Alex Raymond
Alex Raymond was an influential American cartoonist born in 1909 in New Rochelle, New York. He studied at Iona Prep School and the Grand Central School of Art, initially working in a Wall Street brokerage firm before transitioning to drawing comic strips. His early career included contributions to well-known strips such as "Tillie the Toiler," "Tim Tyler's Luck," and "Blondie." Raymond's most notable works include "Secret Agent X-9," co-written with famed mystery writer Dashiell Hammett, and the iconic "Flash Gordon," which became one of his towering achievements and helped shape the science fiction genre in comics.
Throughout his career, he created stories that drew on popular themes like jungle adventures and space operas. Raymond served in the U.S. Marine Corps during World War II, creating impactful posters, and later introduced the character Rip Kirby, a cerebral detective, in his final strip. He was also president of the National Cartoonists' Society. Tragically, Raymond's life was cut short in an automobile accident in 1956, but his legacy endures through his contributions to American comic art, particularly his mastery of color and detail in "Flash Gordon."
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Subject Terms
Alex Raymond
Comic Strip Artist
- Born: October 2, 1909
- Birthplace: New Rochelle, New York
- Died: September 6, 1956
- Place of death: Westport, Connecticut
Biography
Alexander Gillespie Raymond was born in New Rochelle, New York, in 1909. He was educated at Iona Prep School and the Grand Central School of Art. After a brief stint in a Wall Street brokerage firm around the time of the great crash in 1929, he began to draw for newspaper comic strips.
From 1930 to 1931 he worked for Russ Westover on Tillie the Toiler. From 1931 to 1933 he drew Lyman Young’s strip Tim Tyler’s Luck and Chic Young’s strip Blondie. In 1934, he became artist on three of his own strips. One of them, Secret Agent X-9, is of particular interest to detective novel fans, because it was written by Dashiell Hammett, perhaps the best of the hard-boiled mystery writers, and creator of Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon (1930) and Nick and Nora Charles in The Thin Man (1934).
Raymond’s other two strips were created with Don Moore, and each sought to build on the popularity of other subgenres. Jungle Jim sought to capitalize on the success of the jungle adventure story, as shown in the success of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan of the Apes (1914) in various media. Ironically, the same actor, Olympic swimmer Johnny Weissmuller, would portray both characters in the movies. The other sought to build on the craze for science fiction that fueled the success of the strip Buck Rogers in the Twenty- Fifth Century A.D. (1929). This strip became Raymond’s towering achievement: Flash Gordon (again, ironically, an Olympic swimmer, Larry “Buster” Crabbe, portrayed both Rogers and Gordon in movie serials).
As science fiction, Flash Gordon is rudimentary space opera. The inhabitants of the planet Mongo are loosely based on Burroughs’s creatures in A Princess of Mars (1912) and its sequels in that they exhibit a color scheme (yellow, red, blue, brown). They do not, however, rise to Burroughs’s basic level of originality, in that Mongo’s intelligent inhabitants are all hominid, and its monsters copies of earth animals (such as the “wolvron” and the “sharkon”). The chief villain, with his Chinese name (Ming), henchmen (Lin Chu, Admiral Chung), and yellow skin, is clearly an update of the so-called Yellow Peril characters so often used as villains in Anglo-American popular culture in the first half of the twentieth century; even the name of Mongo’s chief god, Tao, points to an Asian origin. Also, Flash Gordon contains a surprising amount of bare skin and sadism for its era: A skimpily clad Dale Arden is chained to a pillar more than once. The strip was enormously influential in its own right, as were the three Universal movie serials based on it.
During World War II, Raymond served with the U.S. Marine Corps, drawing stunning posters such as “Marines at Prayer.” Raymond’s last strip was Rip Kirby (1946-1956), about a cerebral police detective whose resemblance to a muscular Clark Kent shows that he can use brawn when necessary. Raymond was president of the National Cartoonists’ Society from 1950 to 1951. He died in an automobile accident in Westport, Connecticut, in 1956.
Right up until his death, Raymond was willing to learn new techniques. The mastery of color, line, detail, and invention he exhibited in Flash Gordon has ensured his permanent place in American popular culture.