FOUR COLOR RADIO | 13th Dimension, Comics, Creators, Culture

May09

FOUR COLOR RADIO: The All-Time Classic THE LONE RANGER

Posted by Dan Greenfield on May 9, 2026

FOUR COLOR RADIO: The All-Time Classic THE LONE RANGER

Old-time radio shows and their comics connections… By PETER BOSCH Welcome back to FOUR COLOR RADIO, the magical station where you can be instantly transported to the great old days when radio was what TV is today — the entry into a land of fantastic imagination! I am your host and today we must don our Western garb to visit a time when the masked rider of the plains was our companion in the fight for law and order. So, let’s return to those glorious days when the Lone Ranger and Tonto roamed the Old West. We actually need to start in 1929, four years before the Lone Ranger came into existence. George W. Trendle and his partner, John H. King, were owners of a string of movie theaters but they decided to dispose of them and turn their attention to what they thought would be a more profitable medium — radio. They purchased a station in Detroit, WXYZ, with the plan to cut ties to the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), which had been supplying nighttime programming to the outlet for a fee. Trendle and King believed great profits were to be made by producing their own programs and raking in 100% of the money from local sponsors. Toward the end of 1932, however, WXYZ was losing $4,000 a week. What they needed was a hero to come riding to their rescue. Though several individuals later said the Lone Ranger was their idea, from all accounts it was actually a group effort by Trendle and his team. Trendle decided to make the project a Western that was aimed at kids. He particularly liked the idea of the setting because cowboy character merchandising was easy and had plenty of opportunities for different items. Trendle was also a fan of Zorro, who had debuted in a 1919 pulp magazine serial, and onscreen in the 1920 silent swashbuckler starring Douglas Fairbanks, The Mark of Zorro. He wanted the new character to also wear a mask and have some of the derring-do and humor of Zorro. The mask stayed but the Ranger was not the right fit for derring-do and humor. The idea for the name of the Western hero was pitched by a team member (“Lone Star Ranger” had been mentioned first but there was already a character called that). Trendle called...

Feb28

FOUR COLOR RADIO: The 1930s’ FLASH GORDON and JUNGLE JIM

Posted by Dan Greenfield on Feb 28, 2026

FOUR COLOR RADIO: The 1930s’ FLASH GORDON and JUNGLE JIM

Old-time radio shows and their comics connections… By PETER BOSCH Here I am, back again. The Rajah of Radio. The Accumulator of the Airwaves. Step into my inner sanctum for another adventure in time travel, back to when radio was king in the home. What TV is today, radio was in the 1930s and ’40s. And — just like today — the airwaves were filled with programs with ties to comic-book, pulp, and science fiction heroes. This time around, we go to the planet Mongo for The Amazing Interplanetary Adventures of Flash Gordon and then we head back to Earth for the tales of Jungle Jim! You likely know they shared space on the Sunday page by Alex Raymond (which was sometimes written or co-written by Don Moore) in the Thirties and Forties… … but did you know they appeared together in a few episodes of the Flash Gordon radio program? Flash Gordon’s radio show debuted April 27, 1935, a year before the first Buster Crabbe movie serial. On radio, the heroic Gordon was played by another Gordon — Gale Gordon. Yes, Mr. Mooney on The Lucy Show and Principal Conklin on Our Miss Brooks! One and the same. The cast also included Maurice Franklin as Dr. Zarkov and Bruno Wick as Ming the Merciless. The actress who played Dale Arden is unconfirmed. (At least one historian has put forward Irene Champlin as Dale on the radio program but they are confusing when she played Dale on the 1950s TV series. In 1935, at the time of the Flash Gordon radio series, she was 4 years old!) The 26-episode program ran once a week and the stories were taken from the Sunday newspaper comic strip by Raymond. The radio series came to an end October 26, 1935, but the episode before that had Flash, Dale, and Zarkov returning to Earth — where they crashed in a jungle. They were rescued by Jim Bradley, aka “Jungle Jim.” On the last episode of the series, Flash and Dale were wed (something that never happened in the comic strip). Here is The Amazing Interplanetary Adventures of Flash Gordon complete radio series. (Please note: The last of the radio serial is listed at this link as “Good Bye Jungle Jim Hello USA.” The recordings following that are a mishmash of other FG stories,...

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