A superb paired original production cel setup from Flash Gordon: The Greatest Adventure of All, Filmation's 1982 animated film written by Samuel A. Peeples, the production that was conceived before the Saturday-morning series ever aired, and that carried a harder, more ambitious edge than anything Filmation had attempted with the property before or since.

The first cel presents Flash Gordon himself in close-up, framed against what appears to be the architecture of one of Mongo's many hostile environments. Production code FE12 S47 F4 is annotated along the lower edge, placing this cleanly within the production record. It is a strong, composed image: Flash at his most watchful, the broad-shouldered silhouette and steady gaze that Robert Ridgely voiced with such laconic authority. The tatters visible in Flash's top are a telling detail, a quiet reminder that this is a man who has already been through something before this moment was captured, and they add a lived-in quality that the Saturday-morning version rarely bothered with. There is a reason Filmation kept returning to this face, it carries the whole premise on its own, the all-American hero dropped into a world that has no interest in playing fair. The cel carries the official Filmation Seal.

The second cel is the livelier of the two, and the one that tells you exactly what kind of film this was. A group of Lizard Women guards, spear raised, torchlit, posed in a dungeon passageway with painted stone arches receding behind them, carry the production code FG 18 363. The design is boldly operatic, exactly the kind of imagery that signalled to any parent watching with their children in 1981 that this was not quite the Saturday-morning product they might have expected. Looking back at the Lizard Women now, there is a charm to them that was likely overlooked at the time, something in the confident strangeness of their design that rewards a second glance from an adult perspective. The film's production notes are specific on this point: the costumes, the combat, the stakes were all calibrated for a prime-time audience, and this cel is evidence of that ambition in paint and acetate. Both cels are 12-field with bottom peg holes, presented against printed presentation backgrounds, and each carries the official Studio Art Programme seal. Condition throughout is excellent.

Flash Gordon: The Greatest Adventure of All has remained one of the more elusive pieces of Filmation's output, known more by reputation than by widely available material.