Title: Flash Gordon
Issue: 34
Date: 1981
Publisher: Whitman (Western Publishing)
Writer: John Warner
Artist: Gene Fawcette
Flash Gordon, Dale Arden, and Doctor Zarkov travel to a remote area to loot one of Emperor Ming's observation posts for spare parts. The station appears to be unguarded, but it's actually defended by a type of gas that Ming devised that knocks out its victims and causes potentially fatal hallucinations. This is one of those classic unnecessarily slow deathtraps, and it's really just an excuse to give us a peak into each character's worst nightmare and watch them deal with these dream scenarios.
Zarkov faces off against the most frightening thing he can imagine: Literally his own brain! In a jar! Except it's evil.
Dale, is a scenario very much playing to stereotypes, finds Flash falling in love with a strong and beautiful (and blonde!) warrior woman who is more than ready to handle any of Dale's objections with fist and sword, all while Flash stands by, dazzled by his newfound love.
Flash himself gets the least interesting nightmare: Getting crushed by Ming himself, grown to giant-size.
It takes Zarkov's wit and Flash's strength of will to overcome the effects of the nightmare-gas. I was a little bit disappointed that the writers weren't able to make things a bit more parallel and have a clearly defined strength of Dale's that lets her overcome her own scenario. That would have made the story a lot more satisfying. Instead, she gets rescued by Flash, as per normal.
The story was still fairly interesting in spite of how contrived it all was.
There's also a backup story in which Flash is searching for Charn, a leader in the rebellion against Ming. Charn was captured by a tribe who enslave their captives, and his will has been just about broken in captivity. Flash is captured as well, and needs to find a way to instill hope in Charn so that they can attempt to escape. This story was a good concept but suffered a bit from page-count limitations, as it could have used some more time to develop.
The worldbuilding and character interactions in both stories were good.
Rating: 5/10
