First "Laptop" Discovered in Flash Gordon Comics

Probably the earliest depiction of a communication device resembling a laptop has been discovered in an ancient Flash Gordon comics by Mende Petreski of Prilep, Macedonia.

Browsing through his comics collection, Mr. Petreski stumbled upon a panel in Politikin Zabavnik weekly published June 14, 1974, featuring the forces of Ming the Merciless using a device which looks a lot like a laptop to talk to their leader.

Translation: "Our infantry will stay in the cover until the rockets silence the rebel armored cars, commander" - "Keep us posted about the flow of the operation, Major!"

This particular comics represents a Serbian translation of an episode drawn around 1937 by Alex Raymond. The title the magazine used is "Ming's Prisoners", while the contents probably covers part of the story "The Outlaws of Mongo" which the Flash Gordon Wiki attributes to Alex Raymond and Don Moore, originally published as Sunday comics from August 15, 1937 – June 5, 1938.

The Wiki mentions the spacephone as a "communication device used on Mongo," but makes no mention about the laptop-like apparatus.

The leading Macedonian portal On.net broke the news of this discovery first. It can be of interest to computer science historians and comics lovers.

Since 2004, Checker Book Publishing Group has been republishing the Alex Raymond's Flash Gordon comics in hardcopy edition (seven books in total).


Flash Gordon comics were a major hit in Former Yugoslavia, published by popular magazines such as Politikin Zabavnik and Stripoteka. While the former had a tradition of republishing both classic episodes and reruns, the later usually featured newer installments by Dan Barry.

Several scans from this historic episode are available bellow, courtesy of Mr. Mende Petreski.

SF Rock Music Stars: Queen

British rock band Queen has made significant contribution to science fiction by making music for two movie soundtracks: Flash Gordon (1980, DVD, CD) and Highlander (1986, DVD).

Both are great albums, even though not everybody thinks so. Concerning the later, Wikipedia notes:

The original movie had a well-regarded soundtrack by Queen, including "Princes of the Universe," which is also used in the Highlander television series title sequence. While an album specifically tied to the Highlander movie was never released, the Queen album "A Kind Of Magic" (a phrase spoken twice in the movie by Connor) featured most of the songs from the film, as well as other music on the same theme. Notably, Queen's version of "New York, New York" (playing while The Kurgan drives Brenda through New York) was never released by Queen. All the Queen songs in Highlander were purposely written for the movie, except the song "Hammer To Fall" which had been previously released on their album The Works in 1984. Queen saw an early screening of Highlander, and decided to compose music for the film's entire non-symphonic soundtrack. They wrote many of the songs specifically to match the mood of the scenes when the songs were played, notably Brian May's heart-rending "Who Wants To Live Forever" concerning the doomed love of Connor and his original, mortal Highland bride.

Higlander-related videos:

• Princes of the Universe - colage made by fans using scenes from the movie
• A Kind of Magic - official video
• Who Wants to Live Forever - ditto
  

Flash Gordon is mostly instrumental, and had one single "Flash's Theme," "notable for its pounding, repetitive bassline and the camp humour of the snippets of dialogue from the movie that it contains." The linked video clip features key scenes from the movie.

Update: 50 Queen videoclips.