Buck Rogers
Buck Rogers is a science fiction adventure hero and feature comic strip created by Philip Francis Nowlan first appearing in daily U.S. newspapers on January 7, 1929, and subsequently appearing in Sunday newspapers, international newspapers, books and multiple media with adaptations including radio in 1932, a serial film, a television series, and other formats.
This article is about the fictional character. For specific works featuring this character, or for other people with the same name, see Buck Rogers (disambiguation).Buck Rogers
John F. Dille Co. (National Newspaper Syndicate)
January 7, 1929
Buck Rogers
Wilma Deering
Dr. Elias Huer
The Buck Rogers strip, published 1929–1967 and syndicated by John F. Dille Co. (later called the National Newspaper Syndicate), was popular enough to inspire other newspaper syndicates to launch their own science fiction strips.[1] The most famous of these imitators was Flash Gordon (King Features Syndicate, 1934–2003);[2] others included Brick Bradford (Central Press Association, 1933–1987), Don Dixon and the Hidden Empire (Watkins Syndicate, 1935–1941),[3] and Speed Spaulding (John F. Dille Co., 1940–1941).[1] The Buck Rogers strip also probably inspired developing a strip based on John Carter of Mars (United Feature Syndicate, 1941–1943) which was introduced in 1941 though based on an Edgar Rice Burroughs character first seen in 1912.[4]
The adventures of Buck Rogers in comic strips, movies, radio, and television became an important part of American popular culture. Buck Rogers has been credited with bringing into popular media the concept of space exploration,[5] following in the footsteps of literary pioneers such as Jules Verne and H. G. Wells. It was on January 22, 1930, that Buck Rogers first ventured into space aboard a rocket ship in his fifth newspaper comic story Tiger Men from Mars. This popular phenomenon paralleled the development of space technology in the 20th century and introduced Americans to outer space as a familiar environment for swashbuckling adventure.[6][7]
In 1933, Nowlan and Calkins co-wrote Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, a novella which retold the origin of Buck Rogers and also summarized some of his adventures. A reprint of this work was included with the first edition of the novel Buck Rogers: A Life in the Future (1995) by Martin Caidin.
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century A.D.
Philip Francis Nowlan (1929–1939)
Rick Yager (c. 1940–1958)
Jack Lehti (1959–1960)
Ray Russell (1961)
Fritz Leiber (1961)
Howard Liss (1960–1961, 1961–1967)
Dick Calkins (1929–c. 1932)
Russell Keaton (1929–c. 1932)
Rick Yager (c. 1932–1958)
George Tuska (1959–1967)
Concluded daily & Sunday strip
January 7, 1929
July 8, 1967
John F. Dille Co. (National Newspaper Syndicate)
Science fiction adventure
Jim Lawrence (1979–1981)
Cary Bates (1981–1983)
Concluded daily & Sunday strip
1979
1983
Science fiction adventure
Film and television adaptations[edit]
World's Fair[edit]
A ten-minute Buck Rogers film, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century: An Interplanetary Battle with the Tiger Men of Mars, premiered at the 1933 Chicago World's Fair. John Dille Jr. (son of strip baron John F. Dille) stars in the film. It was later shown in department stores to promote Buck Rogers merchandise. It was shot in the Action Film Company studio in Chicago, Illinois, and was directed by Dr. Harlan Tarbell. A 35mm print of the film was discovered by the filmmaker's granddaughter, donated to UCLA's film and television archive, restruck and subsequently posted to the web. It is available on the VCI Entertainment DVD 70th Anniversary release of the 1939 Buck Rogers serial. The characters featured include Buck Rogers, Wilma Deering, Dr. Huer, Killer Kane, Ardala, King Grallo of the Martian Tiger Men, and robots.[24]
Many of the later appearances of Buck Rogers departed widely from the original circumstances of the Han-dominated America and the hero from the past helping overturn that domination; Rogers in his numerous later incarnations was given various other past careers which did not include the Han. However, in the 1980s the original Armageddon 2419 A.D. was taken up again and authorized sequels to it were written by other authors working from an outline co-written by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle and loosely tied-in with their bestseller Lucifer's Hammer (1977). The first sequel begins c. 2476 AD, when a widowed and cantankerous 86-year-old Anthony Rogers is mysteriously rejuvenated during a resurgence of the presumed-extinct Han, now called the Pr'lan. The novels include:
In popular culture[edit]
Buck Rogers's name has become proverbial in such expressions as "Buck Rogers outfit" for a protective suit that looks like a space suit. During the mid 20th century, the bulk of the American public's exposure to science fiction literature came through newspaper comics, and their opinion was formed accordingly.[5][38] Stemming from this, a phrase in common use before 1950 was "that crazy Buck Rogers stuff" in regards to what they viewed as fantastical literature.[39]
Such was the fame of Buck Rogers that this became the basis for one of the most fondly remembered science fiction spoofs in a series of cartoons in which Daffy Duck portrayed Duck Dodgers. The first of these was Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century (1953), which was directed by Chuck Jones. There were also two sequels to this cartoon, and ultimately a Duck Dodgers television series.
Buck Rogers is featured in Steven Spielberg's blockbuster sci-fi movie E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982). E.T. is inspired to create a makeshift communicating device (to 'phone home') by copying a Buck Rogers comic strip.
The Buck Rogers appellation has become a particularly descriptive term for vertical landings of spaceships, which was the predominant mode of rocket landing envisioned in the pre-spaceflight era at the time Buck Rogers made his original appearance. While many science fiction authors and other depictions in popular culture showed rockets landing vertically, typically resting after landing on the space vehicle's fins, Buck Rogers seems to have gained a special place as a descriptive compound adjective. For example, this view was sufficiently ingrained in popular culture that in 1993, following a successful low-altitude test flight of a prototype rocket, a writer opined: "The DC-X launched vertically, hovered in mid-air ... The spacecraft stopped mid-air again and, as the engines throttled back, began its successful vertical landing. Just like Buck Rogers."[40] In the 2010s, SpaceX rockets have likewise seen the appellation to Buck Rogers in a "Quest to Create a 'Buck Rogers' Reusable Rocket"[41]
or a Buck Rogers dream.[42]
The animated television series Futurama, created by Matt Groening and David X. Cohen in 1999, was strongly influenced by themes and characters from the "Buck Rogers" comic strip, as well as many other science fiction books and films.
"Buck Rogers" was a hit single by the British rock band Feeder in 2001.
The Foo Fighters' self-titled album (1995) features Buck Rogers's XZ-38 Disintegrator Pistol on the album's cover.
Track nine of Hyphy Bay Area rapper Mac Dre's album Heart of a Gangsta, Mind of a Hustla, Tongue of a Pimp (2000) is titled "Black Buck Rogers".
In The Right Stuff (1983), the film about the United States supersonic test pilots of the 1940s and 1950s and the early days of the United States space program, in one scene, the character of the Air Force Liaison Man tells test pilots Chuck Yeager and Jack Ridley and test pilots and future Mercury Seven astronauts Gus Grissom, Deke Slayton and Gordon Cooper about the need for positive media coverage in order to assure continued government funding for the rocket program, dramatically declaring "no bucks—no Buck Rogers!" In a later scene in which the seven astronauts confront the NASA rocket scientists who have been running the program to demand changes to allow them to fly their spacecraft as actual pilots rather than as mere passive passengers in vehicles totally controlled from the ground—threatening to reveal to the press how they were being marginalized despite their public status as heroes, which would in turn damage Congressional support for the program—Cooper, Grissom and Slayton repeat the "no bucks—no Buck Rogers!" speech to the startled scientists to make their point.
In Martin Scorsese's epic drama The Aviator (2004), Howard Hughes refers the Hughes XF-11 as his Buck Rogers ship.
Buck Rogers is heavily referenced in the 2006 two-episode arc of the animated television series South Park, "Go God Go" and "Go God Go XII".