Battling the Sea Beast opens with Buster Crabbe fighting an octopus. Mostly it’s Crabbe–quite enthusiastically–feigning a struggle against one or two legs of the octopus, which shows no life once they’re battling. Before it was stock footage; with the fight, it’s a passive prop Crabbe has to get going.
And it’s the only fight scene in Sea Beast, with the exception of an off screen one between Crabbe and a guard while Priscilla Lawson stands by and plots her next move.
It’s a suspenseful chapter; Lawson’s duplicity leads to a catastrophic event, one Crabbe can’t fix. But he still tries to save the day, much to Lawson’s chagrin (and confusion).
There’s some plot development involving Frank Shannon trying to get in touch with Earth. Charles Middleton comes in and cuts it short. Middleton’s not really any better than usual, but for whatever reason he’s more tolerable. Maybe he just wears you down.
Jean Rogers gets nothing to do. She stands by while James Pierce and Duke York argue. They’re fine at it.
It’s a good Flash Gordon. Director Stephani does quite well with the tension.
I’m really hoping there’s an explanation for Flash Gordon, like Dynamite’s licensing deal changed or something along those lines. Because it’s hard to believe Parker and Shaner put all their previous effort into a comic where the majority of pages went to advertisements for upcoming comics. And their amazing Flash Gordon adaptation only gets something like twelve pages to finish.
Well, if this issue of Flash Gordon feels a little light, it might be because Parker and Shaner’s story clocks in at something like fifteen pages. The rest of the comic is promotional material.
Parker does a great job with the Arboria adventure–with Dale getting to hang out with some Hawkmen and then rescue Flash and Zarkov on her own. There’s a lot of personality for the Arborians–well, the people with the wings, less so for the sirens who don’t have wings. Parker keeps it relatively simple; maybe too much so, but it’s Flash Gordon and it works with simplicity.
Odd issue. Parker splits it in two–with Sandy Jarrell and Richard Case on art for the first part and Shanier on the second. The first part, which is just Flash, Dale and Zarkov in their spaceship trying to get to the next world, has a lot of personality. There’s banter, there’s Ming megalomania. Even with the art change, it feels like the Flash Gordon comic Parker and Shanier have been working towards. Jarrell and Case do well too.
The cynic in me assumes the Phantom’s one panel appearance in a flashback to Flash fighting off the invaders from Mongo on Earth is so Dynamite can do a team-up limited series some time down the road. The reader in me hopes they do it and get Parker to write it.
Reading the big gladiator fight scene in this issue–and I make this statement as a compliment–one can almost hear the Queen music from the movie. Parker has a couple big action sequences in this one, with Flash destroying the factory at the beginning and then the gladiator battle against Ming’s beastmen.