Buck Rogers

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Buck Rogers

Long before Star Trek and Star Wars, there was Buck Rogers, the first comic strip devoted to science fiction. Debuting early in 1929, it introduced readers to most of its stock features, including rocket ships, space travel, robots, and ray guns, concepts considered by most to be wildly improbable, if not downright impossible. A graduate of a pulp fiction magazine, Anthony "Buck" Rogers served as a sort of ambassador for the science fiction genre, presenting many of its premises, plots, and props to a mass audience. Indeed, it was Buck Rogers that inspired a wide range of people, from creators of comic book superheroes and future astronauts to scientists and Ray Bradbury. Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, as the strip was initially titled, helped introduce the United States to the possibilities of the future, such as space travel and the atomic bomb, while simultaneously offering quite a few wild and exciting adventures.

Buck Rogers was the creation of Philadelphia newspaperman Philip Francis Nowlan, who was forty when he sold his first science fiction story to Amazing Stories. Titled "Armageddon—2419 A.D.," it appeared in the August 1928, issue, and featured twenty-nine-yearold Anthony Rogers, who got himself trapped in a cave-in at an abandoned Pennsylvania coal mine. Knocked out by an accumulation of radioactive gases, Rogers slept for five centuries and awakened to a world greatly changed. America was no longer the dominant power in the world. In fact, the nation was a "total wreck—Americans a hunted race in their own land, hiding in dense forests that covered the shattered and leveled ruins of their once-magnificent cities." The world was ruled by Mongolians, and China was the locus of power. Finding that the Han Airlords ruled North America, Rogers joined the local guerilla movement in its fight against the conquerors, and took advantage of 25th century anti-gravity flying belts and rocket guns, as well as his own knowlege, to concoct winning strategies against them.

His partner was Wilma Deering, destined to be the woman in his life, who he met soon after emerging from the mine. A dedicated freedom fighter, Wilma was considerably more competent and active than most comparable female science fiction characters of the time. Rogers and Wilma, along with their other new comrades, saved America in Nowlan's sequel, "The Airlords of Han," which appeared in Amazing Stories the following year. By that time, Anthony Rogers, newly-named Buck, was the hero of his own comic strip.

John F. Dille, who ran his own newspaper feature syndicate in Chicago, noticed Nowlan's initial story in Amazing Stories, and encouraged him to turn it into a comic strip, "a strip which would present imaginary adventures several centuries in the future—a strip in which the theories in the test tubes and laboratories of the scientists could be garnished up with a bit of imagination and treated as realities." Dille picked artist Dick Calkins to work with Nowlan, who was already on the syndicate staff and had been trying to interest his boss in a strip about cavemen and dinosaurs. Apparently assuming that someone who could depict the dim past ought to be able to do the same for the far future, Dille put Calkins on the team. Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, a daily strip at first, began on Monday, January 7, 1929, the same day, coincidentally, that the Tarzan comic strip was launched.

Readers responded favorably to Buck Rogers, and it began picking up papers across the country. One early fan was a young fellow in the Midwest by the name of Ray Bradbury. Many years later, he recalled the impact that the early strips had on him: "What, specifically, did Buck Rogers have to offer that instantly 'zapped' us into blind gibbers of love? Well, to start out with mere trifles—rocket guns that shoot explosive bullets; people who fly through the air with 'jumping belts'; 'hovercrafts' skimming over the surface of the earth; disintegrators which destroyed, down to the meanest atom, anything they touched; radar-equipped robot armies; television-controlled rockets and rocket bombs; invasions from Mars; the first landing on the Moon."

Among the regular characters, in addition to Buck and Wilma, were Dr. Huer, scientific genius, inventor, and mentor to Buck; Black Barney, a reformed air pirate; Killer Kane, slick-haired traitor and recurrent villain; and Buddy Deering, teenage brother of Wilma. When a Sunday page was added early in 1930, it was devoted chiefly to Buddy's adventures. It was intended to appeal to youthful readers who supposedly made up the majority audience for Sunday funnies. Buddy spent much of his time on Mars, where he was often involved with young Princess Aura of the Golden People. In separate daily sequences, Buck also journeyed to the Red Planet, but concentrated on battling the evil Tiger Men. The Martian equivalent of the Mongols, the Tiger Men had come to earth in their flying saucers to kidnap human specimens. When they grabbed Wilma for one of their experiments, Buck designed and built the world's first interplanetary rocket ship so that he could rescue the victims who had been taken to Mars. "Roaring rockets!" he vowed. "We'll show these Martians who's who in the solar system!"

Astute readers in the 1930s may have noticed that the Sunday pages were considerably better looking than the daily strips. That was because a talented young artist named Russell Keaton was ghosting them. He remained with the feature for several years. When he left to do a strip of his own, he was replaced by another young ghost artist, Rick Yager. Buck Rogers, especially on Sundays, was plotted along the lines of a nineteenth-century Victorian picaresque novel. There was a good deal of wandering by flying belt, rocket ship, and on foot. Characters drifted in and out, appeared to be killed, but showed up again later on after having assumed new identities. Reunions and separations were frequent. The strip's trappings, however, were far from Dickensian, offering readers the latest in weapons, modes of transportation, and lifestyles of the future. By 1939, the atomic bomb was appearing in the strip. With the advent of World War II, most of the villains were again portrayed as Asians.

Buck Rogers also played an important role in the development of the comic book. A reprint of a Buck Rogers comic book was used as a premium by Kellogg's in 1933, which was before modern format comic books had ever appeared on the newsstands. In 1934, Famous Funnies, the first regularly-issued monthly comic, established the format and price for all comic books to follow. The Buck Rogers Sunday pages, usually four per issue, began in the third issue. It also seems likely that Buck Rogers and his associates, who were among the first flying people to be seen in comic books, had an influence on the flying superheroes who came along in the original material funny books of the later 1930s.

Almost as impressive as Buck's daring exploits 500 years in the future, was his career as a merchandising star during the grim Depression era. In 1932, a Buck Rogers radio show began airing, heard every day in fifteen-minute segments and sponsored by Kellogg's. The serial was heard in various forms throughout most of the decade and into the next. In 1933, the first Big Little Book devoted to the futuristic hero was printed. Buck Rogers was marketed most successfully in the area of toys. Commencing in 1934, Daisy began manufacturing Buck Rogers rocket pistols; that same year the Louis Marx company introduced a toy rocket ship. The zap guns were especially popular, so much so that Daisy began producing them at night and on Saturdays to meet the demand.

Buck Rogers conquered the silver screen in the 1930s. Universal released a twelve-chapter serial in 1939, with Buster Crabbe as Buck, and Constance Moore as Wilma. Anthony Warde, who made a career of playing serial heavies, was Killer Kane. Not exactly a gem in the chapter play genre, Buck Rogers took place on Earth and Saturn. The serial was later condensed into a 101-minute feature film. Under the title Destination Saturn, it occasionally shows up on late-night television.

Nowlan was removed from the strip shortly before his death in 1940, and Calkins left in 1947. Rick Yager carried on with the Sunday pages and the dailies before Murphy Anderson took over. By the late 1950s, George Tuska, also a graduate of the comic books, was drawing both the Sunday and the daily strips. Science fiction writers such as Fritz Leiber and Judith Merrill provided scripts. The Sunday strip ended in 1965, and the daily two years later. But Buck Rogers was not dead.

He returned, along with Wilma and Doc Huer, in a 1979 feature film that starred Gil Gerard. That production led to a television series and another comic strip, written by Jim Lawrence, drawn by Gray Morrow, and syndicated by the New York Times. None of these latter ventures was particularly successful, and more recent attempts to revive Buck Rogers have been even less so.

—Ron Goulart