1960s, due to the popularity of old radio adventure shows like The Shadow, The Lone Ranger, and I Love a Mystery being re-released on LP records, MGM/Leo the Lion Records created a series of new audio adventures of classic characters in the same style, but with hi-fi audio, such as this album starring Buster Crabbe, who played Flash Gordon in three movie serials from 1930 to 1940 reprising the role.
Trivia: Oddly, there weren't any albums of Flash Gordon's radio adventures until the 1970s!

Though ostensibly-written by cast member Ronald Liss, one of the two tales...

...was based on a story in King Comics' just-revived Flash Gordon comic book, written and illustrated by noted creative Al Williamson, who had succeeded Alex Raymond on his Secret Agent X-9/Secret Agent Corrigan newspaper strip and had ghosted some of Dan Barry's 1950s run on Flash!

We've combined the two versions together in a Power Records-style presentation!
(The original album didn't include the comic book!)

Click on the link HERE to open the audio file and read along 

Note that the audio version is not a word-for-word transcription of the comic, but it's close enough that it's easy to follow the story...

Bonus: the art for the cover, uncropped and without text/trade dress.

Plus, a study done by Al Williamson for the album cover, inked and colored by Gray Morrow and used as the cover of the Flash Gordon-themed prozine Heritage (1972)...

BTW, we normally would've included a Flash Gordon story in our ongoing Space Hero Saturdays feature...except it takes place on (and under) Earth, not in space!

Next Week, a different World of Wonder!

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Al Williamson's

Flash Gordon
A Lifelong Vision of the Heroic

(which reprints the story and the album cover, but in black-and-white!)

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Good Friday KING OF KINGS "Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday"

You may be wondering "Where's Parts 1 & 2?"...

Jeffrey Hunter as Jesus Christ

...and the answer is; we haven't run them yet!

Since it's Good Friday, we're presenting the Dell Comics adaptation of the final part of the 1961 movie, covering the period from Palm Sunday to the Resurrection.

We'll run the first part around Christmas, and the second shortly after that.

While the writer for this movie adaptation from Dell's Four Color Comics King of Kings #1236 (1961) is unknown, the artist is Gerald McCann, a pulp artist who moved to comics in the early 1950s and did numerous Classics Illustrated covers and stories including "Abraham Lincoln" and "Ben-Hur".

Who says comics ain't educational?

It's Palm Sunday! Did You Know the Very First Captain of the USS Enterprise...

...was Jesus Christ?

Jeffrey Hunter as Jesus Christ in King of Kings (1961)

 Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Christopher Pike with Leonard Nimoy as Mr Spock in Star Trek "The Cage" (1964)

Here's"six degrees of separation" trivia in only five degrees:

• John Huston, who later did a prequel movie, The Bible: In the Beginning, directed Moby Dick, using a screenplay adapted by Ray Bradbury from the Herman Melville novel.
• Ray Bradbury wrote the voiceovers in King of Kings spoken by Orson Welles.
• Welles' The Shadow and Mercury Theatre radio series co-star Agnes Moorehead served as dialogue coach to  Jeffrey Hunter (Jesus Christ) in King of Kings.
• Jeffrey Hunter later played Christopher Pike, the first captain of the Starship Enterprise in the pilot episode of Star Trek, "The Cage".
• Star Trek did an episode, "Bread and Circuses", about a planet where parallel evolution produced a society that resembled a 20th Century version of the Roman Empire, complete with it's own "Christians" and Jesus Christ (who doesn't appear on-camera, but is mentioned in dialogue)!

Monday Mecha Madness (Continued) BATTLESTAR GALACTICA "Saga of a Star World" Conclusion

Art by Bob Larkin

There are those who believe...that life here began out there, far across the Universe...with tribes of humans...who may have been the forefathers of the Egyptians...or the Toltecs...or the Mayans...that they may have been the architects of the Great Pyramids...or the lost civilizations of Lemuria...or Atlantis.
Some believe that there may yet be brothers of man...who even now fight to survive--far, far away amongst the stars...

When Last We Left the Human Race...

Betrayed by one of their own to the robotic alien Cylons*, the Twelve Colonies of Man are wiped out in a sneak attack.

The survivors hastily assemble a fleet of ships under the protection of the only remaining Battlestar, and head away from their now-devastated worlds....

This second half of the movie version of Battlestar Galactica was presented by writer Roger McKenzie and artist/colorist/painter Ernie Colon.
Because it was based on an early draft of the script, names (Serina is called Lyra) are different, and some characters who live in both the movie and tv series (including Cassiopeia) die!
(Baltar dies in the feature film, but survives in the TV series.)

This first version of Marvel Super Special #8 (1978) was a full-process color, slick-stock magazine.

However, because the editor didn't get approval from Universal Studios on the final art before it went to press, the vast majority of the copies were ordered pulped!
(This story has been confirmed by both then-Marvel Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter and the book's artist Ernie Colon.)
Changes in both script and art were made, and the book was reissued as a tabloid-sized Treasury edition, with standard comic book "flat" coloring and a new pen-and-ink cover by Rick Bryant based on the Bob Larkin cover painting!

The story was modified again when it was expanded to fill the first three issues of the ongoing Battlestar Galactica comic book...including keeping both Baltar and Cassiopeia alive!
(Cassie would later die in the comic adaptation of the two-part episode "Lost Planet of the Gods", where she's killed by Cylons.)

*Though the Cylons' Imperious Leader appears reptilian, it is as much a robot as the others, though based on the image of the humanoid lizards who created the robots!

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Battlestar Galactica: the Definitive Collection
The Original Series
Galactica: 1980
Original Feature Film
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