Memphis, Tennessee
Memphis is a city located along the Mississippi River in southwestern Shelby County, United States. The 2017 city population was 652,236, making Memphis the largest city on the Mississippi River, second-largest city in Tennessee, as well as the 25th largest city in the United States. Greater Memphis is the 42nd largest metropolitan area in the United States, with a population of 1,348,260 in 2017; the city is the anchor of West Tennessee and the greater Mid-South region, which includes portions of neighboring Arkansas and Mississippi. Memphis is the seat of the most populous county in Tennessee; as one of the most historic and cultural cities of the southern United States, the city features a wide variety of landscapes and distinct neighborhoods. The first European explorer to visit the area of present-day Memphis was Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto in 1541 with his expedition into the New World; the high bluffs protecting the location from the waters of the Mississippi would be contested between the Spanish and the English as Memphis took shape.
Modern Memphis was founded in 1819 by three prominent Americans: John Overton, James Winchester, future president Andrew Jackson. Memphis grew into one of the largest cities of the Antebellum South as a market for agricultural goods, natural resources like lumber, the American slave trade. After the American Civil War and the end of slavery, the city experienced faster growth into the 20th century as it became among the largest world markets for cotton and lumber. Home to Tennessee's largest African-American population, Memphis played a prominent role in the American civil rights movement and was the site of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s 1968 assassination. The city now hosts the National Civil Rights Museum—a Smithsonian affiliate institution. Since the civil rights era, Memphis has grown to become one of the nation's leading commercial centers in transportation and logistics; the city's largest employer is the multinational courier corporation FedEx, which maintains its global air hub at Memphis International Airport, making it the second-busiest cargo airport in the world.
Today, Memphis is a regional center for commerce, media and entertainment. The city has long had a prominent music scene, with historic blues clubs on Beale Street originating the unique Memphis blues sound during early 20th century; the city's music has continued to be shaped by a multi-cultural mix of influences across the blues, rock n' roll and hip-hop genres. Memphis barbecue has achieved international prominence, the city hosts the World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest, which attracts over 100,000 visitors to the city annually. Occupying a substantial bluff rising from the Mississippi River, the site of Memphis has been a natural location for human settlement by varying cultures over thousands of years; the area was known to be settled in the first millennium A. D. by people of the Mississippian Culture, who had a network of communities throughout the Mississippi River Valley and its tributaries. They built complexes with large earthwork ceremonial and burial mounds as expressions of their sophisticated culture.
The historic Chickasaw Indian tribe, believed to be their descendants occupied the site. French explorers led by René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle and Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto encountered the Chickasaw tribe in that area in the 16th century. J. D. L. Holmes, writing in Hudson's Four Centuries of Southern Indians, notes that this site was a third strategic point in the late 18th century through which European powers could control United States encroachment and their interference with Indian matters—after Fort Nogales and Fort Confederación: "... Chickasaw Bluffs, located on the Mississippi River at the present-day location of Memphis. Spain and the United States vied for control of this site, a favorite of the Chickasaws."In 1795 the Spanish Governor-General of Louisiana, Francisco Luis Héctor de Carondelet sent his Lieutenant Governor, Manuel Gayoso de Lemos, to negotiate and secure consent from the local Chickasaw so that a Spanish fort could be erected on the bluff. Holmes notes that consent was reached despite opposition from "disappointed Americans and a pro-American faction of the Chickasaws", when the "pro-Spanish faction signed the Chickasaw Bluffs Cession and Spain provided the Chickasaws with a trading post…".
Fort San Fernando de las Barrancas remained a focal point of Spanish activity until, as Holmes summarizes: he Treaty of San Lorenzo or Pinckney's Treaty of 1795, all of the careful, diplomatic work by Spanish officials in Louisiana and West Florida, which has succeeded for a decade in controlling the Indians, was undone. The United States gained the right to navigate the Mississippi River and won control over the Yazoo Strip north of the thirty-first parallel; the Spanish dismantled the fort, shipping its iron to their locations in Arkansas. In 1796, the site became the westernmost point of the newly admitted state of Tennessee, located in what was called the Southwest United States; the area was still occupied and controlled by the Chickasaw nation. Captain Isaac Guion led an American force down the Ohio River to claim the land, arriving on July 20, 1797. By this time, the Spanish had departed; the fort's ruins went unnoticed twenty years when Memphis was laid out as a city, after the United States government paid the Chickasaw for land.
The city of Memphis was founded on May 22, 1819 by John Overton, James Winchester and Andrew Jackson. They named it after the ancient capita
Little Nemo
Little Nemo is a fictional character created by American cartoonist Winsor McCay. He originated in an early comic strip by McCay, Dream of the Rarebit Fiend, before receiving his own spin-off series, Little Nemo in Slumberland; the full-page weekly strip depicted Nemo having fantastic dreams that were interrupted by his awakening in the final panel. The strip is considered McCay's masterpiece for its experiments with the form of the comics page, its use of color, its timing and pacing, the size and shape of its panels, perspective and other detail. Little Nemo in Slumberland ran in the New York Herald from October 15, 1905, until July 23, 1911; when McCay returned to the Herald in 1924, he revived the strip, it ran under its original title from Aug 3, 1924, until December 26, 1926, when McCay returned to Hearst. A weekly fantasy adventure, Little Nemo in Slumberland featured the young Nemo who dreamed himself into wondrous predicaments from which he awoke in bed in the last panel; the first episode begins with a command from King Morpheus of Slumberland to a minion to collect Nemo.
Nemo was to be the playmate of Slumberland's Princess, but it took months of adventures before Nemo arrived. Nemo and Flip become companions, are joined by an African Imp whom Flip finds in the Candy Islands; the group travels far and wide, from shanty towns to Mars, to Jack Frost's palace, to the bizarre architecture and distorted funhouse-mirror illusions of Befuddle Hall. The strip shows McCay's understanding of dream psychology of dream fears—falling, impalement; this dream world has its own moral code difficult to understand. Breaking it has terrible consequences, as when Nemo ignores instructions not to touch Queen Crystalette, who inhabits a cave of glass. Overcome with his infatuation, he causes her and her followers to shatter, awakens with "the groans of the dying guardsmen still ringing in his ears". Although the strip began October 15, 1905 with Morpheus, ruler of Slumberland, making his first attempt to bring Little Nemo to his realm, Nemo did not get into Slumberland until March 4, 1906 and, due to Flip's interfering, did not get to see the Princess until July 8.
His dream quest is always interrupted by either him falling out of bed, or his parents forcibly waking him up. On July 12, 1908, McCay made a major change of direction: Flip visits Nemo and tells him that he has had his uncle destroy Slumberland. After this, Nemo's dreams take place in his home town, though Flip—and a curious-looking boy named the Professor—accompany him; these adventures range from the down-to-earth to Rarebit-fiend type fantasy. The famous "walking bed" story was in this period. Slumberland continued to make sporadic appearances until it returned for good on December 26, 1909. Story-arcs included Befuddle Hall, a voyage to Mars, a trip around the world. McCay experimented with the form of the comics page, its timing and pacing, the size and shape of its panels and architectural and other detail. From the second installment, McCay had the panel sizes and layouts conform to the action in the strip: as a forest of mushrooms grew, so did the panels, the panels shrank as the mushrooms collapsed on Nemo.
In an early Thanksgiving episode, the focal action of a giant turkey gobbling Nemo's house receives an enormous circular panel in the center of the page. McCay accommodated a sense of proportion with panel size and shape, showing elephants and dragons at a scale the reader could feel in proportion to the regular characters. Narrative pacing McCay controlled through variation or repetition, as with equally-sized panels whose repeated layouts and minute differences in movement conveyed a feeling of buildup to some climactic action. In his familiar Art Nouveau-influenced style McCay outlined his characters in heavy blacks. Slumberland's ornate architecture was reminiscent of the architecture designed by McKim, Mead & White for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, as well as Luna Park and Dreamland in Coney Island, the Parisian Luxembourg Palace. McCay made imaginative use of color, sometimes changing the backgrounds' or characters' colors from panel to panel in a psychedelic imitation of a dream experience.
The colors were enhanced by the careful attention and advanced Ben Day lithographic process employed by the Herald's printing staff. McCay annotated the Nemo pages for the printers with the precise color schemes he wanted. For the first five months the pages were accompanied with captions beneath them, at first the captions were numbered. In contrast to the high level of skill in the artwork, the dialogue in the speech balloons is crude, sometimes approaching illegibility, "disfigur otherwise flawless work", according to critic R. C. Harvey; the level of effort and skill apparent in the title lettering highlights what seems to be the little regard for the dialogue balloons, their content, their placement in the visual composition. They tend to contain repetitive monologues expressing the increasing distress of the speakers, showed that McCay's gift was in the visual and not the verbal. McCay used traditional ethnic stereotypes prominently in Little Nemo, as in the ill-tempered Irishman Fl
Walt McDougall
Walter Hugh McDougall was an American cartoonist. He produced some of the earliest full color newspaper comic strips, was one of the first producers of regular political cartoons in American daily papers, his satirical cartoons, published in outlets such as the New York World and The North American, were influential in the 1884 U. S. presidential election, soon after political cartoons became a fixture in American papers. He drew children's comic strips, including Queer Visitors from the Marvelous Land of Oz written by L. Frank Baum, has been called the first syndicated cartoonist for his contributions to the weekly columns of humorist Bill Nye, his books include The Rambillicus Book. Walter Hugh McDougall was born in Newark, New Jersey, the son of John Alexander McDougall, a painter and close associate of writers such as Edgar Allan Poe and Washington Irving. Walt attended a military academy, from the age of 16 was self-educated, he began his professional work in 1876 with the New York Daily Graphic, which three years earlier had become the nation's first illustrated daily newspaper.
He sold early works to Harper's Weekly and Puck. For a time he was part owner of the Newark newspaper The Suburban, he married F. M. Burns in 1878, he began working for the New York World in 1884, a cartoon printed on August 10 of that year became the World's first political cartoon. Several of his cartoons were influential in the 1884 presidential election. One, likening nominee James G. Blaine's dinner with millionaires and plutocrats shortly before the election to Belshazzar's feast of the Bible, is credited with contributing to Blaine's narrow loss to Grover Cleveland; the cartoon, entitled "The Royal Feast of Belshazzar Blaine and the Money Kings" and co-drawn by Valerian Gribayedoff, was reprinted on billboards across New York and Blaine lost the state, thus the election, by little over 1,000 votes. Author Michael R. Smith writes McDougall and Gribayedoff "may have created the most influential political cartoon in United States history." "Belshazzar Blaine and the Money Kings" elevated the prominence of political cartoons, which soon after became a regular feature in daily newspapers nationwide.
McDougall is sometimes credited with the first color cartoon in an American newspaper: a May 21, 1893, cartoon on the cover to the World's first color Sunday comic supplement. However, the first color cartoon has been attributed to an April 2, 1893, George Turner cartoon in the New York Recorder. McDougall, in collaboration with Mark Fenderson, is credited with the first American color comic strip: "The Unfortunate Fate of a Well-Intentioned Dog", which first appeared in the World on February 4, 1894, he illustrated the popular newspaper column of humorist Bill Nye for many years, has thus been called the first syndicated cartoonist. While his caricature of Nye was recognized, it was disliked by Nye himself, he illustrated the comic strip Queer Visitors from the Marvelous Land of Oz, written by L. Frank Baum, as well as his own novel The Hidden City and story books such as Comic Animals and The Rambillicus Book, his comic strips included Fatty Felix, Hank the Hermit, Absent-Mined Abner, Peck's Bad Boy.
Another noted political cartoon appeared in Philadelphia's The North American in 1903: when Pennsylvania Governor Samuel W. Pennypacker—long mocked by cartoonists as a parrot—championed a libel bill banning the portrayal of politicians as animals, McDougall caricatured Pennypacker and his supporters as a tree, beer stein, turnip and chestnut burr. McDougall released an autobiography, This is the Life!, in 1926, died from a self-inflicted gunshot at his home in Waterford, Connecticut, on March 6, 1938, at the age of 80. Notable cartoons As author Fun and Fancy - Wonder Tales for the Children from 7 to 70. Newark, NJ: Charles E. Graham & Co. 1885. Comic Animals. New York: Charles E. Graham & Co. 1890. The Hidden City. New York: Cassell. 1891. The Un-Authorized History of Columbus. Newark, NJ: McDougall Publishing Co. 1892. The Rambillicus Book. Philadelphia: G. W. Jacobs & Co. 1903. Peck's his Country Cousin Cynthia. Chicago: Thompson & Thomas. 1907. Peck's his Chums. Chicago: Stanton & Van Vliet Co. 1908.
"Pictures in the Paper". The American Mercury. September 1925. Pp. 67–73. This is the Life!. New York: A. A. Knopf. 1926. As illustrator Nye, Edgar W. and James Whitcomb Riley. Nye and Riley's Railway Guide. Chicago: Dearborn. 1888. Queer Visitors from the Marvelous Land of Oz. Syndicated. 1904–05. Reprinted by Sunday Press, Palo Alto, 2009. History of American comics History of American newspapers Harvey, Robert C.. Insider Histories of Cartooning: Rediscovering Forgotten Famous Comics and Their Creators. University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 978-1-62674-354-0. Hess, Stephen. American Political Cartoons: The Evolution of a National Identity, 1754–2010. Transaction Publishers. ISBN 978-1-4128-1119-4. Lordan, Edward J.. Politics, Ink: How America's Cartoonists Skewer Politicians, from King George III to George Dubya. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-0-7425-3638-8. Marschall, Richard. "McDougall, Walter Hugh". In Horn, Maurice; the World Encyclopedia of Comics. 2. New York: Chelsea House. P. 469. Walt McDougall at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database Walt McDougall at the Comic Book DB Guide to the Bill Loughman Collection of Walt McDougall and Valerian Gribayedoff Cartoon Tearsheets at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum Walt McDougall photograph, 1927 at Historical Society of Pennsylvania
Popeye
Popeye the Sailor is a cartoon fictional character created by Elzie Crisler Segar. The character first appeared in the daily King Features comic strip Thimble Theatre on January 17, 1929, Popeye became the strip's title in years. Popeye has appeared in theatrical and television animated cartoons. Segar's Thimble Theatre strip was in its 10th year when Popeye made his debut, but the one-eyed sailor became the main focus of the strip, Thimble Theatre became one of King Features' most popular properties during the 1930s. After Segar's death in 1938, Thimble Theatre was continued by several writers and artists, most notably Segar's assistant Bud Sagendorf; the strip continues to appear in first-run installments in its Sunday edition and drawn by Hy Eisman. The daily strips are reprints of old Sagendorf stories. In 1933, Max Fleischer adapted the Thimble Theatre characters into a series of Popeye the Sailor theatrical cartoon shorts for Paramount Pictures; these cartoons proved to be among the most popular of the 1930s, Fleischer — and Paramount's own Famous Studios — continued production through 1957.
These cartoon shorts are now owned by Turner Entertainment and distributed by its sister company Warner Bros. Over the years, Popeye has appeared in comic books, television cartoons and video games, hundreds of advertisements, peripheral products ranging from spinach to candy cigarettes, the 1980 live-action film directed by Robert Altman and starring Robin Williams as Popeye. Charles M. Schulz said, "I think Popeye was a perfect comic strip, consistent in drawing and humor". In 2002, TV Guide ranked Popeye number 20 on its "50 Greatest Cartoon Characters of All Time" list. Popeye's story and characterization vary depending on the medium. Popeye got "luck" from rubbing the head of the Whiffle Hen. Swee'Pea is Popeye's ward in the comic strips, but he is depicted as belonging to Olive Oyl in cartoons. There is no absolute sense of continuity in the stories, although certain plot and presentation elements remain constant, including purposeful contradictions in Popeye's capabilities. Popeye seems bereft of manners and uneducated, yet he comes up with solutions to problems that seem insurmountable to the police or the scientific community.
He has displayed Sherlock Holmes-like investigative prowess, scientific ingenuity, successful diplomatic arguments. His pipe proves to be versatile. Among other things, it has served as a cutting torch, jet engine, periscope, musical instrument, a whistle with which he produces his trademark toot, he eats spinach through his pipe, sometimes sucking in the can along with the contents. Since the 1970s, Popeye is depicted using his pipe to smoke tobacco. Popeye's exploits are enhanced by a few recurring plot elements. One is the love triangle among Popeye and Bluto, Bluto's endless machinations to claim Olive at Popeye's expense. Another is his near-saintly perseverance in overcoming any obstacle to please Olive, who renounces Popeye for Bluto. Thimble Theatre was cartoonist Segar's third published strip when it first appeared in the New York Journal on December 19, 1919; the paper's owner William Randolph Hearst owned King Features Syndicate, which syndicated the strip. Thimble Theatre was intended as a replacement for Midget Movies by Ed Wheelan.
It did not attract a large audience at first, at the end of its first decade appeared in only half a dozen newspapers. In its early years, the strip featured characters acting out various stories and scenarios in theatrical style, it could be classified as a gag-a-day comic in those days. Thimble Theatre's first main characters were her boyfriend Harold Hamgravy. After the strip moved away from its initial focus, it settled into a comedy-adventure style featuring Olive and Olive's enterprising brother Castor Oyl. Olive's parents Cole and Nana Oyl made frequent appearances. Popeye first appeared in the strip on January 1929 as a minor character, he was hired by Castor Oyl and Ham to crew a ship for a voyage to Dice Island, the location of a casino owned by the crooked gambler Fadewell. Castor intended to break the bank at the casino using the unbeatable good luck conferred by stroking the hairs on the head of Bernice the Whiffle Hen. Weeks on the trip back, Popeye was shot many times by Jack Snork, a stooge of Fadewell's, but survived by rubbing Bernice's head.
After the adventure, Popeye left the strip but, due to reader reaction, he was brought back. The Popeye character became so popular that he was given a larger role, the strip was taken up by many more newspapers as a result. Initial strips presented Olive as being less than impressed with Popeye, but she left Hamgravy to become Popeye's girlfriend and Hamgravy left the strip as a regular. Over the years, she has displayed a fickle attitude towards the sailor. Castor Oyl continued to come up with get-rich-quick schemes and enlisted Popeye in his misadventures, he settled down as a detective and on bought a ranch out West. Castor has appeared in recent years. In 1933, Popeye received a foundling baby in the mail, whom he named Swee'Pea. Other regular characters in the strip were J. Wellington Wimpy, a hamburger-loving moocher who would "gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today".
Canada
Canada is a country in the northern part of North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic to the Pacific and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering 9.98 million square kilometres, making it the world's second-largest country by total area. Canada's southern border with the United States is the world's longest bi-national land border, its capital is Ottawa, its three largest metropolitan areas are Toronto and Vancouver. As a whole, Canada is sparsely populated, the majority of its land area being dominated by forest and tundra, its population is urbanized, with over 80 percent of its inhabitants concentrated in large and medium-sized cities, many near the southern border. Canada's climate varies across its vast area, ranging from arctic weather in the north, to hot summers in the southern regions, with four distinct seasons. Various indigenous peoples have inhabited what is now Canada for thousands of years prior to European colonization. Beginning in the 16th century and French expeditions explored, settled, along the Atlantic coast.
As a consequence of various armed conflicts, France ceded nearly all of its colonies in North America in 1763. In 1867, with the union of three British North American colonies through Confederation, Canada was formed as a federal dominion of four provinces; this began an accretion of provinces and territories and a process of increasing autonomy from the United Kingdom. This widening autonomy was highlighted by the Statute of Westminster of 1931 and culminated in the Canada Act of 1982, which severed the vestiges of legal dependence on the British parliament. Canada is a parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy in the Westminster tradition, with Elizabeth II as its queen and a prime minister who serves as the chair of the federal cabinet and head of government; the country is a realm within the Commonwealth of Nations, a member of the Francophonie and bilingual at the federal level. It ranks among the highest in international measurements of government transparency, civil liberties, quality of life, economic freedom, education.
It is one of the world's most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many other countries. Canada's long and complex relationship with the United States has had a significant impact on its economy and culture. A developed country, Canada has the sixteenth-highest nominal per capita income globally as well as the twelfth-highest ranking in the Human Development Index, its advanced economy is the tenth-largest in the world, relying chiefly upon its abundant natural resources and well-developed international trade networks. Canada is part of several major international and intergovernmental institutions or groupings including the United Nations, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the G7, the Group of Ten, the G20, the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. While a variety of theories have been postulated for the etymological origins of Canada, the name is now accepted as coming from the St. Lawrence Iroquoian word kanata, meaning "village" or "settlement".
In 1535, indigenous inhabitants of the present-day Quebec City region used the word to direct French explorer Jacques Cartier to the village of Stadacona. Cartier used the word Canada to refer not only to that particular village but to the entire area subject to Donnacona. From the 16th to the early 18th century "Canada" referred to the part of New France that lay along the Saint Lawrence River. In 1791, the area became two British colonies called Upper Canada and Lower Canada collectively named the Canadas. Upon Confederation in 1867, Canada was adopted as the legal name for the new country at the London Conference, the word Dominion was conferred as the country's title. By the 1950s, the term Dominion of Canada was no longer used by the United Kingdom, which considered Canada a "Realm of the Commonwealth"; the government of Louis St. Laurent ended the practice of using'Dominion' in the Statutes of Canada in 1951. In 1982, the passage of the Canada Act, bringing the Constitution of Canada under Canadian control, referred only to Canada, that year the name of the national holiday was changed from Dominion Day to Canada Day.
The term Dominion was used to distinguish the federal government from the provinces, though after the Second World War the term federal had replaced dominion. Indigenous peoples in present-day Canada include the First Nations, Métis, the last being a mixed-blood people who originated in the mid-17th century when First Nations and Inuit people married European settlers; the term "Aboriginal" as a collective noun is a specific term of art used in some legal documents, including the Constitution Act 1982. The first inhabitants of North America are hypothesized to have migrated from Siberia by way of the Bering land bridge and arrived at least 14,000 years ago; the Paleo-Indian archeological sites at Old Crow Flats and Bluefish Caves are two of the oldest sites of human habitation in Canada. The characteristics of Canadian indigenous societies included permanent settlements, complex societal hierarchies, trading networks; some of these cultures had collapsed by the time European explorers arrived in the late 15th and early 16th centuries and have only been discovered through archeological investigations.
The indigenous population at the time of the first European settlements is estimated to have been between 200,000
Flash Gordon
Flash Gordon is the hero of a space opera adventure comic strip created by and drawn by Alex Raymond. First published January 7, 1934, the strip was inspired by, created to compete with the established Buck Rogers adventure strip; the Flash Gordon comic strip has been translated into a wide variety of media, including motion pictures and animated series. The latest version, a Flash Gordon television series, appeared on the Syfy channel in the United States in 2007–2008; the Buck Rogers comic strip had been commercially successful, spawning novelizations and children's toys, King Features Syndicate decided to create their own science fiction comic strip to compete with it. At first King Features tried to purchase the rights to the John Carter of Mars stories by Edgar Rice Burroughs; the syndicate was unable, however, to reach an agreement with Burroughs. King Features turned to Alex Raymond, one of their staff artists, to create the story. One source for Flash Gordon was the Philip Wylie novel.
The themes of an approaching planet threatening the Earth, an athletic hero, his girlfriend, a scientist traveling to the new planet by rocket, were adapted by Raymond for the initial storyline. Raymond's first samples were dismissed for not containing enough action sequences. Raymond sent it back to the syndicate, who accepted it. Raymond was partnered with an experienced editor and writer. Raymond's first Flash Gordon story appeared alongside Jungle Jim; the Flash Gordon strip was well received by newspaper readers, becoming one of the most popular American comic strips of the 1930s. As with Buck Rogers, the success of Flash Gordon resulted in numerous licensed products being sold, including pop-up books, colouring books, toy spaceships and rayguns; the Flash Gordon comic strip ran as a daily from 1934 to 1992, with the Sunday strip continuing until 2003. Reprints are still being syndicated by King Features Syndicate; the comic strip follows the adventures of Flash Gordon, a handsome polo player and Yale University graduate, his companions Dale Arden and Dr. Hans Zarkov.
The story begins with Earth threatened by a collision with the planet Mongo. Dr. Zarkov invents a rocket ship to fly into space in an attempt to stop the disaster. Half mad, he kidnaps Flash and Dale and they travel to the planet. Landing on the planet, halting the collision, they come into conflict with Ming the Merciless, Mongo's evil ruler. For many years, the three companions have adventures on Mongo, traveling to the forest kingdom of Arboria, ruled by Prince Barin, they are joined in several early adventures by Prince Thun of the Lion Men. Ming is overthrown, Mongo is ruled by a council of leaders led by Barin. Flash and friends return to Earth and have some adventures before returning to Mongo and crashing in the kingdom of Tropica reuniting with Barin and others. Flash and his friends travel to other worlds and return to Mongo, where Prince Barin, married to Ming's daughter Princess Aura, has established a peaceful rule. In the 1950s, Flash became an astronaut; the long story of the Skorpii War takes Flash to other star systems, using starships that are faster than light.
In addition to Ming and his allies and his friends fought several other villains, including Azura, the Witch Queen. After Raymond's tenure writers created new enemies for Flash to combat. Austin Briggs created Kang Ming's callous son. Prince Polon, who had the power to shrink or enlarge living creatures, the unscrupulous Queen Rubia, Pyron the Comet Master were among the antagonists introduced during Mac Raboy's run; the Skorpi, a race of alien shape shifters who desired to conquer the galaxy, were recurring villains in both the Mac Raboy and Dan Barry stories. The Skorpi space-fighter ace Baron Dak-Tula became a periodic nemesis of Flash in the late 1970s stories. King Features sold the Flash Gordon strip to newspapers across the world, by the late 1930s, the strip was published in 130 newspapers, translated into eight foreign languages, was read by 50 million people. In the 1930s and 1940s, several newspapers in Britain carried Flash Gordon, including the Scottish Sunday Mail. In France, his adventures were published in the magazine Robinson, under the name "Guy l'Éclair".
Dale Arden was named Camille in the French translation. In Australia, the character and strip were retitled Speed Gordon to avoid a negative connotation of the word "Flash". However, events in the 1930s affected the strip's distribution. Newspapers in Nazi Germany were forbidden to carry the Flash Gordon strip, while in Fascist Italy it was restricted to two newspapers. In 1938, the Spanish magazine Aventurero, the only publication in the country to carry Flash Gordon, ceased publication because of the Spanish Civil War; the outbreak of World War II resulted in Flash Gordon being discontinued in many countries. In Belgium, artist Edgar Pierre Jacobs was therefore asked to bring the current Flash Gordon story to a satisfactory conclusion, which he did. After the war's end, the strip enjoyed a resurgence in international popularity. Flash Gordon reappeared in Italy and West Germany, it was al
Prince Valiant
Prince Valiant in the Days of King Arthur, or Prince Valiant, is an American comic strip created by Hal Foster in 1937. It is an epic adventure that has told a continuous story during its entire history, the full stretch of that story now totals more than 4000 Sunday strips; the strip appears weekly in more than 300 American newspapers, according to its distributor, King Features Syndicate. HRH Edward, the Duke of Windsor, called Prince Valiant the "greatest contribution to English literature in the past hundred years". Regarded by comics historians as one of the most impressive visual creations syndicated, the strip is noted for its realistically rendered panoramas and the intelligent, sometimes humorous, narrative; the format does not employ word balloons. Instead, the story is narrated in captions positioned at the bottom or sides of panels. Events depicted are taken from various time periods, from the late Roman Empire to the High Middle Ages, with a few brief scenes from modern times. While drawing the Tarzan comic strip, Foster wanted to do his own original newspaper feature, he began work on a strip he called Derek, Son of Thane changing the title to Prince Arn.
King Features manager Joseph Connelly renamed it Prince Valiant. In 1936, after extensive research, Foster pitched his concept to William Randolph Hearst, who had long wanted to distribute a strip by Foster. Hearst was so impressed. Prince Valiant began in full-color tabloid sections on Saturday February 13, 1937; the first full page was strip # 16. The internal dating changed from Saturday to Sunday with strip #66; the full-page strip continued until 1971, when strip #1788 was not offered in full-page format—it was the last strip Foster drew. The strip continues today by other artists in a half-page format; the setting is Arthurian. Valiant is a Nordic prince from Thule, located near present day Trondheim on the Norwegian coast. Early in the story Valiant arrives at Camelot where he becomes friends with Sir Gawain and Sir Tristram. Earning the respect of King Arthur and Merlin, he becomes a Knight of the Round Table. On a Mediterranean island he meets the love of his life, Queen of the Misty Isles, whom he marries.
He fights the Huns with his powerful Singing Sword, Flamberge, a magical blade created by the same enchanter who forged Arthur's Excalibur. Val travels to Africa and America and helps his father regain his lost throne of Thule, usurped by the tyrant Sligon; when the strip starts in 1937, Val is five years old. The first episodes follow the youth through the wild Fens district of Britain with his father, the deposed King Aguar of Thule; when Val encounters the witch Horrit she predicts he will have a life of adventure, noting that he will soon experience grief. Arriving home, Val discovers. Not long after this come encounters with Gawain, with gigantic creatures and with the glory of Camelot. Steve Donoghue comments: At first, in the earliest months of Prince Valiant, Foster’s Arthurian England might be confused with the Cimmeria of Conan the Barbarian: monsters abound; as a boy, Val fights a ‘dragon’ that looks a lot like a plesiosaur, he fires his arrows at a rampaging swamp-turtle the size of a Zamboni.
But only a few installments this has sublimated somewhat into history: when Val saves his new friend Sir Gawain from a robber knight and Gawain decides to take the villain to Camelot for summary judgement from King Arthur, the whole party is at one point attacked by another enormous beast—only this time it’s a salt water crocodile!... When they all at length succeed in killing the beast, Val is outraged that Gawain still seeks to have the man tried before King Arthur; the young prince speaks up in his outrage before the great king, his queen Guinevere and his feared wizard Merlin—and so a career at Camelot is born. Val becomes Gawain’s squire and immediately accompanies him on a quest, during which Gawain is captured and Val must use his wits—smiling and laughing the whole time—to free his mentor. On the trip, Gawain is wounded, the large panel where Val gets him back to Camelot is Foster’s first genuine visual show-stopper in the strip. Val acquires the Singing Sword in strips from 1938; the original owner of the Singing Sword is Prince Arn of Valiant's rival for the maid Ilene.
The two men put aside their differences. Arn hands Valiant the charmed sword to help him hold back their pursuers while he himself rides ahead to free Ilene; the pair continue in their efforts to rescue Ilene discovering that she has been killed in a shipwreck. Arn gives the Singing Sword to Valiant after the two part as friends. In the series it is mentioned that the Singing Sword is a sister to King Arthur's Excalibur. In the strips from 1939 Val is knighted by King Arthur, the following year, he helps to restore his father as King of Thule. Moving across Britain and the Holy Land, Val fights invading Goths and Saxons. In 1946, shortly after Val marries Aleta, she is kidnapped by the Viking raider Ulfran. Val's pursuit takes him past the Shetland Islands, the Faroe Islands, Greenland and the Saint Lawrence River, arriving at Niagara Falls 1,000 years before Columbus. Defeating Ulfran, Val is reunited with Aleta, the couple spend that winter with friendly Native Americans. In the strip dated August 31, 1947, Prince Arn, their first son, is born in America, Val celebrates by getting drunk.
The infant Arn is named after Prince Arn of Ord. Va
