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BUCK ROGERS

IN THE PULPS, COMICS, MOVIES AND TV

Buck Rogers first appeared in a 1928 issue of Amazing stories. published by HugoGernsback

"Buck Rogers" introduced sci-fi art to the general population on January 7, 1929 (the same date "Tarzan" first appeared) and is considered to be the first science fiction comic strip. But, there was probably less science than fiction when it came to people were flying in fast rockets without the need for helmets or oxygen. The strip was drawn by Jack Calkins (1895-1962) (aka Dick Calkins) from 1929 to 1947. In those early days, there was a real connection between the strip and its readers. I have a number of great ad hoc sketches sent from the artists to their fans and this is probably one of the best examples. Drawn on hotel stationary (probably from a hotel in Minneapolis), the detail of the ray gun, the man in the open cockpit rocket and the ship crashing toward the earth demonstrates that this wasn't just a quick sketch -- Calkins really put some effort into his piece for Stuart Nelson.

http://cowancollectioncomic.blogspot.com/2008/05/buck-rogers-c1930-jack-calkins-hotel.html

Rick Yager was hired as an assistant on the 'Buck Rogers' newspaper strip by Dick Calkins and Russell Keaton in 1932. Yager had formal art training (especially in watercolors), and he quickly moved from inker and writer of the "substrip" (early Sunday strips had a small sub-strip running below) to writer and artist of the Sunday strip and eventually the dailies as well. When Russell Keaton moved over to 'Skyroads', Yager quickly took control of the Sundays. Yager probably had complete control of the 'Buck Rogers' dailies from about 1940 on.

Around 1958, there was a falling out between the artists and the syndicate over the strip, and the artists quit.

http://lambiek.net/artists/y/yager_rick.htm

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BUCK ROGERS TOYS

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FIRST BUCK ROGERS MOVIE (1935)

BUCK ROGES IN AUSTRALIA:

http://comicsdownunder.blogspot.com/2007/10/buck-rogers-australian-orbit.html

http://www.bookpalace.com/OzComics/BuckRogers/INDEX.HTM

FRANK FRAZETTA COVERS :

Frazetta was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. At the age of eight, with the insistence of his school teachers, Frazetta's parents enrolled him in the Brooklyn Academy of Fine Arts. He attended the academy for eight years under the tutelage of Michael Falanga, an award-winning Italian fine artist. Falanga was struck by Frazetta's significant talent. Frazetta's abilities flourished under Falanga, who dreamed of sending Frazetta to Europe, at his own expense, to further his studies. Unfortunately, Falanga died suddenly in 1944 and with him, his dream. As the school closed about a year after Falanga's passing, Frazetta was forced to find work to earn a living.

At 16, Frazetta started drawing for comic books that varied in themes: westerns, fantasy, mysteries, histories and other contemporary themes. Some of his earliest work was in funny animal comics, which he signed as "Fritz". During this period he turned down job offers from giants such as Walt Disney. In the early 1950s, he worked for EC Comics, National Comics (including the superhero feature "Shining Knight"), Avon and several other comic book companies. Much of his work in comic books was done in collaboration with friends Al Williamson and Roy Krenkel.

Through the work on the Buck Rogers covers for Famous Funnies, Frazetta started working with Al Capp on his Li'l Abner comic strip. Frazetta was also producing his own strip, Johnny Comet at this time, as well as assisting Dan Barry on the Flash Gordon daily strip. In 1961, after nine years with Capp, Frazetta returned to regular comics. Having emulated Capp's style for so long, Frazetta's own work during this period looked a bit awkward as his own style struggled to reemerge.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Frazetta

http://www.coverbrowser.com/covers/famous-funnies

Many comics aficionados consider the adventure strips of the 1930s to constitute a Golden Age. And many who feel that way consider that Golden Age to have started with the simultaneous debut of Tarzan and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century A.D., on Jan. 7, 1929.

Both had appeared previously in the pulps — Tarzan in several stories by Edgar Rice Burroughs, and "Anthony" Rogers as the hero of "Armageddon 2419 AD", which appeared in the August, 1928 issue of Amazing Stories magazine. The latter story caught the attention of newspaper syndicator John F. Dille, who commissioned Nowlan to turn his story into comic-strip continuity. It was Dille who suggested a snappier first name for the character, drawing inspiration from a contemporary western movie hero, Buck Jones.

The artist on the new feature was Richard Calkins, a veteran both of the newspaper illustration business, and of World War I. (He used his U.S. Army rank as part of his byline decades after the war ended.) Calkins's idiosyncratic drawing style was emulated by few other comics artists, but did have some influence on Harry G. Peter, who later became known for his work on Wonder Woman. One of Calkins's early assistants, Zack Mosley, went on to create Smilin' Jack. Another, Russell Keaton, created Flyin' Jenny. Calkins himself also did Skyroads.

Initially, the strip recapitulated the plot of the prose version of the story. Buck, a 20th century American, was overcome by fumes while being trapped in a mine cave-in. Apparently, the gas had a preservative effect, because 500 years later, fresh air entered the cavern and he woke up. The future America in which he found himself had been conquered by evil Asian overlords, and Buck was quickly recruited by the resistance. Supporting characters included his love interest, Wilma Deering, and his brainy back-up man, Dr. Huer.

The straightforward story Nowlan originally wrote was eked out by many side adventures; but still, after a couple of years, the Mongols were overthrown. There followed a series of alien invasions, space voyages, and other sci-fi plot devices of a sort that had already become standard in pulp magazines, but were brand-new to comic strip readers. It was Buck Rogers that first brought such stalwarts as rocket ships, robots and ray guns to public consciousness. Years later, devotees of the genre were to become familiar with the phrase "that crazy Buck Rogers stuff" as a common description of their favored branch of literature.

The Buck Rogers strip was popular enough to spawn imitators, including Brick Bradford and Flash Gordon — both of which proved more durable than the original. Buck was an early star of Famous Funnies, generally considered the very first modern-style comic book, where he appeared alongside Mutt & Jeff, Joe Palooka, and other comic strip stars, from 1935-55.

MORE: http://www.toonopedia.com/buckrog.htm

http://cowancollectioncomic.blogspot.com/search/label/%22Buck%20Rogers%22

RADIO

Buck Rogers radio cast

Three years after bringing science fiction to the world of comic strips, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century introduced space opera to radio on his own program, which first aired on November 7, 1932. Originating from New York and broadcast four times weekly (initially at 7:15 P.M. and later moved to an earlier "children's hour"), the program had a built-in audience of funny-paper readers who tuned in by the hundreds of thousands.

Plots were roughly similar to those of the comic strip, with Buck, his liberated co-pilot Wilma Deering and the brilliant Dr. Huer, daily keeping the world in one piece. The sounds of Buck's arsenal, consisting of such futuristic devices as death rays, incendiary missiles, gamma bombs and a mechanical mole capable of burrowing deep into the Earth, were simulated by a variety of electrical and hand-powered motors. The crackling buzz of Rogers' psychic destruction ray, for instance, was provided by a Schick razor.

MORE: http://www.buck-rogers.com/radio_serial/

http://www.geocities.com/buckrogers_nz/evolution.html?200827

THE SERIAL

A 12-part Buck Rogers film serial was produced in 1939 by Universal Pictures Company. In this version Buck Rogers and his young friend Buddy Wade are involved in a dirigible accident in a remote place. Immediately afterwards they somehow get into suspended animation waiting for rescue. When they are finally discovered and revived, they learn that 500 years have passed. A tyrannical dictator named “Killer Kane” and his henchmen now run the world. Buck and Buddy must now save the world, and they do so with the help of Lieutenant Wilma Deering and Prince Tallen of Saturn.

The serial had a small budget and saved money on special effects by re-using material from other stories: background shots from the futuristic musical Just Imagine (1930), as the city of the future, the garishly stenciled walls from the Azura palace set in Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars, as Kane's penthouse suite, and the "Strato-Sleds" of Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars, as mock-ups of the flying machines. Between 1953 and the mid-1970s, this film serial was edited into three different and distinct feature film versions.

MORE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_Rogers

Buster Crabbe as Buck Rogers in movie serial

TELEVISION

ABC Buck Rogers TV show, 1950.

The first version of Buck Rogers to appear on television, debuted on ABC on April 15, 1950 and ran until January 30, 1951.^[2] Its time slot initially was on Saturdays at 6:00 P.M., and each episode was 30 minutes in length. Later, the program was rescheduled to Tuesday at 7:00 P.M. where it ran against the popular Texaco Star Theater hosted by Milton Berle which trounced Buck Rogers in the ratings, and led to the series' cancellation.

There were a number of changes to the cast during the show's short duration. Three actors played Buck Rogers in the series: Earl Hammond, Kem Dibbs and Robert Pastene. Two notable actresses portrayed Wilma Deering in the series, Eva Marie Saint and Lou Prentis. Two actors would also play the role of Dr. Huer: Harry Southern and also Sanford Bickart.

The series was directed by Babette Henry, written by Gene Wyckoff and produced by Joe Cates and Babette Henry.

The series was broadcast live from station WENR-TV, the ABC affiliate in Chicago, Illinois. There are no known surviving kinescopes of the first Buck Rogers television series.

MORE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_Rogers

http://www.geocities.com/buckrogers_nz/evolution.html?200827

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Space Heroes - Buck Rogers

Buck Rogers first appeared as Anthony Rogers in the pages of the August 1928 issue of the long running science fiction pulp magazine Amazing Stories. The story, “Armageddon 2419 A.D.,” was written by Phillip Francis Nowlan. A sequel, “The Airlords of Han,” appeared in the magazine’s March 1929 issue.

After being exposed to strange radiation in an abandoned mine, Rogers, a World War I veteran of the U.S. Army Air Corps, falls into a state of suspended animation. Awakened 500 years later, he teams up with the beautiful Wilma Deering to free the world from the "Mongol" hordes.

Just a few months prior to the second story, though, the more familiar title of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century A.D. had debuted in newspapers across the nation. John F. Dille, head of the National Newspaper Service syndicate, had seen a lot of promise in the original story and had commissioned Nowlan to launch the first on-going science fiction newspaper strip. Illustrated by Dick Calkins, the strip began its run on January 7, 1929, the same day Tarzan made his comic strip debut.

In addition to the daily strip, a Sunday page joined the family on March 30, 1930. The daily ran until July 8, 1967, while the Sunday page concluded in 1965. Although it is difficult to always gauge correctly what creators worked on the strip at a particular time, along the way, those who guided Buck’s adventures in the daily and Sunday incarnation of the strip included Murphy Anderson, Leonard Dworkins, John Dille, Rick Yager, George Tuska, and Fritz Lieber, among others. Many of the early strips were re-published as Big Little Books, which remain highly collectible.

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Buck Rogers' Adventures

Over the years, we've covered Buck Rogers, one of our favorite characters, many times, But did you know that Buck Rogers was the very first American comic strip to explore the wild and weird world of science fiction? And, despite all the success Buck found and the legacy he spawned, there is one Buck Rogers premium that's rarer than the rest.

The 1933 Cocomalt “Buck Rogers Cut-Out Book,” featuring a stage, scenes, characters and a slew of spectacular 25th century inventions, allowed kids to act along with the adventures being broadcast. But they had to drink a lot of Cocomalt to get it.

MORE: http://scoop.diamondgalleries.com/public/default.asp?t=1&m=1&c=34&s=264&ai=95641

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Inspired by the massive success of Star Wars two years earlier, the pilot film opened in cinemas on March 30, 1979. Good box-office returns led NBC to commission a full series, which began on September 20, 1979 with a modified version of the theatrical release, which trimmed or altered some racier scenes — including a popular reference by Twiki to his "freezing his ball bearings off" —and omitted the death of one character — Tigerman, Princess Ardala's henchman — who would later appear in several episodes of the series. There was also some footage added, including Buck exploring his new quarters, and his first conversation with Dr. Theopolis regarding the nature of Anarchia.

The production used recycled props, effects shots and costumes from Larson's previous sci-fi series Battlestar Galactica (1978). For example, the control sticks used in the Terran starfighters in the pilot/movie were the same as those used in Battlestar Galactica's Viper craft. The Terran starfighters were also concept designer Ralph McQuarrie's original vision of the Colonial Vipers. The same props were later used in the opening credits of the TV Show, Out of this World.

The new series centered on Captain William Anthony "Buck" Rogers, played by Gil Gerard, a U.S. Air Force pilot who commands Ranger 3, a space shuttle that is launched in May 1987. Due to a life support malfunction that Ranger 3 suffers in deep space, Rogers is frozen for 504 years before the derelict spacecraft is discovered in the year 2491. The combination of gases that froze his body coincidentally comes close to the formula commonly used in the 25th Century for cryopreservation, and his rescuers are able to revive him. He learns that the Earth was rebuilt following a devastating nuclear war on November 22, 1987, and is now under the protection of the Earth Defense Directorate.

MORE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_Rogers_in_the_25th_Century_(TV_series)

Erin Gray as Wilmer Deering

http://www.thewellers.com/twiki/buck.htm

IGN is reporting that venerable comic book character Buck Rogers is headed back to the big screen. Nu Image/Millenium, the folks behind the revivals of Rambo and (purportedly) Conan the Barbarian, are producing.

MORE: http://snarkerati.com/movie-news/buck-rogers-returnsagain/

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