Alex raymond
Alexander Gillespie Raymond (New Rochelle, New York, October 2, 1909 - Westpost, Connecticut, September 6, 1956), known as Alex Raymond, was an American cartoonist.
Early years (1909-1933)
Since he was little, he showed extraordinary gifts for drawing. His father, an engineer with a passion for design, tried to steer him into this profession. Although Raymond found his first job as a stockbroker on Wall Street, the 1929 crash was in charge of making him change his mind. Shortly thereafter he enrolled in the Grand School of Art.
In the early 1930s he began working as a "black" (uncredited cartoonist) for King Features Syndicate on the Chic and Lyman Young brothers' series Blondie and Tim Tyler's Luck, respectively. The experience acquired in these series allowed him to become, at the beginning of 1934, the artist of three classic series in the history of comics: Flash Gordon, Jungle Jim and Secret. Agent X-9.
Classic series (1934-1944)
The first two series began publication on January 7, 1934, in the Sunday supplements of newspapers. Flash Gordon took up two-thirds of a page, while the top third was taken up by Jungle Jim, his topper, or supporting series.. For these series, Raymond initially had the collaboration of his brother James Raymond, and Don Moore, editor of pulp literature magazines, who, however, does not appear credited on the page.
Flash Gordon was a science fiction strip that King Features Syndicate planned to compete with the popular Buck Rogers. Its starting point is quite delirious: Flash Gordon, a famous polo player, and Dale Arden, the hero's future girlfriend, parachute when the plane they were traveling in crashes into a meteorite. They fall near the place where the scientist Hans Zarkov prepares his plans to divert the trajectory of a major meteorite that is going to hit the Earth. The plan consists of nothing less than launching a rocket against the meteorite. In that rocket travels himself, Dale Arden and Flash Gordon. As a result, they travel with that rocket through space and end up on the planet Mongo, the future scene of their adventures. Despite the absurdity of the initial approach, the adventures of Flash and his friends on the planet Mongo, and their battles against the evil Ming in strange settings, partly futuristic, partly inspired by ancient civilizations They were very successful.
If Flash Gordon was King Features Syndicate's trump card to compete with Buck Rogers in the field of science fiction, Jungle Jim (Jungle Jim) was his response to the success of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan. In the American popular culture of the first half of the 1930s, adventures in exotic places were fashionable. The protagonist, "Jungle" Jim Bradley, was a white hunter operating in the jungles of Southeast Asia, accompanied by a native servant, Kolu. The female characters of the series stand out, such as the adventurer Lilly De Vrille.
Secret Agent X-9 began to be published as a daily strip (daily strip), in black and white from January 22, 1934. To write the scripts For this series, Joseph Connolly, head of King Features Syndicate, hired well-known crime novelist Dashiell Hammett. The character, secret agent X-9, is an upholder of the law who hates gangsters to death ever since a gang of criminals murdered his wife and son. In Raymond's stage neither the character nor the agency he worked for had a name; Years later, however, it was revealed that his name was Phil Corrigan and that he worked for the FBI. In reality, Hammett only wrote the entire first episode of the series, titled 'The Top', and then limited himself to suggesting plots to Raymond. On April 20, 1935, the writer abandoned comics altogether, being replaced by Leslie Charteris, and at the beginning of 1936 Raymond also stopped drawing her to concentrate on his Sunday pages of Flash Gordon and Jungle. Jim. The series would continue, however, written and drawn by other authors, until 1996.
It is at this moment, when the stories of Flash Gordon acquire an epic tone and in Raymond's drawings the human figure takes on an increasing role. Starting in 1936, Raymond enlisted the help of Austin Brigss to make the Flash Gordon comics. In 1938, the cartoonist even decided to dispense with speech bubbles -as was done in other adventure series, such as Prince Valiente, by Harold Foster- so as not to interfere with the plastic structuring of the cartoon. Raymond's work on Flash Gordon constitutes, from a graphic point of view, one of the classic works of American comics.
Maturity and death (1944-1956)
Briggs, who from 1940 was in charge of drawing Flash Gordon's daily strip, replaced Raymond when he was called up in April 1944. Jungle Jim was left in the hands of Alex's brother, James Raymond, and continued to be published until the mid-1950s. The character became very popular, and his stories were even adapted for film and television.
Alex spent two years in the Navy, spending part of his military service in the Pacific, serving aboard the aircraft carrier Gilbert Islands. Upon his return to civilian life, he undertakes a new job for King Features Syndicate, which is for some his most important work, Rip Kirby , crime thriller. It was published as a daily strip, in black and white, from March 4, 1946. At first, Raymond wrote and drew the series, but from 1952 (according to others, from 1948) Fred Dickenson took over the scripts. The stories of the series do not always run along the usual paths of the police genre, but rather there is room for themes typical of other genres, such as sentimental melodrama.
The protagonist is a New York detective, although very distant from the standards of the genre. Tall and athletic, middle-aged, he dresses elegantly, wears glasses, smokes a pipe and is a lover of cognac and classical music (he plays the piano). He also likes golf and sports cars. He lives in a comfortable apartment with Desmond, an ex-con turned sophisticated butler. Kirby is engaged to the blonde Honey Dorian , but in love with her he frequently crosses paths with the brunette Pagan Lee .
On September 6, 1956, Alex Raymond died in a car accident in Westport, Connecticut, while driving a Corvette with his friend Stan Drake, also a well-known cartoonist. Drake was spared, but Raymond died instantly. He was at the zenith of his career. After Raymond's death in 1956, the series was continued by the talented cartoonist John Prentice.
Assessment and influence
The work of Alex Raymond, especially Flash Gordon, has been imitated over and over again for years, being the model for all science fiction stories for many years.
Habitually, the academic perfection of his figures, of an almost sculptural conception, and even the general sensationalism of his drawing have been praised, but theorists such as Pedro Porcel have pointed out that this masks his neglect of many other aspects,
especially documentation and narrative agility, which in the best known years Flash Gordon It's going to a very close-up.