10 Comic Book Heroes Whose Origins Are A Mystery
2. Flash Gordon
With the success of the Buck Rogers comic strip, King Features Syndicate tapped writer Alex Raymond to create something in that style. In 1934, Raymond created “Flash Gordon”, whose daily strip ran from 1934 to 1992, and the Sunday strip ran until 2003. Reprints continue to run to this day. The series spanned comics, coloring books, cartoons, radio shows, and a 1980 feature film starring Sam J. Jones and featuring the music of Queen.
The original origin saw Flash as a Yale University graduate and polo player. Earth was on a collision course with the Planet Mongo and nearly-mad scientist Hans Zarkov created a rocket to stop it. He kidnapped Flash and Dale Arden and they travel to Mongo to fight the evil Ming the Merciless. It is never explained how polo made Flash a good fighter, how it taught him to fly spaceships or fire ray guns - he was just especially adept at these things.
Later stories and the 1980s movie updated Flash as a football player/quarterback, and Dale was made a plucky reporter in the vein of Lois Lane instead of the stereotypical damsel in distress. Nearly every modern comic company has created a Flash Gordon series at one time. In 1988, writer Dan Jurgens penned a nine-issue miniseries that saw Flash as a washed-up basketball player who became a hero on Mongo.