This post is brought to you by Ships of Steel, a Space Opera anthology in the Swords of Fire tradition. Four novellas featuring Steel, a secret agent of the future in “Rolling Stone” by M. D. Jackson. “The Hidden Heart” by G. W. Thomas features Sudana and Zaar, characters from Whispers of Ice & Sand. “Gideon’s Burden” by T. Neil Thomas is set on a space station orbiting Jupiter. Gideon Stormcrow is on the search for a missing boy. “The Price of Redemption” by Jack Mackenzie is a prequel to his novel The Mask of Eternity with Solis DeLacey a mere cadet, not a captain. Each tale has an illustration by the cover artist.
Ray Bradbury and Ray Harryhausen were both nuts for dinosaurs back in the mid-1930s. It turns out they met each other, not in Hollywood in the 1950s but as teens in L. A. around 1934. I learned this from a great book I am reading right now, The First Geeks by Orty Ortwein (2024). (Talk about Pennies From Heaven! To say the least, this is a book destined for any reader of Dark Worlds Quarterly. It’s all about the things I love from page one to the last. I will do a review when I finish it.)
Let’s get back to the Two Rays. One of the things both of these dino-lovers did was collect the Flash Gordon comic strips from the newspaper. They didn’t have Fantagraphic Books, IDW or Dark Horse to reprint them. You had to make sure you bought that paper everyday and on Sunday. The strips were kept in scrapbooks to be enjoyed over and over again. And why it was Flash Gordon is no mystery. Alex Raymond (whatever you think of his stories) drew better than anyone except Hal Foster. And Flash had dinos, and quasi-dinos and a number of other weird beasties I will put in another post. (The exploding flying squirrels are a fav.)
Let’s look at Raymond’s saurians here in the Sunday pages. Right from the first storyline “On the Planet Mongo” (January 7 to April 8, 1934), Flash comes to Mongo and is immediately set upon by a big scaly fiend. In a move that I would have called Harryhausen-esque, the monster is attacked by another monster. Neither monster is named. (As Forry Ackerman might have said, “One goddamn thing after another!”)
The good guys escape the battling fiends only to find others waiting inside the castle dungeon. These are the Hideous Water Dragons of Mongo! Fortunately, Princess Auro scolds them into behaving.
“Monsters of Mongo” (April 15-November 18, 1934) puts Flash in the arena (thanks ERB!) to face off with Sulpha, Sacred Dragon of the Hawkmen. Gordon can’t beat it so he uses his wits to escape it.
“The Caverns of Mongo” (March 3-April 14, 1935) give us our first of several bat-like flyers, Dactyl-Bats! Flash has to use Desolvo-rays to blow them into atoms.
The local cliff-men have bigger problems with Komok, eater of Men.
Oh, hey, Desolvo-rays work on him, too.
Hanging out with the “Witch-Queen of Mongo” (April 21-October 13, 1935) Flash and Azura encounter a Horn Snake. A sword and a little luck are all Flash needs here.
There are many kinds of chariot-pulling beasties on Mongo including black lions but here it is the dragon version.
Another place to encounter a lot of saurians is in prison. Every dungeon, including Ming’s here in “At War With Ming” (October 20, 1935-April 5, 1936) has a lizard ready to eat the prisoners. This one is called Constrictosaurus. Flash takes him out by choking it to death with his chains. A move worthy of Conan the Cimmerian!
One of the great things about Mongo is that it has so many different environs. In “Undersea Kingdom of Mongo” (April 12-October 11, 1936) it is an aquatic environment with logically sourced aquatic dinos. Unlike the Earth, Mongo is one exciting locale after another. (And if you don’t believe me, Flash returns to Earth in “Return to Earth” (July 6 to December 28, 1941) and doesn’t meet even one dinosaur!) Devourosuarus gets a mouthful when Flash uses his downed ship as a weapon.
Another ecological area is the “Forest Kingdom of Mongo” (October 18, 1936-January 31, 1937). Of course, there are dino-critters running around. The lakes are filled with unnamed dinos much like Pellucidar.
The Tusk-Men of Mongo (February 7-April 18, 1937) live in a jungle where the Mighty Gwak dwells. Flash does a little Tarzan routine on the fearsome beast.
The forests of “Beast-Men of Mongo” (April 25-August 8, 1937) provide another flyer with the Harpy Bats. Flash is too busy playing Robin Hood to notice these could have been Dactyl-Bats.
Jungles, desert and snowy areas, Mongo has it all. “Ice Kingdom of Mongo” (March 12, 1939 -April 7, 1940) has its own Snow Dragon that can snowboard on its own tail.
Such a cold climate can’t have just one beastie. The Ice Worm has actual fur and a big appetite. Flash lives up to his name and zaps the thing with his ray gun.
The jungles of “Queen Desira” (January 4-June 14, 1942) provide another beaked monster in the Tree Dragon. Its touch is deadly poison. Ray guns work here too.
The last of the flyers are the Great Dragon Bats in “Jungles of Mongo” (June 21 to November 1, 1942) where everything is upside down. You can tell Raymond had fun with this one. After drawing the strips for eight years, he had to find a way to challenge himself. The end is in sight for the artist.
“Fiery Desert of Mongo” (November 8, 1942 to July 11, 1943) finally brings Flash to the sandy wastes. What better place for a dinosaur? What besides Fire Dragon could you call a creature that can live in lava? Flash shoots it in the head until it falls back into the fiery opening. I’m not so sure I buy that one. The thing can live in lava. What is a ray gun going to do?
“Battle For Tropica” (July 18, 1943-February 6, 1944) has a final unnamed dino-beast, Raymond’s last one. And like the first, the easiest way to beat it is to send another monster at it. By August 1944, Alex Raymond was ready to move on and join the army. Ten years of drawing Flash and his friends on Mongo has given us a wide range of scaly monsters.
Conclusion
Alex Raymond couldn’t go on doing Flash forever. The comic is still running today so there were many artists who drew the space adventures of the Earthman. (Though Alex was always the best.) Raymond hung up his ink pen to make way for his Daily artist, Austin Briggs to take over. But the guy who followed knew one thing: you gotta have a dinosaur (or at least a giant lizard) every so often. I don’t know if the two Rays were still reading the comic by the 1940s but they probably enjoyed some if not all of these rampaging beasts.
In 1944, Ray Bradbury was still writing Horror for Weird Tales and just beginning to move onto SF at Planet Stories. The Saturday Evening Post and “The Fog Horn” was still seven years away. Ray Harryhausen in 1944 was in the army working in Frank Capra’s film division. After WWII, he’d work with Willis O’Brien on Mighty Joe Young (1949). 1953 would see the Two Rays join forces for The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms. Visions of scaly danger inspired in part by these comic strip wonders, no doubt.
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