Apparently you've never seen the original Flash Gordon serials. Lucus stole the opening 'caption crawl' summaries (moving from bottom to top of screen/receding in perspective) in Star Wars directly from those used to summarize the ongoing storyline at the beginning of the chapters of Flash Gordon. The comic strip itself was William Randolph Hearst's response to the popularity of BUCK ROGERS (since 1929). After the success of TARZAN (beginning the same day as Buck Rogers), Edgar Rice Burroughs sought in vain to interest Hearst in carrying a Sunday strip adaptation of ERB's John Carter of Mars, but Hearst was evasive on a commital (probably because HE wouldn't own the strip outright) -- so instead, Hearst combined elements swiped from ERB's Carter of Mars stories with the premise of the then-popular science fiction novel by Philip Wylie and Edwin Balmer, WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE, and turned it over to Alex Raymond to draw. As science fiction, it wasn't exactly intellectual stuff, but seeing the romantic fantasy world of Mongo created by Raymond left an indelible impression on its audience.
Link to the book:
Wonder Comics 13
