This issue doesn’t just have gorgeous art, it also has Parker getting to a Flash Gordon moment. Flash Gordon’s a hard character to portray because his behaviors are often contradictory. Parker understands some of that contradiction this issue, with Flash both being foolish and also being selfless. The selfless bit comes gloriously at the end.
As for the Shaner art, the comic is beginning to seriously impress. Flash and company are on Arboria and Shaner does a great double page (half) panel of an airship carrying them around. It’s fantastically rendered, as is everything else this issue.
Parker doesn’t spend much time establishing any of the characters–and Prince Baran seems a little too unobservant–but the time he does spend is successful. Dale is still a mystery, but Professor Zarkov is great. Both funny and smart at the same time; humor and exposition in one.
Flash’s starting to impress.
B+
CREDITS
Flash in the Forest; writer, Jeff Parker; artist, Evan Shaner; colorist, Jordie Bellaire; letterer, Simon Bowland; editor, Nate Cosby; publisher, Dynamite Entertainment.
Another Flash Gordon? Hasn’t this license well been long tapped dry? Based on this first issue, maybe not. Oh, it’s got problems–the soft cliffhanger is a disaster, turning the residents of Arboria into Ewoks (so far), and writer Jeff Parker digs himself a hole with the narration structure–half the issue in the past, half in the present, all the big invasion events in expository dialogue–but it’s not bad. A lot of it’s pretty good.