{"id":12239,"date":"2014-01-07T21:01:18","date_gmt":"2014-01-08T02:01:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/?p=12239"},"modified":"2014-01-07T21:02:14","modified_gmt":"2014-01-08T02:02:14","slug":"happy-80th-birthday-flash-gordon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/2014\/01\/07\/happy-80th-birthday-flash-gordon\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy 80th birthday, Flash Gordon!"},"content":{"rendered":"

I wanted to wish Flash Gordon a happy birthday today—after all, his first strip appeared in newspapers on January 7, 1934—but then I took a look at that first strip, which I don’t recall having seen before …<\/p>\n

… and I winced. You might wince, too.<\/p>\n

\"FirstFlashGordonJanuary71934\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Yep. It all began with “howling blacks.”<\/p>\n

Once I saw that, I hesitated. I thought about not<\/em> posting this birthday wish, because you might get the wrong idea about what I was celebrating, and the worldview I considered just. But then I reconsidered, because … attention must be still be paid.<\/p>\n

We—and by we, I mean science fiction—would not be where we are today without creator Alex Raymond and Flash Gordon. Which means that even though that initial strip shows its age, a true artifact of 1934, and that panel in particular gives me pause, yes, I still do want to take a moment to pause and remember.<\/p>\n

So—happy birthday, Flash!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I wanted to wish Flash Gordon a happy birthday today—after all, his first strip appeared in newspapers on January 7, 1934—but then I took a look at that first strip, which I don’t recall having seen before … … and I winced. You might wince, too. Yep. It all began with “howling blacks.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[363,151,18,364],"class_list":["post-12239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-alex-raymond","tag-birthdays","tag-comics","tag-flash-gordon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12239"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12239\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12253,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12239\/revisions\/12253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}