This project outlines the third in a series of fan made mini-comics. To get the full backstory on the origins of this project as a whole, see the write up on Superman & Green Lantern.
While McFarlane Toys was bringing back the Super Powers toyline in 2022, another company was paying homage to the 1980s toys with characters from the King Features Syndicate properties. Boss Fight Studios was set to launch wave 1 of Power Stars with Flash Gordon, Ming the Merciless and Prince Thun from the Flash Gordon comics strips and The Phantom from his own comic strip.
As a HUGE Flash Gordon fan and a fan of the Super Powers action figures, I thought it would be fun to create a mini-comic for the Flash Gordon characters. Once again, Bill Wiist joined me for this endeavor.
Similar to the Superman and Green Lantern mini-comics, I wrote the story and delivered the script to Bill. Bill penciled and inked the cover and 13 story pages. I then took the finished line art, colored and lettered it and compiled it into a final form.
I knew that my story would include Flash Gordon, Ming and Thun since they all had action figures, but I also love the character of Dale Arden and wanted to include her as well. So for this mini-comic project, my process began by doing a lot of research and trying to settle on a look for Dale's costume as well as how the rocket ship should appear.
Boss Fight made it easy as they have also released a set of PVC figures of the King Features characters and the characters in the Power Stars line match their look from this set. So the Dale design from the PVC set became our design for use in the mini-comic.
While doing this research, I also plotted out the comic story. As with Superman and Green Lantern, I wanted to tell a complete story in the 25 or so panels that we would use. I pulled from ideas used in the 1980 movie where it is referenced that Ming has blasted Thun's kingdom. Picking up on that idea was the springboard. Thun would reach out to Flash for help after his kingdom was blasted again.
I wanted to also include Dale because I love her sass in the movie. While I didn't have the dialogue figured out, I noted where I wanted to have her wit show up in the script.
With my story beats figured out, I transferred the outline to Final Draft and expanded the story to a full script.
I sent the script and reference material to Bill who then roughed out basic layouts that eventually became tighter pencil drawings.
Bill’s next process was to ink the pages.
Once he was finished with the inks, I could begin coloring.
With final inked and colored pages in place, I could finalize my lettering. If you compare it with the script, you'll notice a few tweaks as I realized some lines of dialogue were too much.
As before, the final release was a pdf that could be printed, folded, cut and stapled.
Upon doing that, the final would be a 16-page mini-comic that looks great with the action figures.
To explain the process, I shot and produced this explainer video. Rather than re-use the version with Superman, I produced one for this book to keep Super Powers and Power Stars separate.
We released the free downloadable PDF through ActionFigureInsider.com.
While working on this project, I came up with the idea to produce an alternate version to pay homage to the old 1930s serials starring Buster Crabbe. The story and line art would be the same, but instead of full color, the interiors would be grayscale.
The above outlines the process for the interior story and art. Bill also drew a cover for the regular edition and crafted a painted variant of the cover for the Serial Edition.
The final PDF was once again available for free at ActionFigureInsider.com.
