38 Facts About Alex Raymond

Towards the end of 1933, Alex Raymond created the epic Flash Gordon science fiction comic strip to compete with the popular Buck Rogers comic strip.

Alex Raymond worked on the jungle adventure saga Jungle Jim and spy adventure Secret Agent X-9 concurrently with Flash, though his increasing workload caused him to leave Secret Agent X-9 to another artist by 1935.

Alex Raymond left the strips in 1944 to join the Marines, saw combat in the Pacific Ocean theater in 1945, and was demobilized in 1946.

In 1956, Alex Raymond was killed in a car crash at the age of 46.

Alex Raymond became known as "the artist's artist" and his much-imitated style can be seen on the many strips that he illustrated.

Alex Raymond was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 1996.

Maurice Horn stated that Alex Raymond unquestionably possessed "the most versatile talent" of all the comic strip creators.

Alex Raymond's father was a civil engineer and road builder who encouraged his son's love of drawing from an early age, even "covering one wall of his office in the Woolworth Building" with his young son's artwork.

Alex Raymond's father died when he was 12, after which he felt that there was not as viable a future in art as he had hoped.

Alex Raymond was influenced by a variety of strip cartoonists and magazine illustrators, including Matt Clark, Franklin Booth, and John La Gatta.

Alongside ghostwriter Don Moore, a pulp-fiction veteran, Alex Raymond created the visually sumptuous science fiction epic comic strip Flash Gordon.

The duo created the "complementary strip, Jungle Jim, an adventurous saga set in South-East Asia", a topper which ran above Flash in some papers Alex Raymond was concurrently illustrating Secret Agent X-9, which premiered January 22,1934, two weeks after the two other strips.

Alex Raymond left the Sunday strip in 1944 to join the Marines, whereupon the daily strip was cancelled and Briggs assumed the Sunday strip duties, continuing until 1948.

Alex Raymond took the war in Europe seriously enough to incorporate it into his strips, with Flash returning to Earth in the Spring of 1941.

Alex Raymond was becoming "restive about doing his duty", a restlessness increased by the knowledge that four of his five brothers were already enlisted.

King Features were not prepared to usurp Austin Briggs from the Sunday strip and pointed out that Alex Raymond had left voluntarily to enlist.

The plotting of the strips is harder to attribute, the scant evidence available supporting the notion that Alex Raymond was more than simply an illustrator.

Stylistically, "Alex Raymond turned to the Cooper Studio-Al Parker advertising style for inspiration, spurring a new generation of comic artists to follow a fresh direction", that of "glorify[ing] contemporary post-War American life".

Alex Raymond served as the National Cartoonists Society's president from 1950 until 1952, putting into place the committee structure responsible for overseeing the organization, and threw himself into championing the medium as an art form.

Alex Raymond profited in recognizability as well as financially, and continued on the strip until his untimely death in September 1956.

Fellow-cartoonist Stan Drake recalled that Alex Raymond called his black areas "pools of quiet", serving as they did "as a pause for the viewer, something to slow the eye across the strip's panels".

In particular, Alex Raymond has been named as a key influence by many of the most influential and important comic book artists of all time.

Key Golden Age artists credit Alex Raymond with influencing their work.

Cerebus creator Dave Sim has published a comic book since 2008 called glamourpuss which is an examination of Alex Raymond's career structured around a hypothetical storyline set during the last day of Raymond's life.

Alex Raymond married Helen Frances Williams on December 31,1930, with whom he had five children.

Alex Raymond was the great-uncle of actors Matt Dillon and Kevin Dillon.

Alex Raymond's younger brother, Jim Raymond, was a cartoonist, and worked as assistant to Chic Young on Blondie.

On September 6,1956, a month before his 47th birthday, Alex Raymond was killed in an automobile accident in Westport, Connecticut.

Alex Raymond was driving the convertible with its top down when the rain started to fall.

Alex Raymond decided to reach his destination quicker rather than stop the vehicle to put the top back up.

The car crashed and Drake was thrown clear, but Alex Raymond, who was wearing his seat belt to no avail, died instantly.

Alex Raymond had been involved in four automobile accidents in the month prior to his death.

Schumer alleged that Alex Raymond had been having affairs and that his wife was refusing to grant him a divorce.

Drake has been quoted as speculating that Alex Raymond "hit the accelerator by mistake".

Alex Raymond was buried in St John's Roman Catholic Cemetery in Darien, Connecticut.

Alex Raymond received a Reuben Award from the National Cartoonists Society in 1949 for his work on Rip Kirby, and he later served as president of the society in 1950 and 1951.

Alex Raymond was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 1996.

Alex Raymond was inducted into the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame in 2014.