page_title: Alex Raymond
section_title: Military career
hierarchical_section_title: Alex Raymond / Biography / Military career
caption_attribution_description: English: "Marines at Prayer" promotional poster produced by Raymond during his service in World War II as a US Marine.
context_page_description: Alexander Gillespie Raymond Jr. was an American cartoonist who was best known for creating the Flash Gordon comic strip for King Features Syndicate in 1934. The strip was subsequently adapted into many other media, from three Universal movie serials to a 1970s television series and a 1980 feature film.
  Raymond's father loved drawing and encouraged his son to draw from an early age. In the early 1930s, this led Raymond to become an assistant illustrator on strips such as Tillie the Toiler and Tim Tyler's Luck. Towards the end of 1933, Raymond created the epic Flash Gordon science fiction comic strip to compete with the popular Buck Rogers comic strip. Before long, Flash was the more popular strip. Raymond also worked on the jungle adventure saga Jungle Jim and spy adventure Secret Agent X-9 concurrently with Flash, though his increasing workload caused him to leave Secret Agent X-9 to another artist by 1935. He left the strips in 1944 to join the Marines, saw combat in the Pacific Ocean theater in 1945, and was demobilized in 1946. Upon his return to civilian life, Raymond created and illustrated the much-heralded Rip Kirby, a private detective comic strip.
context_section_description: Raymond took the war in Europe seriously enough to incorporate it into his strips, with Flash returning to Earth in the Spring of 1941. Jungle Jim found himself involved in the conflict too, fighting in the U.S. Army. Raymond was becoming "restive about doing his duty", a restlessness increased by the knowledge that four of his five brothers were already enlisted.  In February 1944, Raymond left King Features and his work on the Sunday Flash Gordon/Jungle Jim pages to join the US Marines, commissioned as a captain and serving in the public-relations arm. Raymond is quoted as stating "I just had to get into this fight... I've always been the kind of guy who gets a lump in his throat when a band plays the 'Star Spangled Banner'".
  Shortly thereafter, he "was sent to Quantico for training in the curriculum of the Aviation Ground Officer's School," and was soon producing "posters and patriotic images from a government office in Philadelphia." His most famous image from this time is "Marines at Prayer," which "was destined to become a well-known and well-circulated image of Marines on a battlefield pausing for worship." Raymond also "designed the official 1944 Marine Corps Christmas card." 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." Treated by his fellow marines (who had been raised on Flash Gordon) as a celebrity, he was nonetheless seen as "a down-to-earth fellow," and well liked. He saw "a period of intense combat in June 1945," and was "made an honorary member of VMTB-143 in August 1945." Raymond had, in May 1945, designed a squadron patch for the men of VMTB-143, after which the "squadron adopted the new name 'The Rocket Raiders'."
  He was demobilized as a major in 1946. Upon his return, Raymond was unable to return to Flash Gordon. King Features were not prepared to usurp Austin Briggs from the Sunday strip and pointed out that Raymond had left voluntarily to enlist. Relatives of Raymond recall the artist as resenting this decision, which left him feeling "cast off with so little regard." However, King Features offered Raymond the opportunity to create a new strip.
caption: While he was in the Marines, Raymond painted "Marines at Prayer" for the Marine Corps' Headquarters Bulletin (December 1944).
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