Comic strip news: Flash Gordon returns, Spider-Man canceled

This Sunday the Flash Gordon comic strip returned with new strips for the first time since 2003, both online and in print.

King Features has enlisted Dan Schkade, creator of Lavender Jack, to write and draw the strip. For the last 20 years King Features has offered reruns of the strip, as drawn by Jim Keefe (which can still be found online).

“The initial version of Flash I pitched was a little more purposefully a himbo,” Schkade told the Washington Post. Schkade won a competitive tryout earlier this year to take over the strip, and he agreed to make Flash less of a himbo and “a more classic, straightforward hero.”

Schkade brings a different style to the strip than Keefe; as he has a cool art deco approach to his art that gives it a more modern feel.

Schkade isn’t the only new creator making Flash Gordon comics — Mad Cave announced at the New York Comic Con that Jeremy Adams will write the Flash Gordon comic they announced earlier this year.

While Flash Gordon may be back, news of another strip that’s been in reprint limbo also landed this weekend. According to the Daily Cartoonist, the Amazing Spider-Man comic strip has been officially cancelled. It went into reruns almost five years ago with the promise that new strips would return, but now King Features has removed it from their listings entirely.

The strip first debuted in newspapers back in 1977 and featured storylines and artwork by Stan Lee, John Romita, Larry Lieber, Paul Ryan and more over the years. While the strip was in a separate continuity than the comics (and even has its own Spider-verse designation, Earth-77013) it did have a few storylines that aligned with the comic series, including the wedding of Peter Parker and Mary Jane and the subsequent “One More Day/Brand New Day” storyline that erased their marriage. Fan reaction to the changes in the strip were so negative that Lee decided to write it off as a bad dream.