Flash Gordon's 80th Birthday

Shelf Awareness

Flash Gordon, Alex Raymond's "iconic blond-haired, Yale-educated, polo-playing hero, began his comic-strip adventures on the pages of newspapers" more than 80 years ago, USA Today reported, adding that Andre Peltier, a lecturer at Eastern Michigan University and part-time bookseller at Nicola's Books, Ann Arbor, Mich., "has made Flash a key component of his science-fiction literature course."

"We might not be able to have superheroes without characters like him," said Peltier. "We probably wouldn't have the space opera in film the way we do today. We can see the influence in a lot of Vonnegut and Arthur C. Clarke--maybe even a little in Asimov. It's in everything.... Luke [Skywalker], the out-of-place guy who has to go out and save everybody, is not at all unlike Flash Gordon, who stumbles into a spaceship just by chance."