Buck Rogers
Buck Rogers tells the first part of his own story from inside a collapsing mine near Pittsburgh. The opening three frames of his newspaper strip are narrated in his voice. "I was 20 years old when they stopped the world war and mustered me out of the air service." He had taken a job surveying the lower levels of an abandoned mine, where the air had a strange pungent tang and the crumbling rock glowed. Then the roof fell in behind him.
A strange gas kept him alive in a suspended state, somewhere between sleep and coma. When he climbed out, the year was 2429 AD, and another war was already underway.
That premise raises questions that run through the rest of this story. How did a magazine novella turn into a comic strip that crossed oceans and spawned rivals? Who actually drew and wrote it over its long life? Why did a noisy toy pistol become its most famous souvenir? And why are lawyers and screenwriters still fighting over who gets to tell his story next?
In the August 1928 issue of Amazing Stories, readers found a novella called Armageddon 2419 A.D. by Philip Francis Nowlan. A newspaper syndicator named John F. Dille read it and saw the makings of a comic strip. He and Nowlan recruited an editorial cartoonist, Dick Calkins, to handle the drawing. Nowlan then reshaped his idea into a strip about life some 500 years in the future, and it was named Buck Rogers. Some have suggested that Dille took the name from Buck Jones, a cowboy actor of the 1920s.
On the 7th of January 1929, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century A.D. debuted in daily newspapers. By coincidence, the Tarzan comic strip began on the very same day. Buck Rogers started out in 47 newspapers. Some of them nicknamed the hero "Rip Van Rogers," a joke about his five-century nap. A Sunday strip joined the daily on the 30th of March 1930.
Nowlan was open about where some of his ideas came from. In 1930 he told the inventor R. Buckminster Fuller that he often borrowed Fuller's concepts for his cartoons.
The strip did not leave Earth right away. On the 22nd of January 1930, in his fifth newspaper story, Tiger Men from Mars, Buck finally boarded a rocket ship. The strip is credited with bringing space exploration into popular media, following earlier pioneers such as Jules Verne and H. G. Wells. It also grew alongside real twentieth-century space technology, and it taught Americans to think of outer space as a familiar place for swashbuckling adventure.
Rivals followed quickly. Flash Gordon came from King Features Syndicate in 1934 and ran until 2003. Brick Bradford ran from 1933 to 1987, Don Dixon and the Hidden Empire from 1935 to 1941, and Speed Spaulding from 1940 to 1941. The strip probably also inspired a newspaper version of John Carter of Mars in 1941, even though Edgar Rice Burroughs had introduced that character in 1912.
Calkins kept signing the Buck Rogers strip long after he had stopped working on it. That is one reason authorship of the early strips is so hard to pin down. Few other artists signed their work at all, and many pages carry no signature.
What is clear is that Calkins, an advertising artist, drew the earliest dailies, while Russell Keaton drew the earliest Sundays. Keaton wanted to move to Skyroads, another strip written by Calkins. The syndicate advertised for an assistant and hired Rick Yager in 1932.
Yager had formal training at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and was a gifted watercolorist. His father, Charles Montross Yager, published a trade paper called The Modern Miller, and Rick once wrote an advice column called "Auntie's Advice" for it. At Buck Rogers he began as inker and writer of the small sub-strip that ran under early Sunday pages. He rose to write and draw the whole Sunday strip, and eventually the dailies. From about 1940, he probably controlled the Sunday pages completely. Len Dworkins joined later as an assistant, and Dick Locher helped in the 1950s.
The physical process was painstaking. Every strip began as an India ink drawing on Strathmore paper. A smaller duplicate, sometimes redrawn by hand, was then colored with watercolors. Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, holds a large collection of the original artwork.
The strip peaked in 1934, when it ran in 287 American newspapers. It was translated into 18 languages and appeared in 160 more papers abroad.
The decline was bitter. Relations between Yager and the other artists and the syndicate turned acrimonious, and in mid-1958 the artists quit. Murphy Anderson filled in briefly. George Tuska took over in 1959 and stayed to the end. During those final years the science fiction author Fritz Leiber wrote the strip for stretches in 1960 and 1961.
The last installment of the original strip ran on the 8th of July 1967, in only 28 newspapers. The hero did not stay retired. A revival in 1979 came from the New York Times Syndicate, produced by Gray Morrow and Jim Lawrence. It was shortened to Buck Rogers in the 25th Century in 1980. Comic book writer Cary Bates signed on in 1981 and wrote it until the 1983 finale.
Wilma Deering meets Buck at the worst possible moment, while attackers wielding anti-gravity belts and rocket guns are chasing her. He drives them off, and then must prove he is no impostor. His evidence is an American Legion button from the world he left behind.
Wilma explains the future in grim detail. The Red Mongols had risen out of the Gobi desert and conquered Asia and Europe. Their next target was America, and their attack began with what Wilma called the "big idol holding a torch," meaning the Statue of Liberty.
Their disintegrator beams made short work of the army and navy. Washington, D.C., was wiped out in just three hours. The Mongols built new cities on the ruins of the old ones. Their advanced technology meant they did not need slave labor, so they simply left surviving Americans to fend for themselves.
Those Americans regrouped into loosely bound organizations called "orgs." Their fight became known as the Second War of Independence. Wilma took Buck to the Alleghany org, based in what had once been Philadelphia. The leaders doubted his story until electro-hypnotic tests convinced them, and then they admitted him.
Around him gathered a memorable cast. Dr. Huer was an eccentric elderly scientist who punctuated his speech with the exclamation "Heh!" The villains included the traitor Killer Kane and his partner in crime, Ardala Valmar. Black Barney Wade began as a space pirate and ended up as Buck's friend and ally.
The universe also held aliens. Buck faced the Tiger Men of Mars, the nasty little Asterites of the asteroid belt, and giant robots called Mekkanos.
The Sunday strip took a different path at first. No convention yet existed for one character having separate adventures in the Sunday and daily strips, since many papers carried only one of them. So the Sunday pages followed Wilma's younger brother, Buddy Deering, and his girlfriend Alura, a young princess of the Golden People of Mars. Black Barney joined them later. It was some time before Buck himself appeared in a Sunday strip.
On the 7th of November 1932, CBS put a 15-minute Buck Rogers program on the air. It was the first science fiction show on radio. At first it ran Monday through Thursday. In 1936 it moved to three days a week and went off the air that May. Mutual later revived it in four separate runs. These included three days a week in the spring and summer of 1939, a half-hour Saturday version in 1940, and a weekday run from September 1946 to March 1947.
Several actors voiced Buck over the years: Matt Crowley, Curtis Arnall, Carl Frank and John Larkin. Adele Ronson played Wilma Deering, and Edgar Stehli played Dr. Huer. Carlo De Angelo produced and directed the series, followed by Jack Johnstone.
The 1933 Chicago World's Fair saw the premiere of a ten-minute film, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century: An Interplanetary Battle with the Tiger Men of Mars. John Dille Jr., son of the strip baron, starred in it. It was shot at the Action Film Company studio in Chicago and directed by Dr. Harlan Tarbell. It later played in department stores to promote Buck Rogers merchandise. The filmmaker's granddaughter eventually discovered a 35mm print, which went to the UCLA film and television archive and was put online.
Universal Pictures released a 12-part serial in 1939 starring Buster Crabbe. Here Buck and a young friend, Buddy Wade, crash their airship in an Arctic blizzard and breathe Nirvano gas to survive. They wake to learn that 500 years have passed, and that Killer Kane now rules the world. The budget was small, so the studio recycled material. City backgrounds came from the 1930 musical Just Imagine. Walls from the Azura palace set in Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars became Kane's penthouse. Even Crabbe's studded leather belt from that film ended up on Buck's uniform. Between 1953 and the mid-1970s the serial was cut into three separate feature films.
Television came on the 15th of April 1950, when ABC launched a half-hour Buck Rogers series. It ran for 36 black and white episodes until the 30th of January 1951. Only two survive. This Buck lived in a secret lab in a cave behind Niagara Falls, and a tiny budget kept most episodes inside that lab. Three actors played Buck, and Eva Marie Saint was one of two Wilmas. The show later faced Milton Berle's popular Texaco Star Theatre in its time slot. It was sponsored by Peter Paul candy bars. Producers wanted to copy the success of Captain Video, but a two-month summer break hurt any chance of building an audience.
A far glossier version arrived in 1979. A film released to cinemas on the 30th of March 1979 did well enough that NBC ordered a series, and Glen A. Larson produced the first season. Gil Gerard starred as Captain William "Buck" Rogers, a pilot launched aboard the shuttle-like Ranger III. He was frozen in space for 504 years. Erin Gray played Colonel Wilma Deering, and Tim O'Connor played Dr. Elias Huer. In a gender reversal, Ardala became a Draconian princess played by Pamela Hensley, and Kane became her enforcer. The comic robot Twiki, voiced by Mel Blanc, became Buck's assistant, and Buster Crabbe made a cameo.
The 1980 actors strike delayed the second season. When it returned in early 1981, the show had been rebuilt around the exploration ship Searcher and its hunt for humanity's lost colonies. Dr. Huer was gone. The new crew included a birdman named Hawk and Vice Admiral Efram Asimov, named after the author Isaac Asimov. The revamp failed, and NBC canceled the series at the end of the 1980-81 season.
At the American Toy Fair in February 1934, buyers met the XZ-31 Rocket Pistol. It was a 9½-inch pop gun that made a distinctive "zap!" sound. It sold for 50 cents, which was not cheap in the Great Depression. Its futuristic shape set the pattern for the space guns that followed.
Daisy made it under an exclusive contract with John Dille for all Buck Rogers toys. The first toys had appeared in 1933. Some people mark that year as the beginning of modern licensed character merchandising, because the character appeared both on unrelated products and on items made only for him.
After the atomic bomb, Daisy reissued the XZ-38 in silver in 1946 as the U-235 Atomic Pistol. By 1952 the company had lost its exclusive license. Its last offering was a garish reissue of the XZ-35 called the Zooka, a name borrowed from the real bazooka.
The 1950s space race demanded a gun that actually projected a ray. In 1953 Norton-Honer introduced the Sonic Ray Gun, a 7½-inch flashlight on a pistol grip. It had colored lenses and an electronic buzzer, so it doubled as a Morse Code signaling device. The newspaper strip put it to work. Many installments ended with a secret message in the Rocket Rangers International Code. Readers could get the key by mailing the syndicate a self-addressed stamped envelope, or from a cheat sheet in the toy's box.
Other makers joined in. In 1934 Louis Marx and Company produced a windup tin Rocket Police Patrol Ship with Buck in the cockpit, and the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum holds both versions. A 1936 set of six lead soldiers for the British market was a Cream of Wheat premium. In 1937 Tootsietoys made a die-cast set of four spaceships and two small figures of Buck and Wilma.
Gottlieb released a Buck Rogers pinball machine at the start of 1980, a few months after the new television show premiered. Action figures followed from Go Hero in 2009 and Zica Toys in 2011. The Go Hero figure carried a miniature XZ-38 and came in a numbered box limited to 1000. The second figure, based on Gil Gerard, came with a Tigerman figure.
Whitman, an imprint of Western Publishing, produced 12 Buck Rogers Big Little Books starting in 1933. Titles included Buck Rogers in the City Below the Sea and Buck Rogers on the Moons of Saturn. The Kelloggs Cereal Company gave away two booklets with story and art by Nowlan and Calkins, in 1933 and 1935. Also in 1933, the two men co-wrote a novella, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, retelling the origin. A pop-up book appeared as well.
Comic books followed. Buck appeared in 69 issues of Famous Funnies from 1934 to 1955, published by Eastern Color Printing. In 1940 Eastern gave him his own title, which lasted six issues. Toby Press reprinted strips in three issues in 1951. An Australian company, Atlas Productions, made five issues in 1955. Gold Key published a single issue in 1964 and then launched a series from 1979 to 1982 tied to the new television show. Dynamite Entertainment started a monthly series in May 2009 by writer Scott Beatty and artist Carlos Rafael. Hermes Press followed with a Howard Chaykin series, and in 2025 Array Comics published Buck Rogers 2425.
In 1988, TSR, Inc. built an entire game setting called Buck Rogers XXVC. Players sided with Buck and NEO, the New Earth Organisation, against RAM, a Russian-American corporation based on Mars. The setting also featured "gennies," genetically enhanced organisms. TSR published ten comics modules from 1990 to 1991 and ten paperback novels starting in 1989. Its Battle for the 25th Century board game dealt with token movement and resource management. Martin Caidin's 1995 novel Buck Rogers: A Life in the Future retold the original story.
Video games arrived too. Sega released the arcade game Buck Rogers: Planet of Zoom in 1982. In 1990 Strategic Simulations, Inc. released Countdown to Doomsday for the Commodore 64, IBM PC, Sega Mega Drive and Amiga, with a sequel, Matrix Cubed, in 1992.
In 1995 TSR tried something different. High-Adventure Cliffhangers returned to the themes of the original strips, with biplanes and warfare between peoples instead of space combat. The game was neither widely advertised nor popular. Only two products were published, a box set and a module titled War Against the Han, and the production of Buck Rogers role-playing games ended soon afterward.
In the 1980s, authorized sequels to Armageddon 2419 A.D. appeared from other authors, working from an outline co-written by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. The first sequel opens around 2476, when an 86-year-old, widowed and cantankerous Anthony Rogers is mysteriously rejuvenated. Ace published four of these novels between 1981 and 1983, and the last, Rogers' Rangers, was by John Silbersack.
Before 1950, Americans had a phrase for fantastic fiction: "that crazy Buck Rogers stuff." For much of the mid-twentieth century, newspaper comics gave the public most of its exposure to science fiction, and opinion formed accordingly. A protective suit that resembles a space suit is still called a "Buck Rogers outfit."
Chuck Jones directed Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century in 1953, a Daffy Duck spoof that earned two sequels and eventually a television series. In Steven Spielberg's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial in 1982, the alien gets the idea for his makeshift communicating device by copying a Buck Rogers comic strip. The animated series Futurama, created in 1999 by Matt Groening and David X. Cohen, drew heavily on the strip.
In The Right Stuff in 1983, a government liaison warns test pilots that rocket funding depends on good press. His point is that without bucks there is no Buck Rogers. Later, Cooper, Grissom and Slayton throw that argument back at startled NASA scientists. In 2004 The Aviator showed Howard Hughes calling his XF-11 his Buck Rogers ship. Feeder had a hit single called "Buck Rogers" in 2001, and the XZ-38 pistol appears on the cover of the Foo Fighters' 1995 debut album.
The name also became shorthand for a particular way of landing a rocket. Early depictions often showed ships settling vertically on their fins. In 1993, a writer described the DC-X's successful low-altitude test flight as "Just like Buck Rogers." Writers in the 2010s used the same label for SpaceX's reusable rockets.
The fight over ownership is as tangled as any plot. Frank Miller was once slated to write and direct a new film, but his involvement ended after The Spirit flopped. In 2015 producer Don Murphy announced a film based on Armageddon 2419 A.D., which conflicted with the Dille Family Trust's claim to the rights.
In February 2019, the Dille Family Trust settled with the Nowlan Family Trust, assigning its Buck Rogers rights to the Nowlan trust. The case was dismissed with prejudice on the 4th of March 2019. Dille beneficiaries then filed further actions in California courts. One was dismissed on the 11th of July 2019, and a later one in October 2020 was dismissed on the 4th of April 2021.
Since 2020, Don Murphy, Susan Montford, Flint Dille and Legendary Entertainment have reportedly worked on a new adaptation, with Brian K. Vaughan as writer. Smokehouse Pictures joined in 2021, and George Clooney was suggested as a star. On the 2nd of February 2021, Skydance Media reported that it was working with Nowlan's estate. On the 29th of October 2025, Zeb Wells was assigned to write the film script.
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Common questions
When did the Buck Rogers comic strip first appear?
It debuted in daily American newspapers on the 7th of January 1929, starting in 47 papers. A Sunday strip joined it on the 30th of March 1930.
Who created Buck Rogers?
Philip Francis Nowlan wrote the 1928 novella Armageddon 2419 A.D. The syndicator John F. Dille and the illustrator Dick Calkins helped turn it into a newspaper strip.
What was the first science fiction program on radio?
The Buck Rogers radio program, which began on CBS on the 7th of November 1932, is noted as the first science fiction show on radio.
When did the original newspaper strip end?
The original strip ended on the 8th of July 1967, when it ran in only 28 newspapers. A revival ran from 1979 to 1983.
What is the XZ-38 Disintegrator Pistol?
It was a 10-inch copper-colored toy pop gun from 1935, the first true ray gun toy of the franchise. It even appeared in the first episode of the 1939 serial.
Who owns the rights to Buck Rogers today?
In 2019 the Dille Family Trust assigned its Buck Rogers rights to the Nowlan Family Trust in a settlement. Skydance Media reported in 2021 that it was working with Nowlan's estate.
All sources
46 references cited across the entry
- 1Ron Goulart, "The 30s -- Boomtime for SF Heroes". Starlog, January 1981 (pp. 31–35).
- 2Maurice Horn (editor) 100 Years of American Newspaper Comics (Gramercy Books: New York, Avenel, 1996) . Flash Gordon entry by Bill Crouch, Jr., (p. 118)
- 3Peter Poplaski, "Introduction" to Flash Gordon Volume One: Mongo, the Planet of Doom by Alex Raymond, edited by Al Williamson. Princeton, Wisconsin. Kitchen Sink Press, 1990. (p.6)
- 4Wolfgang J. Fuchs and Reinhold Reitberger Comics; Anatomy Of A Mass Medium. Boston, Little, Brown, 1972 (p. 254)
- 5Patrick Lucanio, Gary Coville, Smokin' Rockets: The Romance of Technology in American Film, Radio and Television, 1945–1962 (2002). McFarland.
- 6Garyn G. Roberts, in Ray B. Browne and Pat Browne (.ed) The Guide To United States Popular Culture. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 2001. (p.120)
- 7Robert Jennings, "Bucking the Future: From 1928 to the 25th Century With Anthony Rogers". Comic Buyer's Guide July 5, 1990. (pp. 58, 60, 62, 65-66).
- 8Buck Rogers in the 25th Century ADDon Markstein's Toonopedia
- 10BookThe "unknown" Buck RogersEugene R. Seger — Eugene R. Seger — 1968
- 11Fuller, R. Buckminster, Critical Path, , Chap.8, p.262
- 12"Passing the Buck", Time (June 30, 1958).
- 15BookOverstreet Comic Book Price GuideRobert M. Overstreet — Gemstone Publishing — 2019
- 24NewsThe First Public Domain Buck Rogers Comic, In 2025 From Array ComicsRich Johnston — 2024-09-11
- 25Big Little Books and Better Little Books: 1932–1949Larry Lowery
- 26BookOn the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time RadioJohn Dunning — Oxford University Press — 1998
- 27Lesser, Robert. A Celebration of Comic Art and Memorabilia (1975)
- 29BookThe Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows, 1946-PresentTim Brooks et al. — Random House Publishing Group — 2009-06-24
- 33Did The Spirit Kill Buck Rogers? - IGN15 May 2009
- 34The Legal Battle to Bring Buck Rogers to the Big Screen20 July 2018
- 35'Buck Rogers' Movie in the Works at Legendary Hollywood Reporter14 October 2020
- 36MagazineBrian K. Vaughan to Write Buck Rogers TV Series for LegendaryBorys Kit — December 10, 2020
- 39Zeb Wells to Write ‘Buck Rogers’ Movie at Legendary ExclusiveUmberto Gonzalez — October 29, 2025
- 40MagazineAll-Time 100 Greatest ToysAllie Townsend — February 16, 2011
- 42Thomas D. Clareson, Understanding Contemporary American Science Fiction (1992). Univ of South Carolina Press. Page 6.
- 44Restoration Center Open House HighlightsNew Mexico Museum of Space History — 2013-02-12
- 46VideoTesla and SpaceX: Elon Musk's industrial empireCBS — 2014-03-30