The art may seem a little crude, but the sense of wonder is palpable in the early Buck Rogers newspaper strips.
Jumping belts, ray guns, rocket ships, robots, domed cities, tiger women — daily delights that began before the Great Depression and helped sustain America’s children right through it. Whatever their privations, they always had the Future.
“Anticipating the Wall Street Crash by nine months, the escapist action doubtlessly benefited from the worsening economic straits of the Depression Years, by providing escapism,” noted Andrew Darlington. “Eventually the strip was reaching a massive readership, syndicated through nearly 400 newspapers.”
A bored financial writer for the Philadelphia Retail Ledger named Philip Francis Nowlan penned a tale for Hugo Gernsback’s new science fiction pulp magazine Amazing Stories, calling it Armageddon 2419. The head of the syndicated National Newspaper Service, John Flint Dille, spotted its potential as something new, a newspaper adventure strip.
The first episode by Nowlan and artist Dick Calkins appeared Jan. 7, 1929 – oddly enough, the same day that the Tarzan adventure strip debuted.
A precursor to Flash Gordon, Superman and Star Trek, Buck Rogers quickly crossed over into dramatic radio, movie serials and toys. It also gave us Ray Bradbury.
“I learned that I was right and everyone else was wrong when I was 9,” the famed fantasy writer recalled. “Buck Rogers arrived on the scene that year, and it was instant love. I collected the daily strips, and was madness maddened by them. Friends criticized. Friends made fun. I tore up the Buck Rogers strips.
“For a month, I walked through my fourth-grade classes, stunned and empty. One day I burst into tears, wondering what devastation had happened to me. The answer was: Buck Rogers. He was gone, and life simply wasn’t worth living.
“The next thought was: Those are not my friends, the ones who got me to tear the strips apart and so tear my own life down the middle; those are my enemies.”
Alaric Shapli;
ReplyDeleteI don't find the art crude. It's a different style, with an older "feel" to it than what we're used to, but I don't think it's crude.
Bob Doncaster:
ReplyDeleteI picked up a paperback of Armageddon 2419 years ago along with a hardback of Buck Rodgers strips.
Matthew T Smith:
ReplyDeleteTelevision view plate? I guess that term never caught on. I wonder how much usage the word “television” got in 1929🤔?
I replied:
Constantin Perskyi coined the word television in a paper read to the International Electricity Congress at the World's Fair in Paris on Aug. 24, 1900.
Michael Fraley:
ReplyDeleteI discovered these strips in the huge collection of them that was published in 1969. It was a library edition, and I eventually had to buy one of my own. Honestly, the strips struck me just as hard as it did the kids of 1929. Probably once a year I go back and revisit the pulp novels they were based on. The post-apocalyptic scenario of Buck's future world is never really touched on in later stories. Understandably, neither is America's struggles against the conquering Mongols -- though at least the novels would explain that they actually originated as space aliens who corrupted human DNA (an awkward Band-Aid on a racist problem). I would eventually reach out to Rick Yager, the artist for the Sunday pages from the late 1930s to the 1950s ... just as he was going blind.
Philip Portelli:
ReplyDeleteThe earliest version of Buck Rogers is in public domain now.
Buck is one of those characters who influenced so much but somehow always gets accused of copying later works, like John Carter.
Colin Epstein:
ReplyDeleteI’d recognize that batch of strips anywhere, ever since I read them in a big harbound book I found in my local library as a kid. I was instantly captivated. When that library in Hollywood, California burned down, destroying so many childhood joys I’d found on the shelves, the loss of “that cool Buck Rogers book” loomed large. I’ve since tracked down a copy of my own.
Colin Epstein:
ReplyDeleteI’d recognize that batch of strips anywhere, ever since I read them in a big harbound book I found in my local library as a kid. I was instantly captivated. When that library in Hollywood, California burned down, destroying so many childhood joys I’d found on the shelves, the loss of “that cool Buck Rogers book” loomed large. I’ve since tracked down a copy of my own.