Category: book

Flash Gordon vol 1 Session 1

Flash Gordon… well. It’s engaging. It’s also, I shall describe it, as thus:

Every character is Lucy pulling the football on the other characters while playing Capture the Flag with Dale Arden as the flag.

As long as you get used to ‘well they are going to go about five feet before getting shot down’ every few minutes, it’s pretty fun!

I have more of this one to read but I do intend to finish it. I’ve already noticed the art is getting steadily better as I read through, so I’m excited to see what it’s like by the time I get to the end of the volume.

Prince Thun is my favourite character.

My least favourite character is the racism.

Prince Valiant Vol 1

Okay, so backstory: I wrote to my local library telling them about how much I liked their selection of old comic strips and it ended in them ordering two books (Flash Gordon, Prince Valiant) at my request! So I was PRETTY EXCITED.

So Prince Valiant was the first one I read and it was BEAUTIFUL. The art was stunning! The narrative technique was pretty interesting too, it doesn’t have dialogue as such, it has explanations (usually at the bottom of) in the panels and sometimes it’ll tell you what they’re saying, but usually just a description of what they said.

Overall I really enjoyed it! There was a record scratch moment where I really do think Ilene would have disagreed that it was better she died horribly at sea so Arn and Valiant could be friends instead of killing eachother over her (at no point is it suggested they NOT kill eachother) but they seemed pretty okay with going ‘yeah! It’s what she would have wanted! BFFS 4 LYFE’

Me: 😐

There were some neat prehistoric style animals but apparently they will get phased out later on.

I enjoyed the panels where the artist made a point of drawing Prince Valiant’s beautiful lashes particularly. But the nature scenes, the epic architecture, and the battle of fifty vikings vs Prince Valiant was gorgeously done.