Number 2405: Flash, Dale and Dr Zarkov after the war

We are given a timeline in the splash panel for this Flash Gordon story. The first line of the caption tells us it is just after World War II. Flash, Dale and Dr Zarkov have returned to Earth from the planet Mongo to find our species has developed powerful weapons that can destroy the planet. It is a reminder to us that it has been almost 3/4 of a century since nuclear bombs were used in war, and hopefully it will never happen again. We have been living under that threat ever since.

That aside, the comic book today’s story comes from, Flash Gordon #1, was published in 1966 by King Features Syndicate, which had published the character in its newspaper comics lineup since the 1930s. It had affected the life of young artist, Al Williamson, while growing up, and helped inspire him to a career both in newspaper comics and newsstand comic books. The late Williamson usually worked with other people on his comics, and in this story of an undersea kingdom Roy G. Krenkel helped by drawing the architecture of the underground city of “Krenkelium.” Despite what I read as something of a worn science fiction concept, people living underground, I believe the artwork saves it.

Number 2071: Little Jacky, who never grew up

Uh-oh. I can “see” some of you readers, and the puzzled looks on your faces. You are wondering what I am showing today. A strip by a kid? It was the same problem of many readers (including me, age 11 1/2) when first encountering the Sunday-only comic strip, Jackys Diary, in January 1959.

Jack Mendelsohn (age 32 1/2 at the time) drew the Sunday page, and a one-shot comic book from Dell Comics in 1960. Mendelsohn worked in comics (including EC Comics’ Panic) and animation (among other things, he worked on Yellow Submarine). He was a talented artist and writer. Don Markstein’s Toonopedia website has a concise history of Jackys Diary, which, for whatever reason, became Jacky’s Diary (with apostrophe), both for the one-shot and the beautiful 2013 coffee table book produced by Craig Yoe and Clizia Gussoni, reprinting the three years of the strip.* As Mendelsohn explained it in the book, a Sunday-only strip was more expensive to maintain than a daily/Sunday combination, so King Features canceled it.

Jack Mendelson, (age 90), died this past January.

Panel two, just below,  is hard to read under the purple ink. I have divined the caption for you: "Jack got scared the giant would eat him also so he tried to not make any noise inside."

*Still available, as of this writing. Highly recommended by me.