Navarre subsidiary BCI and the Hearst Corporation have announced Flash Gordon -- The Complete Series, a four-disk boxed set with a suggested retail price of $39.98 that will debut at the San Diego Comic-Con on July 18th. 

Produced by Filmation (He-Man, She-Ra, Fat Albert, The Archies) and aired on Saturday mornings on NBC from 1979-1981, the Flash Gordon animated series ranks as one of the best adaptations of Alex Raymond's classic comic strip -- the show captured the look of Raymond's stylish adventure strip and was remarkably faithful to the narrative arc of the comic, which debuted in 1934. 

Filmation's use of rotoscoping gave its Flash Gordon series more fluidity than most TV animation of the period.  The main problems with the series were the reduction of violence to fit the Saturday morning standards of the post-Vietnam era and Filmation's annoying repetition of stock footage (a money-saving technique that plagues all of that studio's work).

As was the case with its earlier releases of He-Man and She-Ra, BCI has (with the help of DVD consultant Andy Mangels) come up with a stellar list of extras including 'Blasting Off With Flash Gordon,' a 20-minute documentary about the storied career of the great Alex Raymond creation; three episodic commentary tracks; interactive storyboard-to-clip comparisons of various action sequences; an extensive gallery of model sheets for all the main heroes and villains; a bonus episode, 'Escape From Mongo,' from the series Defenders of the Earth; and two collectible 4' x 6' Flash Gordon art cards by artists Frank Cho (Liberty Meadows) and Gene Ha (Top 10: The Forty-Niners).

The BCI release will include all 32 chapters from the Filmation series.  The first 16 chapters are all 22 minutes (typical for a half-hour TV series), while the second 16 are 11 minutes.  BCI has paired up the final 16 episodes into 8 'half-hour' episodes, but all the titles and credits have been retained.