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In 1986, King Features looked at its stable of unrelated newspaper strip heroes and decided the responsible thing to do was throw them all in a blender. Flash Gordon, Mandrake the Magician, and the Phantom. A spaceman, a stage hypnotist, and a guy who lives in a skull-shaped cave and inherited his job from his dad got drafted into a single Saturday morning cartoon called Defenders of the Earth on the apparent theory that if the Avengers could do a team-up, so could three guys who had never met before that year and shared nothing except a syndicate contract.

Then, because nothing from the ’80s was allowed to stay just a cartoon, Defenders of the Earth became a video game in 1990, courtesy of Enigma Variations, for the exact kind of home computer that made you type a magic incantation and wait: Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, Amiga, and, for the three people on Earth who owned one, the SAM Coupé. You play Flash, sneaking through Ming’s castle dodging security cameras, occasionally calling in Mandrake or the Phantom to open doors, because apparently that’s what magic and jungle-honed strength were for in these days.

Helping make sense of this glorious pile of licensed heroes is Ryan Estrada, who’s written comics for Star Trek, Popeye, Garfield, and, fittingly, Flash Gordon itself, having contributed to Papercutz’s newer Flash Gordon Adventures line. Ryan’s also built a reputation for tucking real hidden puzzles and messages directly into his comic pages, in plain sight, daring anyone paying close enough attention to find them. Which feels like exactly the right skillset for an episode about a security system that apparently only a few specific comic strip disciplines can defeat.

So track down a joystick you no longer own, adjust to a universe where Flash Gordon answers to a management structure that includes a professional hypnotist, and let’s find out whether the Defenders of the Earth earned their game, or whether Earth would’ve been just fine handling Ming on its own.
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Grab your canned vegetables and your questionable licensed tie-ins, because this week on Play Comics we’re diving headfirst into Popeye: Rush for Spinach on the Game Boy Advance—the game that looked at a classic comic strip about a gruff sailor punching his problems and said, “Actually, what if everyone just… ran a lot instead?” This is a world where the Sea Hag steals the global spinach supply, the solution is apparently time-traveling track meets, and Popeye, Olive Oyl, Bluto, and Wimpy all agree that the best way to settle things is to sprint through history like someone off-screen yelled “last one there buys lunch.”

Helping us untangle this leafy green disaster is the wonderful Ryan Estrada from the comic-making side of the internet, a man who knows exactly what it looks like when characters escape the page and do something absolutely no one asked them to do. Ryan’s here to help figure out how a comic icon who started life in newspaper strips, got famous selling spinach, and spent decades punching sea monsters somehow wound up in a handheld racing game that feels like it was brainstormed during a very strange lunch break.

So power up that tiny GBA screen, flex those forearms, and get ready for an episode that’s equal parts comic history lesson, adaptation autopsy, and incredulous laughter at the phrase “Popeye racing game.”Continue Reading

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Welcome to another gloriously chaotic episode of Play Comics, where today’s adventure features everyone’s favorite lasagna-loving, Monday-hating tabby cat stumbling through the digital wasteland of Garfield: The Search for Pooky on the Game Boy Advance. Because apparently, losing a teddy bear is serious enough business to warrant an entire platforming odyssey filled with death pits, questionable physics, and mice that probably deserve their own organized crime documentary.

Joining us for this tale of feline desperation and handheld gaming horrors is the phenomenally creative Ryan Estrada—artist, author, and genuine adventurer who has somehow managed to create official comics for everyone from Star Trek to Popeye to (yes, indeed) Garfield himself. When he’s not crafting award-nominated graphic novels like Banned Book Club or wandering through actual adventures that sound like they belong in their own comic series, Ryan brings the perfect blend of insider knowledge and artistic sensibility to help us navigate this particular slice of orange cat chaos.

So grab your favorite plush companion (and maybe hide it somewhere safe), prepare for some seriously questionable level design choices, and settle in for an episode that explores what happens when beloved comic strip characters get translated into the unforgiving world of Game Boy Advance platforming. Will our heroes survive Garfield’s glacially-paced walking speed? Can anyone explain why this cat can leap tall buildings but still can’t find a simple teddy bear? And most importantly, does this game capture the essence of Jim Davis’s creation, or does it just make us want to curl up for a very long nap?Continue Reading