Alexander Gillespie Raymond Jr. (October 2, 1909 – September 6, 1956)[2] was an American cartoonist and illustrator who was best known for creating the Flash Gordon comic strip for King Features Syndicate in 1934.

Upon his return to civilian life, Raymond created and illustrated the much-heralded Rip Kirby, a private detective comic strip.

In the wake of the 1929 economic crisis he enrolled in the Grand Central School of Art in New York City and began working as a solicitor for a mortgage broker.

[9][10] Raymond was influenced by a variety of strip cartoonists and magazine illustrators, including Matt Clark, Franklin Booth, and John La Gatta.

[11] Towards the end of 1933,[5] King Features asked him to create a Sunday page that could compete with Buck Rogers in the 25th Century,[10] a popular science fiction adventure strip that had debuted in 1929 and already spawned the rival Brick Bradford in 1933.

[11] According to King Features, syndicate president Joe Connolly "gave Raymond an idea ... based on fantastic adventures similar to those of Jules Verne".

[9] Alongside ghostwriter Don Moore,[11] a pulp-fiction veteran, Raymond created the visually sumptuous science fiction epic comic strip Flash Gordon.

Lost in the worthwhile effort to distinguish comics as an art form, the romance, sweep and beauty of Raymond's draftsmanship, his incomparable line work, is dismissed.

"[12] Debuting on January 7, 1934, Raymond's first Flash strip introduced the "world-famous polo player", improbably roped into a space adventure alongside love-interest Dale Arden and scientist Dr. Hans Zarkov.

[17] By the end of 1935, "the [work]load was too much for Raymond,"[5] who left Secret Agent X-9 to artist Charles Flanders [fr], in order to devote more time to his meticulous Sunday pages.

[18] Raymond's work on X-9 is said to particularly reach for "the feel of the best pulp interior art of the time," a style that would evolve with his own so-called "great flourishes" and "later blossom to full effect in Flash Gordon and Jungle Jim".

Combining this with a removal of dialogue from speech balloons to captions at the bottom of the panel afforded Raymond the space to create detailed and atmospheric backgrounds.

[19] Run above Flash Gordon, Raymond's Jungle Jim is described by Armando Mendez as "a thing of beauty ... always more than just a topper or a shallow response to Hal Foster's exquisite Tarzan".

Jungle Jim was "set in contemporary times and the exotic Malay peninsula of islands, [but] was intended to hark back to the original tales of Kipling, Haggard and Burroughs".

[17] In February 1944, Raymond left King Features and his work on the Sunday Flash Gordon/Jungle Jim pages to join the U.S. Marine Corps, commissioned as a captain and serving in the public-relations arm.

"[6] Desiring "to get closer to the action," he then trained at the Marine Corps Air Station in Santa Barbara before serving in the Pacific Ocean theater "on the 1945 cruise of the escort carrier USS Gilbert Islands.

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

[12] Raymond's "police daily strip,"[5] named after its central character – J. Remington "Rip" Kirby[12] – debuted on March 4, 1946, conceived (and initially scripted) by King Features editor Ward Greene.

[21] Running alongside the post-World War II reintegration of America's military into civilian life, Rip (like Raymond) was "an ex-Marine," who "set himself up as a private detective" a vocation tailor-made to provide daily thrills.

[21] Described by Stephen Becker as "modern and almost too intellectual",[22] the strip eschewed many of the pulp fictional detective tropes (e.g. alcoholism, two-fisted assistants, and an assortment of interchangeable femmes fatale).

Instead, "[Rip] did more cogitating than fisticuffing, and smoked a leisurely pipe while he did it;" "had a frail, balding assistant ... instead of a two-fisted sidekick;" "had a steady girlfriend ... [and] [i]f that wasn't enough, he even wore glasses!

"[17] Stylistically, "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".

[21] He also 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.

[21] His collaborator from 1952 was writer Fred Dickenson (who wrote the strip for a further 34 years), and he was succeeded artistically by magazine and Prize Publications' Young Romance illustrator John Prentice.

"[17] Biographer Tom Roberts also believes Raymond's work on Rip Kirby "inspired all the soap opera style strips of the fifties and sixties".

[12] The "heightened realism" of Raymond's photorealistic style has been "chastised for making his pictures too realistic, too gorgeous for its own sake", although many commentators believe that this very method "plunges the reader into the story".

[33] Fellow-cartoonist Stan Drake recalled that 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".

Comics artists who have cited Raymond as a particularly significant influence on their work include Murphy Anderson, Jim Aparo, Matt Baker, Frank Brunner, John Buscema, Gene Colan, Dick Dillin, Lou Fine, José Luis García-López, Frank Giacoia, Bob Haney, Jack Katz, Everett Raymond Kinstler, Joe Kubert, Russ Manning,[34] Mort Meskin, Sheldon Moldoff, Luis Garcia Mozos, Joe Orlando, Mac Raboy,[35] John Romita Jr., Kurt Schaffenberger, Joe Sinnott, Dick Sprang and Alex Toth, among many others.

[36] Decades later, the herald of the Silver Age (and co-creator of most of Marvel Comics's pantheon of heroes), Jack "King" Kirby also credits Raymond, alongside fellow strip artist Hal Foster, as a particular influence and inspiration.

[17] Harvey also noted that no mention of any alleged affairs appears in Tom Roberts's biography, "probably out of consideration to Raymond's surviving family".