Dynamite announces The Bionic Woman, and a Flash Gordon spinoff, Merciless: The Rise of Ming

Dynamite has some new books on the way, including THE BIONIC WOMAN, by Paul Tobin and Leno Carvalho with Paul Renaud on covers.

Today it’s MERCILESS: THE RISE OF MING #1, which is written by Scott Beatty and drawn by Ron Adrian, with Alex Ross covers. This is a spin-off prequel of FLASH GORDON: ZEITGEIST (a title that just begs for spin-offs called Flash Gordon: Weltschmerz, Flash Gordon: Der Zauberberg and so on.) The book debuts in April, and the team waxed enthusiastic about it:

“In most heroic fiction, we (the readers, that is) never really question why the villains do very bad things. It’s always just assumed that evil is as evil does,” says writer Scott Beatty. “Ming is one of the great antagonists of science fiction. In many ways, he’s archetypal and the model for all intergalactic despots to follow. But he’s not just Ming. Everybody knows he’s Ming the MERCILESS. And he’s successful at being just that. Ming has a plan. For EVERYTHING. Readers of FLASH GORDON can think of MERCILESS: THE RISE OF MING as “required reading” for the series’ central conflict. It’s a primer that reveals not just who Ming the Merciless is–well before he ruled all of Mongo–but just what he did to get there… and WHY he did it.”

“Scott [Beatty] has taken the groundwork laid by Eric [Trautmann] and Alex [Ross] in Flash Gordon and gone back in time to tell the tale of the Rise of Ming,” states Dynamite Editor Joe Rybandt. “This is the direct precursor to the story in Flash Gordon and presents the definitive origin of the universe’s most merciless dictator.”



Here’s BIONIC WOMAN stuff: