Ming: Klytus, I'm bored. What plaything can you offer me today?
Klytus: An obscure body in the S-K system. The inhabitants refer to it as the planet...Earth.
Ming: How peaceful it looks...[Causes an earthquake.]
Klytus: Most effective, Your Majesty. Will you destroy this...ah...Earth?
Ming: Later. I like to play with things a while, before annihilation. - Flash Gordon (1980)
What matters is what he is: he’s the purest possible expression of hope in superhero comics. He only shows up when things are at their absolute worst, when it looks like there’s no possible way the good guys can win, whether those good guys are the Justice League or a single mother and her only child stuck in a house of horror or a lonely policeman on the brink of personal despair, and he helps.