comics pages today. He continued with the Youngs until 1933, committing himself irrevocably to comics as his medium, honing his craft and making a name for himself with the power structure inside the King syndicate. Late that year, Raymond was given his first crack at a strip under his own signature. William Randolph Hearst’s King Features wanted a science fiction strip to compete with the National Newspaper Service syndicate’s immensely popular Buck Rogers in the 25^th Century, which had been running since 1929, written by the Philip Francis Nowlan and drawn by Richard Calkins. He would be paired with a writer, Don Moore, to devise the spacefaring concept, along with another feature of their own choosing. The results were Flash Gordon and Jungle Jim, which debuted on January 7, 1934.

King, backed by its irascible and immensely wealthy founder, wielded considerable muscle in the syndication business. An important King property would debut before millions via Hearst’s own papers, which dominated many of the largest markets. There, they would take hold in the public consciousness, and the syndicate would place them in hundreds of non-Hearst markets with an aggressive and Barnumesque brand of salesmanship. Partly for this reason, and partly because of Raymond’s fantastic artwork, which started good but rapidly approached the sublime, Flash Gordon (and to a lesser extent, Jungle Jim) was an instant hit, quickly eclipsing its longer running competitor in readership and name recognition.  Raymond had been launched on a meteoric rise to cartooning stardom.