Flash Gordon 1980 - Production Storyboards - Lion Man Deleted Scenes Set

Description

For the development and production of the 1980 film, Flash Gordon, a team of many artists helped to conceptualize the world of the character and the confrontation with Ming of Mongo.
This is a production-produced spiral bound book of the original storyboard art produced by Mentor Huebner. Consisting  of scenes with Flash Gordon, Dale Arden, Aura, Hans Zarkov, Prince Barin, Vultan, the Hawkmen, the tree men, and the snake man, this also tells a different story with the presence of Lion Man working with Flash in their adventure.
As an early take on the story for the film, these scenes were entirely abandoned during early pre-production and exists as one of the rare remaining visual treasures of how the film was being planned before changes were made. The storyboards are separated two numbered sets, with the first being 1 - 72, and the second being 1-74, with the last full page illustration not numbered. Coincidentally, on planning to write this description, recent research on these storyboards led to the January 2021 article "Flash Gordon's Original Ending Revealed" by Kristen Howard on the Den of Geek website. She talks with John Walsh, the author of the newly released book, Flash Gordon: The Official Story of the Film. References of these particular storyboards are in the article.
While storyboards from Flash Gordon have surfaced in the market from time to time, the research on these specific scenes has been elusive as to how many of these early production storyboard set books were produced during the production. Understandably, the producers would only have produced the ones needed for review purposes among a small number of production members in the early development, before the stage of writing for casting, finalizing the sets needed, effects, costume fabrication and numbers of each needed.
Mentor Heubner's career spanned many films during his time involved, his decades-long achievements of production work is profound. From Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937, to  Ben Hur starring Charlton Heston, to eventually working on now cult classic films like The Thing and Blade Runner, both productions released in 1982.
Stored away out of light since purchased in 2013, this production-produced book of storyboards spans 81 intact pages and is now over 42 years old since it was issued during the production era of the film. Produced by the dye-line process used then commonly for schematic drawing reproductions,  the dark blue has aged to purple toward the front and rear pages while the interior pages retain their original intended processed color with age setting in at edges in the area of the pages near the edges turning to a light extent in brown hue over time. Page corners are intact with some minor staining on a few pages surfaces and edges and a small appearance on the front surface page. There are slight page buckles evident from handling but no apparent prior creased fold-overs of the pages. The rear page had a partial tear from the binding at some point but remains a full page through what was repaired. The plastic spiral binding has also suffered age with loss of some of the ring portions.
The overall measurements are 12 1/4" x 12 1/4" by 1/2" thick.
This is just one of many examples among the Hollywood Cargo listings of items produced during motion picture development, production and promotion processes with other items associated to films of the 80s being listed.