Match to Flame 222

In short, I began an exploration of the matter in Funky to try to link back to the comics history that had preceded me. My first shot at things was a weeklong setup where Pete, a comic strip writer for my fabulous comic book company Atomik Komix, imagined during a deadline daze that he was a character in the Flash Gordon comic strip. It was an easy write, a surface piece that was a too literal interpretation of my golden idea but nonetheless a baby step.*{*True confessions time. As much as possible, I try to avoid tinkering with the strips in these volumes so that they remain a true artifact and accurate representation of what went down. However, I must cop to altering the Pete/Flash Gordon story arc just a bit. After the week had run in the papers, I discovered a font that was exactly like the lettering actually used in the old Flash Gordon strip. I thought that when I revisited that premise I’d use that font instead of my lettering in the word balloons of the Flash Gordon characters. Well, like I said, the concept was too surfacey, and I never returned to it. When I came across that particular week in this volume, however, I realized that I’d been given a second swing at things, so I took the liberty of swapping in the Flash Gordon font whenever Flash or Dale is speaking. It looks so cool! I’m a geek.}  However, I had already started down that golden idea road with the comic book covers that I had been working into my Sunday pages. They started out as a tip of the hat to the comics history that had preceded me. I would begin by re-inking an old cover and inserting my Funky characters into the action. However, another emotional layer was added as I would choose comic covers with a special personal meaning for me. An example fraught with a bit more meaning than most would be the Tom Corbett Space Cadet cover that I used.