December 2005

--e*I*23-- (Vol. 4 No. 6) December 2005, is published and © 2005 by Earl Kemp. All rights reserved.
It is produced and distributed bi-monthly through http://efanzines.com by Bill Burns in an e-edition only.

Contents – eI23 -- December 2005

Buck and Wilma Adrift in Space (Artwork), by Ditmar

Evil But Ours, by Jon Stopa

…Return to sender, address unknown….14 [eI letter column], by Earl Kemp

That Crazy Buck Rogers Stuff (Artwork), by Steve Stiles

Buck You Very Much, by Earl Kemp

The Buck Rogers Comic Strip, by J.A. Coffeen

Fritz Leiber and the Buck Rogers Comic Strips, by Justin Leiber

About Buck Rogers, by Charles Freudenthal

That Crazy Buck Rogers Stuff, by Steve Stiles

Buck Rogers, Nazi Fantasy, by Richard A. Lupoff

Curious Couplings 4, by Earl Kemp

Tales of ESFA, by Mike Deckinger

France Book Checklist, by Robert Elkin

The Real Straight Dope, by Charles Nuetzel

My Gay Life, by Graham Charnock

Sex and Rockets, by Rosemary Pardoe

Unanswered Questions, by Alexei Panshin

I define a saint as a person who behaves decently in an indecent society.

               -- Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake               

THIS ISSUE OF eI is in memory of Philip Francis Nowlan and his creations Buck and Wilma…always in our hearts and minds.

In the world of science fiction, this issue of eI is also in memory of Ken Bulmer, Irv Koch, Denis Lindbohm, and Robert Sheckley.

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As always, everything in this issue of eI beneath my byline is part of my in-progress rough-draft memoirs. As such, I would appreciate any corrections, revisions, extensions, anecdotes, photographs, jpegs, or what have you sent to me at earlkemp@citlink.net and thank you in advance for all your help.

Bill Burns is jefe around here. If it wasn’t for him, nothing would get done. He inspires activity. He deserves some really great rewards. It is a privilege and a pleasure to have him working with me to make eI whatever it is.

Other than Bill Burns, Dave Locke, and Robert Lichtman, these are the people who made this issue of eI possible: Robert Bonfils, Bruce Brenner, Graham Charnock, J.A. Coffeen, Brittany A. Daley, Mike Deckinger, Robert Elkin, Charles Freudenthal, Elaine Kemp Harris, Justin Leiber, Arthur Lorte, Richard Lupoff, Jon Macy, Charles Nuetzel, Alexei Panshin, Rosemary Pardoe, Adam Parfrey, Art Scott, Robert Speray, Steve Stiles, and Jon Stopa.

ARTWORK: This issue of eI features original artwork by Ditmar and Steve Stiles, and recycled artwork by Harry Bell and William Rotsler.

What we have created instead, as customers and employees and investors, is mountains of paper wealth so enormous that a handful of people in charge of them can take millions and billions for themselves without hurting anyone. Apparently.

               -- Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake

GUEST EDITORIAL:
Evil But Ours
Artwork recycled Harry Bell

By Jon Stopa

Remember Nixon's exit from the White House--the brave smiles and words and the helicopter flight that took the disgraced President into exile? What if Bush, unlike Nixon who went quietly for the sake of the nation, decides to act differently? He is stubborn, after all.

Serious thought should be given to the possibility that the Cabal in the White House will not go peacefully after Impeachment for lying to get us into war.

Picture Black Helicopters swooping down on the White House lawn and Deepwood Troopers rescuing Bush, Cheney, and their families from Secret Service agents, whose bullet-riddled bodies cover the White House lawn, killed while trying to take the Bushies into custody.

One could almost see it--the heroic mercenary who throws his body between Cheney and a war protester. Barb Bush, left behind because she wanted to finish her bath, running across the lawn after a helicopter, wrapped in a bath towel. The great photos of the evacuation of the refugees from off the White House roof. Vice President Cheney stomping on Condi Rice's fingers, which are clasped on the door jam of the last, overloaded helicopter, as she begs to be allowed to sit in the back of the machine.

Certainly, George W.H. Bush, the fearful father, would be on television, tearfully begging the fleeing murders, responsible for the deaths of over 2,100 American men and women service members, and tens of thousands of Iraqis, to give themselves up. To no avail.

The Christian part of the nation would grieve when finally the killers are trapped and driven to ground while attempting to hide in Mammoth Cave.

An evil President, but our President.

We are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is.

               -- Mark Vonnegut (Kurt's son)

…Return to sender, address unknown…. 14
The Official eI Letters to the Editor Column
Artwork recycled William Rotsler

By Earl Kemp

We get letters. Some parts of some of them are printable. Your letter of comment is most wanted via email to earlkemp@citlink.net or by snail mail to P.O. Box 6642, Kingman, AZ 86402-6642 and thank you.

Also, please note, I observe DNQs and make arbitrary and capricious deletions from these letters in order to remain on topic.

This is the official Letter Column of eI, and following are a few quotes from a few of those letters concerning the last issue of eI. All this in an effort to get you to write letters of comment to eI so you can look for them when they appear here.

Wednesday July 27, 2005:

Another issue of eI comes to me and I’m quite pleased, as I’ve spent two weeks working on my 48 Hour movie and not nearly enough time reading fanzines. 

Will Eisner was one of the men who made San Diego ComicCon what it is today. His giving out the Eisner awards really made people realize what an important thing they were.  No one ever received a Hugo from Hugo Gernsback, did they?  My early comic book experiences were all DC books like The Flash and Justice League of America.  I didn’t read anything of the Spirit until they began to be reprinted, though I probably didn’t read them until the early 1980s, though it may even have been later.   His graphic novels are wonderful and it’s obvious that they influenced a generation of comics writers that are flourishing on the indy scene today.  In fact, writer/artist Scott Morse (who did the greatest picture of me ever drawn while we were both in high school) probably owes more to Eisner than anyone I can think of.

The Burroughs piece shows all the little things that make it wonderful to live my working life as a historian.  Getting to know those of the past is a joy.  Submerging oneself in the world of William Seward Burroughs seems a dangerous thing.  Even reading the 80-somethingth edition of Naked Lunch I can feel the trauma leaping toward me off the page and I fear that the original thing would only push harder into the world.  I’ve had a few original manuscripts in my hands for extended periods of time, and they positively sing to you.  I did a lot of work on the DaDaists and had the chance to examine originals of Tsara, Schwitters and others.  I spent several weeks getting to know Schwitters in particular and had access to the largest collection of his original works in the world.  After just a few weeks, I found myself able to think along the same lines and not being able to stop it.

I know nothing of Dave Van Ronk.

Ah, another look at a writer whose work I’m familiar with on a couple of levels.  Teachers moonlighting as writers of various levels of smut are a long-standing tradition.  In my senior year of high school, an English teacher of mine took me aside and commented that the paper I had written quoted a book she had written some years before.  It was a soft-core piece of science fiction smut, but I remembered it well and quoted it often in papers that year.  When I looked her up, she had written a few other books under the same pseudonym and a couple under her real name.  I was most impressed, though most of them were from the late 1980s, long past the paperback age that I so enjoyed.  I find it rather amazing that more than a few people could make a living writing porno in those days and now there are almost none.  Those days ended with the advent of the VCR, I’d say, though I know of at least one full-time erotica writer whose work gets seen here and there.

Another fine issue and I can’t wait for more

By the way, I forgot to mention in my LoC that the definition of sleaze was once given to me by a prof I had in college: "If you ever find yourself reading and getting that old familiar feeling in those old familiar places, then whatever you're reading is sleaze."

               -- Chris Garcia

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               --Rose Idlet

eI21 is full of important facts and incidents; Steve Gertz's article on Burroughs has many sharp observations. I liked Brittany Daley's thought on sleaze and the importance of the concept. I think I understand why you think it meaningless in describing a form of expression. But the way the image-makers and today's corporate entertainment industry in general characterizes something as sleaze (instead of "safe," "decent," "family-friendly," or "clean") shows how, for them, marketability trumps creativity. I think connotations of "sleaze" include that which is squalid, unhealthy, fraudulent and disreputable, often in a sexual context. There are physical connotations as well: flimsy, cheap, poorly designed, or deceptively alluring. Sleaze is readily associated with bad taste, low-income levels, racial minorities, alternative sexualities, prurience, alcoholism, drugs, misdemeanors and felonies and coarse kinds of entertainment that encourage uninhibited expression of impulse. All these connotations allow the corporate-friendly media to teach people contempt for whatever is not "uplifting," and cannot be mass produced, peddled as improving one's social standing and self-respect, and emptied of creativity and/or individuality.

               --Jay A. Gertzman

BTW, I brought up the latest eI and did something I've never done before -- I read it all on the monitor.  Normally I wait until work and print it out using their laser printer and then read the hard copy over several nights.  But the stories were so compelling that I got pulled in and read them all in one sitting.

Tom Ramirez's piece was top-notch.  This was the best story about the writers and the process that's ever been done.  Who would have thought that Robert Silverberg's coverage of the topic could be passed.  And he had the Houston trial down too.  Two home runs in one story.  I hate it when those long runs of pink and yellows start having definition and particular books are discovered to have interest.  I'll be looking through those lines now, pulling out Tony Calvano books for a closer look.

               --Robert Speray

I finally had time to read the latest eI and I must say the Ramirez article was one of the best pieces I have ever read. The only story that rivals it is the piece you wrote on Hoover and the FBI. It's a shame what happened to him after the trial. The staff not being allowed to talk to him so Hamling could use him for possible future trials.  But perhaps the worst thing is he still has not received any sort of recognition for his writing. It's been 40 years Earl. How about it? You’re not on trial, so the Fifth Amendment won't work here.

               --Bruce Brenner

The Tom Ramirez autobiographical article was a great read. Writing for a living is something I’ve always dreamed of doing, but I found out the hard way that I’m a better editor and proofreader. To be able to write what you want is just fine; to put it out that quickly is a gift. Shame about the National Enquirer; my mother used to buy that rag, and I’d flip through it out of curiosity. Even though some of the articles were patent nonsense, the magazine did try to foster a sense of community, especially to keep its supermarket sales up. Today, uber-rags like the World Weekly News, with tales of giant babies and wolf women on the front cover, is pure sci-fi with tinges of utter bullshit, and the public laps up every drop. Ramirez didn’t seem to have much use for you, Earl, but I get the feeling that time heals those wounds, and he wouldn’t have written up what he had written for you if he still thought of you badly. Once all is explained, and you do, it looks like the lot of you could get together for dinner and drinks, and reminisce well into the wee hours. That would be a party to celebrate.

               --Lloyd Penney.

eI (Earl Kemp) verges on overkill as this prolific and colorful writer/editor serves up heaping portions of outstanding essays. Although eI has good outside contributions, the main course is almost always Earl’s colorful anecdotes and trenchant articles. The larger issues can be a little overwhelming, but the rewards are great.

               --Arnie Katz, VFW 46

Earl, Congratulations! You have done a great job. It is superb. I had a quick read this morning, but over time I will go back and back to it. At last someone has treated Maurice to a deep appreciation that he deserves. Now I do not have to do it and can devote time to other things. Will this ever appear between hard (or soft) covers?

               --Jim Haynes

Earl -- Earl -- Earl -- What to say? What to say? What to say? (That complimentarily and repetitively hasn't been said before, that is). In that, as usual, any new addition to your website pages is always a treat and an adventure, and a true reading experience. This latest, Me and Maurice, no exception. What great and interesting and enjoyable fun! Looking forward, as usual, to what can possibly come (no pun intended -- well, maybe a "little" pun, not to be confused with a little "bun") later. Lucky for all of us, you do seem to have the knack for forever topping yourself (usually only managed by an experienced sexual contortionist). --William J. Lambert III

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I have skimmed most of the articles (and will get back to them in due course), but I did read fully my own contribution (what handsome dawg I was back then!) "Darlings of Death," and yours entitled "Maurice…the gangster of love.”  What a withering, slashing dissection of poor Maurice and his business ethics! The article was so well done (where are the footnotes?) that there was an almost academic feel to it, especially at the outset.  Such imagery, such precise choice of words!  Such venom!

And, after skimming these articles, I can see how utterly naive I was to even approach Girodias for a meeting. And how lucky I was to have missed this "great" opportunity.  And in light of your mention of his pirating of Greenleaf authors, I can better understand why he granted me the time in the first place.  How he must have been gloating inside as I pitched my feeble wares!

In a way I feel a bit honored to be included among these other authors who had so much more extensive contact -- good or bad -- with Girodias.  My contribution seems totally puny by comparison.

However I think that I was one of few who zeroed in on the physical milieu of his scabrous office.  Yes, he was running scared, he was on the brink of total collapse.   But I would have never dreamed it was happening judging by his suavity, his charm, his impeccable tailoring.

 And as Walter was so fond of saying at the close of each of his history-revisited series way back when:  "You were there!"

Again, yours is a true labor of love.  You make us smut peddlers almost respectable.  Three cheers!

You ARE something else.  To do all this work year in and year out.  And for what?   I still feel that some kind of book should come out of all this -- even if you have to self publish.   But I do think that some publisher out there would go for it.  It IS history, damnit!

               --Thomas P. Ramirez

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Much of this of course I have seen but the Ramirez piece was entirely new to me and plenty else. A magnificent work. This is a tribute disguised as an anatomization and gives the man his due. No one like him ever, indeed. It would be unfair to his memory if I did not say this: I miss him.

               --Barry Malzberg

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I continue to be amazed at the amount of work you put into your zines and books, and at how culturally important it is.

               --Dick Geis

Thursday October 6, 2005:

Andrew Offutt -- Burroughs pasticheur. Last I heard from Andy he was living in a tiny burg in Kentucky. He told me that anybody who was having trouble paying his bills on the meager income of a genre hack could live well if he was willing to move to . . . a tiny burg in Kentucky. Didn't work for me.

And of course Barry Malzberg, who also wrote as -- Barry Malzberg. One of the truly fine, talented, serious writers of his generation. Last book I read of his was In the StoneHouse. A brilliant collection, total knockout. And it was published by Arkham House.

Arkham House? Huh?

Not to deprecate that fine publisher, without whose efforts neither H.P. Lovecraft nor Clark Ashton Smith would have survived the demise of their pulp outlets. Robert E. Howard would have been a minor writer of hack westerns, boxing yarns, and sea stories. Hell, even I have an Arkham House book in my background, and I take pride in being a Arkham House author. But . . . they pay 35 cents and sell 200 copies, most of them to wacko collectors who don't even read the books lest they decline in rating from "mint" to "fine."

What a crime!

Is Joseph Cummings (Joseph Como) the same person as Joseph Commings, author of Banner Deadlines (Crippen & Landru), a wonderful collection that got me through a stressful medical experience a couple of years ago?

Is Jerry Weil ("Leslie Adirondack") the same Jerry Weil who had a very very minor career as a science fiction writer in the early 1970's, using the byline "Pg Wyal" -- ?

Does the gostak really distim the doshes?

Reading about Ella Parker, George Locke, oh, be still my heart!

I don't know how I stumbled across a copy of President Kissinger back in the 1970's, but I thought it was a damned fine book. Looking at the cover again, I am struck by the fact that Heinrich Kissinger and Peter Sellers were clearly conjoined twins, separated at birth.

You doubt me? Take another look.

And Peter Collier . . . ! Peter Collier . . . ! He was one of my editors when I used to write for Ramparts magazine.

               --Dick Lupoff

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You are very generous in thanking me - I appreciate your message.
And more important - Barney and I think the result looks very good - well done!!!
I haven't read everything yet, but will this weekend when there is a space of time.
We'll be in touch. Very best from Barney and me,

               --Astrid Myers/Evergreen Review

Wednesday October 12, 2005:

Having utterly nothing to do at work today, I spent my time (among other things) reading the latest eI. Frankly, it was underwhelming -- not nearly what I'd hoped for. It badly needed *an editor *. What you presented us with is a scrapbook, unorganized and nearly incoherent, which cannibalizes from itself. Lacking is any organizing theme, or chronology. What was desperately needed was an *overview * complete with a timeline. As it is, what you've given us is fragmentary and biased (both pro and con). It's a muddled mess. It needed an editor to pull it all together -- not one who just throws stuff at us.

               --Ted White

That edition of Black Spring is plenty rare nowadays and I’ve found two copies over the years, including one that was noted that it came from the library of some guy who it turned out was either Jello Biafra or a guy with the same name living in SF at the time.  Sadly, I’ve only seen scans of Bawdy Ballads.  I’ve owned both President Kissinger (I gave it as a gift to a girl who used it to replace one of the folksy books in the local Big Yellow House) and Inside Scientology (which is tucked away with all the rest of my Masonic/Anti-Masonic/Rosicrucian/CoS stuff in my Mom’s storage Locker in Clovis, CA). 

Another amazing issue that can only come from Earl Kemp

               -- Chris Garcia

BUT upon a second rereading I did enjoy the Victor Banis piece again, and want to tell you that I think Banis is one helluva writer.  I don't recall what his Greenleaf pen name was, but I'd like to know.  [Don Holiday] I will look through my porno collection to see if I might have a copy of one of his masterpieces on hand.

That guy is witty as hell, can sling words almost as good as old Henry Miller.  I laughed just as hard the second time as I did the first.  What an imaginative writer!  Did he ever do any straight novels?  If so, I'd sure appreciate a couple titles so I can look him over at greater length.

               --Tom Ramirez

Wednesday November 2, 2005:

I read with great interest your recent web publication "Me and Maurice," having known Girodias, written for him and worked for him back in the late ‘60s. I would like to comment on a couple of passages in which my name is mentioned.

You write:

“ He also raided the Greenleaf stable of straight-book writers like D. Bruce Berry, Harvey Hornwood, and Andrew J. Offutt.”

Although I published three books with Greenleaf, I hardly considered myself one of their "stable." Each of those books was sent in unsolicited, and was accepted and paid for with a minimum of correspondence, and no follow-up.

Maurice contacted me on the recommendation of a friend of mine who was half of the "Tor Kung" team. At the time he had no knowledge of my having published with Greenleaf. So it was hardly a "raid."

Later you write:

“ Nothing was sacred to Girodias. He pirated books that he had no rights to from his own father. He pirated books from himself. And worst of all, he pirated directly from Greenleaf Classics. In 1966, Nightstand books published Lust Rumble (NB1769) by John Dexter (Harvey Hornwood) and in 1971, Maurice Girodias published Third-Degree Rape (OP235), by James Kerstetter (Harvey Hornwood), an outright theft of a legally owned and in copyright property.”

To which you append Barry Malzberg's comment:

“ Harvey Hornwood was for a couple of years an editor at Olympia NYC (1969-1971). Probably his idea to pirate his own novels, sell them to himself as "new," score a few more dollars on Maurice (for whom all his employees had utter contempt). Don't blame Maurice for that one.”

Barry is correct. Actually, all three of my Greenleaf books were republished by Olympia (The Sado Swappers as The Pain Lovers, and Passion's Pupil as Carnal Knowledge, in addition to the one you mention). This was strictly my doing, in my capacity as an editor at the New York Olympia office. It was an underhanded ploy, but it was all mine. As Barry says, you can't blame Maurice for that one.

My only quarrel with Barry's note is the "utter contempt" thing. While certainly aware of his shortcomings and peccadillos, I don't think most of his employees would have gone that far. Certainly I wouldn't. In fact, some years ago I wrote what I think is a fairly even-handed if subjective short memoir about Maurice and the New York version of Olympia Press (actually called Maurice and Me), which was published in Penthouse Forum and later reprinted in (I think) Paperback Parade.

The conclusion read:

"Impractical, unworldly, irresponsible and devious Girodias certainly was, but I am glad to have known him. He was also charming, witty, visionary and, above all, courageous. He battled censorship, prudery and stuffiness wherever he found it. He struggled incessantly--and joyously--for literary and sexual freedom in the face of government repression, legal tribulations and constant financial hardship. He never lost his taste for attacking and outraging what he called the 'Universal Establishment.' He was a flawed and not always admirable human being, but he fought the good fight."

               --Harvey Hornwood

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Thanks very much for taking the time and trouble to pass this on. Harvey Hornwood is temperate and level-headed and I couldn't possibly have any quarrel with him. He's certainly right in pointing out that I have no business assigning to him an "utter contempt" toward Maurice and in fact I have read his Penthouse memoir on the man which is respectful and fair. If I had his e-mail address I'd send this to him directly; I'd take it as a favor if you'd forward it along to him.

Poor Maurice! The Lion marooned in the winter of his own soul.

               --Barry Malzberg

Tuesday November 15, 2005:

And I forgot to say that I liked your articles about Tangier in the recent eI's. I think that Paul Bowles was one of the best American writers of the 20th century - not so much for his novels, but for his short stories, which I find are so amazingly compact with not a spare, redundant, word in them. My enthusiasm for him was one of the reasons why Cronenberg's film Naked Lunch ranks high on my list of "Best Films". Well...the film (like most of Cronenberg's) was rather good in its own right, of course, but Ian Holm's take on Paul Bowles was a highlight. (And I loved the typewriter talking through its anus!)

               --Dick Jenssen

Tuesday November 22, 2005:

I was trying to figure out just who Maurice Girodias was…the top dog in the litporn world at the time? I’ll keep going and try to focus that definition even more. As I go on, it would seem that he was an exploiter of writers, hiding them behind a myriad of pseudonyms while grabbing the majority of the profits. Not sure if I’m right here, but this is the impression I’m getting. And yet, it would seem that he was your predecessor in the soft core porn publishing business, paving your way. A man with Poirot-style pride and prissiness, yet perhaps a little uncertain of the books he produced.

How much more I can glean from this, I don’t know. With every issue of eI, I learn more about that industry and the people in it. Mission accomplished, I would hope. Is there anything more I can say on the subject of Maurice Girodias? Just that a lot of people didn’t like him, and none are unhappy that he’s dead.
               --Lloyd Penney

Books in the form so beloved ... hinged and unlocked boxes, packed with leaves speckled by ink

               -- Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake

Original artwork by Steve Stiles

EDITORIAL:
Buck You Very Much

By Earl Kemp

When I was a small child, I played with Buck Rogers toys. He was my hero, and so was Flash Gordon. I can remember being confused at times back then about that because Larry “Buster” Crabbe played both parts in my almost favorite of all Saturday matinee at the double feature movies with…ta! Ta! TA! Larry “Buster” Crabbe as one or the other of them. I also remember being confused about Buster’s name…Crabbe. It always made me laugh and that was years before I ever even heard of crabs.

This issue of eI is devoted to Buck Rogers, and a return to my science fiction roots. I gathered up almost more material than anyone might want to know about my hero, and his friend and companion Wilma, and give them all to you wrapped up nice and pretty as a Christmas gift from me and Bill and from Dave and Robert in the back room.

Enjoy!

This issue also marks the end of our fourth year of publication. Will wonders never cease? I wouldn’t have taken a bet on the possibility of that ever happening, yet here it is and we did it up as best we could.

This issue also marks yet another milestone because Bill Burns and I welcomed our 100,000 th visitor to eI shortly before this issue was closed. Again a miraculous milestone and an incredible improbability.

Buck You Very Much for making it possible for us to be so damned happy/proud right about now. Please don’t forsake us now that we’re almost finding out how to do it right. Watch us closely….

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There are two books of significance to me personally that I need to mention here. The first of them is the just published Everything You Know About Sex Is Wrong. I have a piece in it as do regular eI contributors Victor Banis, Steve Gertz, and Jay Gertzman…in addition to dozens of articles and diatribes written by other people. It is literally an encyclopedia of information about misconceptions regarding sex.

The second book is Luis Ortiz’ Arts Unknown: The Life & Art of Lee Brown Coye. This is a great book for old farts who remember and love Weird Tales, old Arkham House books, and creatures of the night. They’re all here, in glorious black and white and color, only a lot better than ever seen before as far as reproduction goes.

Also, this is a very special book indeed for me, marking a full-circle return from 54 years ago and Evanston, Illinois and me and Harlan Ellison. Who would’ve figured…?

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Happy Holidays!

In the third edition of The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 - 1834) speaks of “that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.” This acceptance of balderdash is essential to the enjoyment of poems, and of novels and short stories, and of dramas, too. Some assertions by writers, however, are simply too preposterous to be believed.

               --Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake

[The following is a discussion of the Buck Rogers comic strip, based on my forthcoming book, The Comic Strip that Changed the World, forthcoming, that is, if and when I complete it, and if and when I get a publisher.

[You may notice that the early days of the strip are stressed far more than the later ones. That is because the early days were the formative ones, because they set the stage for the rest, and because in my opinion, they were by far the best of the strips. However, I have friends, fellow Buck Rogers enthusiasts, who disagree strongly with me on that last point. Maybe they are more right than I am, but my view is the one I am capable of doing justice to.
               --Jim Coffeen]

The Buck Rogers Comic Strip

By J.A. Coffeen

Things moved fast. Science fiction was first recognized as a type of fiction by getting its first magazine, Amazing Stories, in 1926; Philip F. Nowlan wrote a story, “Armageddon, 2419 A.D.”, that was published in a 1928 issue of the magazine; and in 1929 the comic strip Buck Rogers appeared in newspapers.

The magazine story told of a future in which America had been conquered by the Han, Asians with a high technology. They had great aircraft supported by down-pointing rays that caused the air in their beams to rush upward, and armed with disintegrator rays that turned to nothing whatever they hit.

Americans lived in hiding to keep from being disintegrated in raids by Han aircraft, but had secretly developed a technology that included inertron, a substance with reverse weight, it so would “fall” upward. A person with an amount of inertron to cancel most of his weight could travel rapidly across country in long leaps. Americans had guns that fired rockets, as well as a form of radio the enemy couldn’t detect, and a device for seeing through solids.

Anthony (Tony) Rogers is thrust into this struggle after being trapped in a mine cave-in in the 20th century, and preserved for 492 years. Subtract that from 2419, and he started his sleep in 1927. Maybe Nowlan wrote it in that year.

Tony defends a young woman soldier, Wilma Deering, and joins the American forces. The story is good science fiction, with devices given explanations enough to make them seem as though they might someday be invented.

The story came to the attention of John F. Dille, head of the National Newspaper Syndicate, either by him reading the story or by Nowlan offering it to be serialized. Dille had wanted to have a science fiction comic strip, and hired Nowlan to write it. He had staff artist Richard Calkins draw it.

When Jim Coffeen was a teenager, he made model Buck Rogers rocket ships out of modeling clay. These pictures show examples of the ships he saved from that period.

The strip appeared in 1929. Dille had changed Tony’s first name to Buck, probably thinking it was catchier. Wilma was allowed to keep her name. The strip started with a bang, with Buck trapped in the mine, coming out of it, and seeing Wilma make a long leap and fall unconscious, all in the first day’s strip. Like the magazine story, it was told in autobiographical form — first person, past tense -- as though Buck was later relating what had happened. For instance, “Wilma and I were…” This continued for years, but by the end of the strip it was in third person, present tense. “Buck goes after…”

He adapts quickly to this future world he is part of. He and Wilma become inseparable. He has to defeat a former boy friend of hers, Killer Kane, in personal combat. Kane becomes the perennial bad guy in the strip, appearing almost every time the plot calls for dirty work to be done.

Buck and Wilma together play a part in the struggle against the overlords. When they plan to marry, something prevents it, and although they remain sweethearts, they never again come that close to marrying. That is probably because, in the 1930s, it was assumed that female leads in adventure stories should be single. But in the magazine story, Tony and his Wilma did marry, and it improved the story.

The setting of the strip was very like that in the magazine, with repeller-ray craft, disintegrators, inertron jumping belts, rocket guns, and Americans having to hide from Mongol raids (the Han were called Mongols in the strip).

The strip dealt with the Mongols for a little more than the year 1929. A peace treaty was signed, and the Americans put down a revolt for their new ally. Quite different from the magazine version, as a sequel to “Armageddon,” titled “Airlords of Han,” indicated that the Han were a crossbreed of humanity with an evil extraterrestrial race from a meteor that slammed into central Asia. This crossbreed was so inimical to mankind that it had to be exterminated for a human civilization to continue. The version in the strip was better — a human enemy no more hated than any other.

The end of the Mongol threat pretty much used up the plot material from the magazine story, so Nowlan had to come up with new adventures. Okay, right on time, here come invaders from Mars, who pluck Wilma from the Pacific Ocean, somewhere off the coast of Asia. They are determine, having evolved from tigers rather than apes. Like Killer Kane, they pop up as an enemy through most of the years of the strip.

The story gains three regular characters in an episode involving the sunken land of Atlantis, its people adapted to life beneath the sea.

Elderly scientist Dr. Huer adventures with Buck and Wilma, holding up well for an old man, even to getting conked on the head, and to whipping a king in fisticuffs. He invents devices that keep the strip moving technically.

Ardala Valmar is a fellow criminal with, and sort of girl friend of, Killer Kane.

Black Barney is a fierce Hindu air pirate who allies with Kane and Ardala, but later in the story appears as a loyal friend of Buck and Wilma.

For some time the strip stands out from other science fiction by its developing technology. Inventions already made are improved. New inventions are made and become part of the environment. Most science fiction of the future establishes a technology of the time, and doesn’t change it much. Where the technology in those stories is static that in Buck Rogers is dynamic. Pretty good distinction.

Inventions are improved. The Mongol hand disintegrator requires both hands to operate it. A later version is smaller and pistol-like. A paralysis ray projector is a large instrument mounted on a table. A later one is a handgun.

The front and back covers of this Big Little Book.

New inventions are made. Huer invents one-way energy, so a person can lightly hold a thing like a flashlight and exert a strong force with its beam. Like inertron’s reverse weight, it assumes that there can be ways around some of our known principles. In this case it is the principle that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Another principle-canceling device is the gyrocosmic relativator, that cancels a ship’s inertia, so it can start at top speed, or, when it runs into something, just come to an immediate stop without being damaged. These bold ideas are similar to the kind of breakthroughs in knowledge of the physical world that really occur.

At about the time of the end of the Mongol threat, a year from the start of the strip, a Sunday page started. It was drawn by Russell Keaton, although signed by Calkins. Its style was enough like Calkins’ that I didn’t notice any difference.

It featured Wilma’s teenage brother Buddy, who promptly (in the first picture) invents the flying belt, essentially a jumping belt with small rockets on extensions to the sides. At a time that seems only a little later (times aren’t quite synchronized between dailies and Sundays), the dailies show a “flying belt police,” so I’m not sure who should get the patent. On his test flight, Buddy is captured by a tiger ship over the Atlantic at about the time his sister is grabbed from the Pacific by another ship of the tigermen. Quite a coincidence — brother and sister in different oceans, captured by the first two tiger ships seen on Earth.

Buddy acquires a girl friend and traveling companion, the Martian princess Alura. No, not all Martians are tigermen; there is also a completely human race on Mars, the Golden People.

Buddy and Alura explore Pluto and Venus. They become king and queen of Venus, where there are bird riders, dragon riders, people originally from Earth who have invisible war tanks, giants, etc. Captured by a ship from Alpha Centauri, they gain a scientific advisor, the Centaurian Kabba, who serves a function in the story like that of Dr. Huer, but instead of inventing, Kabba just applies Centaurian technology.

In the dailies, technical progress continues. Huer jury-rigs a one-way-energy tube for personal flight, strapping it to himself and having it shine on a metal plate in front of it. Later it appears in a manufactured form, the tube with a small shield in front and a crossbar handle in back. A person holds the cross-bar and is pulled along. By this time the jumping belt has been replaced by a degravity belt, a mechanical device that adjusts the wearer’s weight to anywhere from normal to zero. So you set your belt to some weight, grab the crossbar, and away you go. Just don’t let go, or you’ll have to drift down with your degravity belt. An improved version is the moto-belt — the degravity and one-way-energy in a single case strapped to the back. That is an ideal personal-flight device. An army is shown flying in formation with moto-belts.

In 1932 the technology in the dailies backslides. Someone gets a flying belt from a ship’s stores. A flying belt with rockets! The more advanced moto-belt using one-way energy is never seen again. My guess is that someone thought the drawings needed to show an exhaust, so readers would know something was driving the person through the air. And there would also be the problem of explaining the moto-belt to new readers. For whatever reason, there seemed to be the two opposing forces in the making of the strip — advancing technology and pulling back, “dumbing down” so the kiddies would understand. But Buck Rogers had been wildly popular with the kids when it started. They sopped up all the hi-tech eagerly.

Maybe it was the grownups who needed the dumbing down. Reminds me of the New Yorker magazine commenting on the Buck Rogers phenomenon in a condescending tone. The article mentioned characters wearing space suits — so they wouldn’t get hurt in space! The kids who read Buck Rogers were better educated in that than the adult who wrote the article and many of the adults who read it.

In 1933 Rick Yager took over drawing the Sundays. His style too was enough like Calkins’ for the page to look like a Buck Rogers page. Later, he also did the writing. Unfortunately, many of his plots involved the good guys being tricked into a terrible fix by the bad guys, and using a trick to get out of it.

He had a good character, Admiral Cornplaster, a boy of a race that had suction cups on fingers and toes.

Both dailies and Sundays continued to have adventures based on what had gone before. But in 1936 in the dailies, 1937 in the Sundays, amnesia struck. Earth found itself at war with Venus. The Venus military was a lot like Earth’s. A man named Sethor ruled. Of course, there had certainly been a power vacuum when Buddy and Alura left, and it had to be filled some way. Perfectly reasonable. And I’d expect the bird riders, dragonriders, etc., to have been absorbed into a modern culture. But where were the giants? The invisible tanks?

What happened? Nowlan was still writing the comic. Had he forgotten the Venus he had designed? Of course not. Did he think that, as that Venus had been just in the Sundays, the more juvenile version, it didn’t count? Couldn’t be that, as the popularity of the strip from the first had been driven by kids.

I suspect that he or someone noticed that war clouds were gathering in the real world, and thought the strip might as well get in the act. In 1937 the Spanish Civil War was being fought. It was considered a testing ground for the bigger war to come. Whoever was controlling the strip must have also thought the kids would have forgotten the Venus of two or three years before. Well, to put in a personal note, this kid remembers it now (but he has to admit that his memory has been aided by looking at his collection through the years).

To make their future war feel like the real one, they needed the opponents to be similarly armed. During World War II there would be other attempts at making Buck Rogers relevant to the times, most of which fell flat, in my opinion. This one was by far the best. It felt like a real war, fought with the kinds of weapons used in the strip, and with a few new ones introduced.

Good as it might have been, it was cut off abruptly in favor of an episode about a new planet entering the Solar System. Why?

Phil Nowlan died in 1939. Dick Calkins took over the writing of the dailies, while continuing to draw them. World War II started. There must have been pressure again to make the strip relevant. In 1940, Buck is somehow thrown back in time 500 years! He introduces 25th century technology to help the war effort. Strangely, some of that technology had never been in the strip. He “invents” inertron, but by mixing chemicals — it had been made by radiation. He produces a ray that shrinks a person or object to tiny size, a device that had never been in the strip. He fights in World War II, and is bombed out of existence. Presto, back in the 25th century. There is an indication that it was a dream, but a 20th century kid has come to the 25th with him. What a sad state for our Buck Rogers!

After a rather charming episode of Wilma being paralyzed in a fixed position and worshipped as a goddess, the dailies are back to two more imitations of World War II, and not good ones at that.

In 1942, the Sunday pages had a war episode, “The Rising Sun Planet.” It was utterly corny, with evil Japanese-like people repeatedly trapping the characters, who each time got untrapped. And on and on.

In 1947 Calkins left the strip. He had been trying different ways to make the dailies up to date. Maybe in an attempt to satisfy the troops’ desire for pinups, he made Wilma look like Daisy Mae Yokum, and then like she came from Playboy! In the last episode he wrote and drew, Buck encounters the spirits of Nero, Caesar, and others, who provide him with a super-ship that they have been working on for centuries. What a situation for Calkins’ successor to continue!

We start having a series of different writers and artists. John Dille, who caused the strip to exist in the first place, did the writing for over a year. The artists apparently made no attempt to continue the strip in its familiar style. Strange. When other comic strips have changed artists, the difference in style of drawing has been hardly noticeable.

Somewhere in the writing after Calkins, Wilma Deering was dropped from the strip. Dropped Wilma Deering! Why not drop Buck instead? What in the world were they thinking? It was done subtly, with her reappearing once or twice, and then not seen again. That is, not seen until one of the writers near the end of the strip’s life had the decency to bring her back for a brief visit.

When Calkins left, Murphy Anderson took over, drawing in his own style. Good enough drawing, but to me not Buck Rogers. The last of the artists was George Tuska, who drew the strip for its final eight years. He had no concept of future technology, but drew most scenes right out of our times, just sticking in a spaceship, robot, or other feature as called for. I’ll say this for him — he sure could draw wimmin.

During Tuska’s time there were several writers, apparently just asked to write science fiction stories. They mostly didn’t follow through with what had gone before. It is reported that various science fiction writers wrote episodes. Again there wasn’t follow-through. A person might wonder if some of them didn’t just dig out stories that hadn’t sold, and stick in names from Buck Rogers.

Whatever the cause, the final daily, in 1967, makes quite a contrast with the first one. The first has his sleep, awakening, and seeing Wilma’s long leap, his first of the 25th century’s wonders. The last strip is one picture, of kids running around, their noise annoying a man. I’ve read several places that Buck Rogers was killed by progress catching up with it. 20th-century technology caught up with most of the technology of the last of Buck Rogers, but came nowhere near that of the start of the strip. No, the Buck Rogers strip wasn’t killed by progress, it was done in by self-inflicted wounds.

But —

Buck Rogers was “The Comic Strip that Changed the World.” How’s that for a modest claim? How can a comic strip, in the kids’ part of a newspaper, have any effect on the world as a whole?

Buck Rogers has had several effects on the world, some major and some less so. I’ll start with the most important and work down, more or less, not putting a great deal of effort into an exact sorting. There are so many that I think I’ll number them.

1. Buck Rogers influenced kids, causing them to dream of a future with wonderful new devices, especially spacecraft. Kids grow up, you know. They go into some kind of work. Some became astronauts, scientists, writers, engineers, and inventors. The work some of those people do changes the way we live. Although there is no way to get solid evidence, I believe it's safe to say that humanity got into space sooner than it would have without Buck Rogers. And the same for many more of our technical advances.

2. The strip introduced the public to the idea that the future will be different from the present in technical development. It didn’t attempt to give a picture of specific new devices we would have, but just that we would have many.

3. As with the kids, it prepared the adult public for a future that involved space exploration. So when the “space race” between the U.S. and the Soviet Union came along, people knew what the race was about.

4. The strip introduced the public to science fiction. That is clearly shown by the fact that for years the general public wasn’t familiar with the term “science fiction,” but knew of the genre of writing as “that Buck Rogers stuff.” Or, among people particularly disinclined to accept the possibility of a technically advanced future, “that crazy Buck Rogers stuff.”

5. In doing so, it gave a big boost to the popularity of science fiction, a boost that the science fiction community has never recognized.

6. Almost alone among science fiction stories, it made much use of personal flight, that is, flying by means of a device that a person wears rather than sitting in. The beginnings of personal flight have now already been invented, possibly in part inspired by Buck Rogers.

7. The strip also popularized the idea of non-lethal weapons. They too are coming into being.

8. Buck Rogers gave us some additions to the language — “zap,” “disintegrator,” (already a term in science fiction, but not in the language in general) and of course “that Buck Rogers stuff” with its “crazy” variant, and just “Buck Rogers.”

9. A number of science fiction comic strips appeared following the success of Buck Rogers, some quite well known.

10. Some updated versions of Buck Rogers appeared, not necessarily much like the original, but keeping the name, and therefore the influence, alive.

11. The name continues to pop up in all sorts of places, with the assumption that people are familiar with it, thus prolonging that familiarity.

How’s that for a mere comic strip? Among other things, helping us go into space, perhaps the next great change after we changed from hunting-and-gathering to farming. Not at all bad for one of the funnies.

The skeptic does not mean him who doubts, but him who investigates or researches, as opposed to him who asserts and thinks that he has found.

               -- Miguel de Unamuno

Fritz Leiber and the Buck Rogers Comic Strips

By Justin Leiber

I'm glad to write of Fritz's experience working on writing Buck Rogers strips when he spent a couple of weeks at my basement apartment near the University of Chicago in 1959, my last year of PhD course work in philosophy there.

What I recall, most specifically, was his delight in the unique narrative and technical problems of the story-telling newspaper comic strip. He spoke of them in a wholly uncondescending manner, as a craftsman in one artistic area looking into and trying his hand in another area, with not even a hint of any distinction between "fine" and "high" art and "popular" or "lowbrow" word-smithing (like an Ancient Greek, who made no distinction between art, craftsmanship, and technology, calling all techne, Fritz made no distinction here).

The Buck Roger's strip ran (as newspapers did) on a daily, weekly (weekday, Saturday, and most importantly the wonderfully colored Sunday) and, more arbitrarily, on the number of weeks that made an episode, the fixed number of weeks for which the writer and illustrative artist were paid, with the illustrator's work sometimes divided into drawer, colorer, and letterer.

For each day, Fritz would provide a brief description of what was to be pictured in each cell of the daily three or four, with the speech of the characters, and brief narrative continuity. This was perhaps a constraining but empowering technical form somewhat like the rhyme and meter requirements of a sonnet. The weekly narrative requirements added another baroque layer, like the complex of theme and variations in a Bach fugue. Since the strip ran in black and white for the weekdays, providing for one sort of audience, while the Sunday paper provided a colored version for a sometimes quite independent audience, with some papers just taking the Sunday version and a few just the weekly. So the weekly version had to tell a scene or chapter, a narrative sequence, a mini story with its own beginning, middle, and end (a problem creating incident, a tension-filled expansion, and a resolution -- of course pointing to a new aspect of a continuing larger problem).

But since some readers would just get the Sunday version, some just the weekday version, and many got both, the weekly version and the Sunday version had to tell the same story in two different versions, the longer and more detailed weekly version and the wham-bam Sunday recapitulation, which had to picture and narrate coherently what was essentially the same vignette but at the same time make it seem new and fresh to the weekly reader, like a narrative in which the same events are seen from two perspectives. Complicated indeed! Fritz also made me see that the comics largely employ a restricted but terse and classical, indeed Shakespearian, Anglo-Saxon English.

And the weekly sequence itself of course had to fit into a larger story; as indeed this larger episode had to fit, more or less (!), into the still larger, decades old adventures of Buck Rogers. Ultimately, all a bit like the Sherlock Holmes adventures, leaving trails of inconsistencies and bearing marks of changes in the larger culture, as when Holmes's early cheerful use of Belushi-esque speed balls, the current nadir of dangerous addiction, is tastefully dismissed from the later canon by Doyle himself, or when re-issuers of Howard's Conan stories remove his use of the racist terminology without even a footnote, or Agatha Christie's Ten Little Niggers (1939) becomes Ten Little Indians by the 1960s and has now settled in as And Then There Were None. Ironically, Christie got her original title and plot from a musical hall song (1869), which changed a American original song version (1868) by substituting "Niggers" for "Indians," possibly as the English at that time had romantic visions of "noble savages," while Americans of that time were genocidally completing the cleaning off of our native American population. And "then there were none," indeed.

As a good honest bibliophile and sword and sorcery master, Fritz came to be particularly horrified at the unnoted textual "clean up" of Robert E. Howard's stories in the very successful 1966 L. Sprague De Camp and Lin Carter edition. In Christie's case, the titles were changed (common enough when a book moves from British to American publication -- changing for example C.S. Forester's ironic The Happy Return, which perfectly captures Hornblower's character and story, to the pot-boiling bloody-sea thriller Beat to Quarters. But De Camp and Carter changed the very words of Howard's texts, eliminating the forthright, revealing, and characteristically-flavored racism, hyped by Howard and the pulps, of American white culture through the 1920s and 1930s, and also making other marketable changes, changing other Howard's protagonists to Conan and making "his" overall story more coherent and filling it out.

Their excuse of course was that this was popular commercial literature. (Karl Wagner eventually put together a limited hardcover edition of unexpurgated Howard stories but the publicly known Howard is De Camp and Carter's Howard.) Fritz's respect for the humblest craftsmanship shows out here as well as in his gay and respectful sojourn as a Buck Rogers creator.

Cleaning birdshit out of cuckoo clocks.

               -- Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake

About Buck Rogers

By Charles Freudenthal

Introduction

I have never entirely understood the power that the (early) Buck Rogers imagery has over my imagination. Part of it is nostalgia. Occasionally I will see a "panel" that I actually remember from my childhood. This is always an occasion for reverie. Images are more powerful than text in this regard.

The Buck Rogers toy Wilma pistol.

Dick Calkins spaceships seemed humorous parodies of rocket designs of the time. I think Calkins (who had started illustrating "aviation" comic strips) wanted to convey the strangeness and otherness of The World Of Tomorrow. But there was always that humorous element!

I will say from the outset that I consider Buck Rogers as written and drawn by Phil Nowlan and Dick Calkins or Dick Calkins alone to be the only authentic Buck Rogers. The humorous expressions, postures, and downright cavorting disappeared in the work of the later artists.

How Rick Yager came to take over Buck Rogers by 1940 is a long and complicated story.

Comic creator: Rick Yager http://www.lambiek.net/artists/y/yager_rick.htm

Some long-lived comic strips have a succession of artists in their history. (Gasoline Alley has existed 3/4 of a century!) It is very rare for a new artist to drastically change the style of a strip. This is what Yager did. Under Yager, Buck Rogers looked as if was aimed at preteens. Gone were the humor, kinky space ships, and curvaceous women!

The main purpose of this article is to give the accessibility of various Buck Rogers "products."

Buck Rogers Books

Thanks to Internet sources (bookfinder.com, etc.) a very great number of Buck Rogers reprints and information sources are available.

The prices I have inserted represent a "low average" from bookfinder.com.

The Collected Works of Buck Rogers in the 25 th Century - Editor: Robert C. Dille

(Chelsea House, 1969, 370 pages, h/c) Almost 1,400 strips! - $35

This is an incredible buy for the reader or collector. If one were to buy one Buck Rogers book, I would recommend this one. These are selections of one- or two-year sequences from 1929 to 1949. The artist/writers are Phil Nowlan, Dick Calkins, and Rick Yager.

At the beginning, in 1929 (25th century!) Buck and his American allies, fighting Mongol! invaders, are armed with recognizable Curtis Hawk P-6 fighters and Springfield rifles, which seemed a bit odd.

In The Monkeymen of Mars (1943) there is a dreadful bit of racism. These Monkeymen are supposed to be descended (indeed!) from Japanese who landed on Mars 500 years before! (How?)

Later in this same sequence Calkins speaks of the Sun's "orbit" spiraling down on the earth. Nowhere else have I found geocentrism in Buck Rogers!

Somewhere in the strip history, rocket pistols morph into disintegrators without changing shape! (Remember the Gyrojet "rocket" pistols of the late ’50s?)

No Twiggies appear in Buck Rogers! Wilma's curvaceous form is modeled even into her metallic space suits. Most of the women appear in 1920s/1930s bathing suits.

Adventures of Buck Rogers – The Story of Buck Rogers on the Planetoid Eros by Phil Nowlan and Dick Calkins, Whitman Big Big Book (Hard cover "comic book". See Big Little Books below), 316 pages. 150 full page illos. $79

This is the most glorious of the Whitman Buck Rogers Publications. It is the most "scientific" of the Whitman Buck Rogers books and would qualify as decent pulp s.f., as a short story.

The premise is that the asteroid/planetoid Eros is a cigar shaped, derelict "spaceship" with the inner wall of the ship inhabited. (Eros is 5 by 20 miles!). Nowlan worked out a lot of the gravitational problems quite convincingly. This story has more coherence and s.f. credibility than any other Buck Rogers story that I have read.

The story has a rather comic opera cast of characters that I find entertaining.

Dr. Huer fixes the engines and Buck pilots the ship back to Titan from whence it came. After some more comic opera, Dr. Huer becomes King of the Titanian system by means of fisticuffs!

Buck Rogers landed on Eros in 1935 (25th century).

The Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous Mission landed on Eros in the 21 st century. (2/12/01)

(Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous Mission http://near.jhuapl.edu/ Many fine images. The NEAR found only a barren rock. (Buck Roger's "cigar shape" looks stepped on!)

Buck Rogers: The First 60 Years in the 25 th Century - Editor Lorraine Williams, Introduction by Ray Bradbury. According to sale sites in bookfinder.com this book has reprints of the “Armageddon 2419 A D” story and reprinted Buck Rogers comic strips. I have never seen this book. $35.

http://www.wildsidepress.com/product.asp?itemid=1129&catid=331 $18. This website has a list of the stories and some background information.

Big Little Books

Big Little Books are the best source of Buck Rogers after the two collections above. The low average price is about $40. (Buck Rogers In the City of Floating Globes brings over $150.)

BLB's are about 4-1/2 X 4 X 1-1/2 in. They are hard cover, pulp interior, and have TRIMMED EDGES! (Remember that hoo hah?) The pages were alternately text and illustration.

This website will tell you all you want to know about BLBs. The first four or five paragraphs will give you a good idea. Learning About Big Little Books http://www.biglittlebooks.com/learning.html

Buck Rogers Reprints

These two websites offer reprints of the Buck Rogers strips and other classic comic strips

Pacific Comics Club: Buck Rogers http://www.pacificcomics.com/buck.html offers a total of 52 giant volumes! Volumes 1-52, $10 per volume

Buck Rogers Sundays Reprints http:///.kenpiercebooks.com/buck.htm 3-month set $40.

Buck Rogers Toys

The effect of Buck Rogers on the consciousness of children, in particular, was immense. The Buck Rogers phenomenon spawned a gigantic industry of books, toys, games, etc.

If Phil Nowlan didn't invent "the ray gun," he made it a permanent part of our culture. This article is a must for those besotted with the original Buck Rogers. There are many mini-illos.

Buck Rogers Toy Pistol – http://www.toyraygun.com/buckrogersrayguns.html

Here are fine illustrations of two of the greatest of the Buck Rogers toys.

MARX BUCK ROGERS SPACE SHIP! $3,400!! Great picture! http://scoop.diamondgalleries.com/news_images/1783_4468_2.jpg

BUCK ROGERS DISINTEGRATOR PISTOL & BOX, XZ-38 SPACE GUN Great picture!

BUCK ROGERS 25TH CENTURY ELECTRIC CASTER SET. About $450

http://www.hakes.com/item.asp?Auction=186&ItemNo=37910

Good picture. I actually had one of these when I was a kid. You could make 2-inch lead castings of Buck, Wilma, and Killer Kane. (I still remember the burned fingers and splashes of molten lead!)

MANY BUCK ROGERS ITEMS WITH PICTURES

eBay Store - Toy Ranch: Toy Guns Space Guns, Space Toys, Robots

http://stores.ebay.com/Toy-Ranch

Buck Rogers Radio

At this website you can get Buck Rogers radio programs from the thirties, free! This site has many other free radio programs.

Buck Rogers Audio http://www.radiolovers.com/pages/buckrogers.htm

OTR means Old Time Radio. This is one of the many sources of old time radio MP3s or cassettes. Buck Rogers OTR MP3 List http://www.otrcat.com/buckrogers.htm

Buck Rogers Serial

An informative and entertaining review. History - Review Article Tony LoBue's Flash Gordon Website... http://flashgordon.ws/buckrogers.htm

Audio of the soul stirring "bridge music" of the Buck Rogers Serial. Star Wars, watch out!

http://flashgordon.ws/sound/br.wav

A surprising review from the New York Times BUCK ROGERS [serial] review, cast, and synopsis. 241 min. "Originally released as a serial, Buck Rogers was later re-edited into two different feature-length condensations, Planet Outlaws and Destination Saturn."

http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/movie.html?v_id=122228

Amazon.com: Buck Rogers: DVD: Buster Crabbe, Constance Moore, Jackie Moran. $12!

At the age of eleven (?), at the end of a chapter, I saw Buck Roger's rocket crushed in the gigantic rock gates of the Hidden City. About 60 years later I acquired the VHS and found out that Buck had survived the catastrophe. Surprise, surprise!

Buck Rogers Television

This has no Buck Rogers resonance for me. I include this IMDB site for completeness sake.

"Buck Rogers in the 25th Century" (1979) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078579/locus

Cynic: A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.

               --Ambrose Bierce

That Crazy Buck Rogers Stuff*

By Steve Stiles

Although there are many reasons to enjoy Star Trek, as a jaded old science fiction fan I mostly appreciate one particular by-product of Roddenberry's series: It  *finally * replaced Buck Rogers in the public's mind as being synonymous with science fiction. For far too many years we suffering science fiction aficionados were confronted with the descriptive and dismissive phrase, "Oh, that crazy Buck Rogers stuff!" When applied to the works of, say, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, or Philip K. Dick, it could be pretty galling. Now the phrase is "Oh, like Mr. Spock!," which is, of course, a vast improvement.

"Buck" Rogers first saw life as a novelette written by Philip Francis Nowlan, Armageddon 2419, which appeared in the science fiction pulp magazine Amazing Stories in 1928. Anthony Rogers, a veteran of the Great War, is trapped in a gas pocket after a mine cave-in, and, due to radioactive gas, falls into a 500 year slumber. When he awakens he finds a devastated United States occupied by oriental despots called Hans, who, we are told, are mentally advanced but have "a vacuum in place of that intangible something we call a soul."  Rogers joins forces with a variety of American groups and tribes, eventually uniting them to defeat the dictatorial invaders.

One of Amazing's readers for that issue was syndicator John F. Dille. Nowlan was contacted to adapt his story into a comic strip, with one change: "Anthony" became "Buck." Once again, on January 7, 1929, Rogers would repeat his half a millennia long nap in the new syndicated strip, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. Buck sprang into action in the very first installment, awakening to spot Wilma Deering soaring through the air with the aid of her flying belt, or "Rocket drifter." Now accompanied by Wilma, Buck employed his old-fashioned 20th century American gumption, joining forces with guerrilla bands ("Orgs") to oust the conquerors (now "Mongol Reds"). No sooner do they do so when the country is again attacked by the Tiger-Men of Mars. As Gilda Radner's Roseanne Roseannadana would say, "It's always something." (Later on, in the Second World War, the Martian Tiger-Men would take on distinct Japanese racial stereotypical characteristics.)

The Red Planet invasion, early in the second year of the strip, had one benefit in that it launched Buck's career as a space traveler. Wilma is kidnapped by the Tiger-Men and taken back to the home planet, forcing Buck to build his own spaceship ("Roaring rockets! We'll show these Martians who's who in this solar system!"). Joining Buck in subsequent adventures were Wilma's brother Buddy, who became Buck's teenage sidekick, his friend and mentor, the brilliant Dr. Huer, and Killer Kane, a traitorous freebooter.

The first artist on the strip was Dick Calkins (1895-1962), who had started his career as a newspaper sports cartoonist and artist. During the First World War Calkins had been commissioned as a lieutenant in the air force. The war ended before Calkins could see action, but for years afterwards he often added "Lt." to his signature on the strip. It must be said that Calkins was hardly an accomplished artist. His drawings were crude, the anatomy, perspective, and inking barely adequate. His sole strength (admittedly an important one for that strip) was his ability to draw futuristic gadgets and riveted, pulp-style spaceships with some flair.

The Sunday Buck Rogers debuted on March 30, 1930, and, although signed by Calkins, was actually ghosted by Russell Keaton, whose draftsmanship abilities were far superior to his employer's. The artist had assisted Calkins on another strip, Skyroads, which he would eventually work on under his own name. Keaton, an aviation buff, divided his time between strip work and his other profession as a flying instructor, unfortunately dying of leukemia at the young age of 35 in 1945.

Nowlan was forced off the strip in the 1940s. According to cartoonist Murphy Anderson, "Phil Nowlan was fired from the strip before he died. He was fired for getting too 'far out'." A succession of writers and artists followed his departure. Murphy Anderson, most remembered for his work at DC Comics, replaced Calkins in 1947, and was then replaced by Leonard Dworkins, who drew Buck from 1949 to 1951.

Dworkins was followed by Rick Yager (my own favorite on the strip), who both wrote and drew Buck from 1951 to 1958,
giving it a much greater flair.

Yager had actually started working on the spaceman's adventures in the 25th century sometime in 1932, soon after graduating from the Chicago Academy of Fine Art. Gradually taking over over more of the art chores until, by the mid to late '30s, he was drawing as well as writing the Sunday episodes. By the early 1950s, Yager took over the dailies too, and continued on (with Dworkins assisting) until a contractual dispute with the syndicate forced him, after nearly three decades on Buck Rogers, to quit.

Science fiction writers Fritz Leiber and Judith Merril took over scripting after Yager's departure. George Tuska handled the art until 1965 when Buck Rogers in the 25th Century was abruptly canceled, leaving Tuska to go on to pencil Iron Man and many of Marvel Comics' other characters over the next 22 years.

Buck Rogers has also appeared in other genres. The Yager strips were reprinted in Famous Funnies, which ran brilliant Buck Rogers covers by Frank Frazetta. Original Buck Rogers stories ran in a Gold Key version from 1979-1983. In 1939 Universal produced twelve chapters of a Buck Rogers serial, starring Buster Crabbe. (The serial was re-released in 1953 as Planet Outlaws and in 1965 as Destination Saturn.)

In 1979 Buck returned to the big screen in Buck Rogers of the 21st Century, a probable attempt to cash in on the success of 1977's Star Wars. An equally mediocre television series followed the movie, and the revived interest in the property prompted the New York Times Syndicate to launch a revival of the Nowlan strip, this time with writer James Lawrence and science fiction. artist Grey Morrow. Cary Bates replaced Lawrence in 1981 and Jack Sparling became the strip's artist in 1982. In 1983, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, plagued by syndicate distribution problems, sputtered to an end.

Whatever the strip's flaws were, Calkins introduced the general public to a number of science fiction concepts that, in 1929, had been limited to the pulps and novels. For better or for worse, flying belts, ray guns, robots, once the stuff of fiction, are all now becoming part of our reality.

- - -

We wish to find the truth, no matter where it lies. But to find the truth we need imagination and skepticism both. We will not be afraid to speculate, but we will be careful to distinguish speculation from fact.

               -- Carl Sagan

By Richard A. Lupoff

Parents of hungry children have been known to do all sorts of things for food. Didn’t Jean Valjean steal a loaf of bread to feed a hungry child? Didn’t survivors of Hurricane Katrina actually raid grocery stores to get nourishment for their children? Is there no shame in this world?

When I walked away from a nice secure job in the computer biz in 1970 I thought I had a pretty good game plan worked out. I’d already sold a couple of novels and a nonfiction book. I figured I could turn out two books a year plus assorted shorter pieces and take good care of my family that way.

Oy! Was I ever in for a rude awakening!

At first things went pretty well. I had a couple of contracts in my back pocket and I was able to turn out copy at a pretty rapid pace. I also managed to pick up a fairly steady series of assignments from journals you may or may not have heard of: Ramparts, Crawdaddy, SunDance, Night Times, The Organ. I landed steady gigs reviewing books for the San Francisco Chronicle and for Andy Porter’s slick magazine Algol. Those provided lots of checks, as did occasional shots at the Washington Post and the LA Times. And, not to go into excessive detail, I garnered some bucks via steady albeit part-time teaching at the College of Marin and occasional guest appearances at UC/Berkeley, UCLA, and Stanford.

Sounds pretty good, dunnit? It was a lot of fun and produced some nice publishing credits and copy for my résumé . But somehow the number of dollars received versus the number of hours required just didn’t add up right and my financial condition was steadily deteriorating. We had three small children and taking care of them was a full-time job for Pat. Our savings were just about exhausted and things were looking desperate.

One day my agent phoned and asked if I was familiar with Buck Rogers.

Jeez, what a question! Any science fiction fan of that era knew Buck Rogers whether he wanted to or not. All you had to do was mention science fiction outside fannish circles and you knew the next words you were going to hear: “You really read that crazy Buck Rogers stuff?”

At least it wasn’t, “Do you believe in UFOs?”

Sure, I knew the comic strip, I’d seen the Buster Crabbe serial, and I’d even read Armageddon 2419 AD, by Philip Francis Nowlan in the sweet little Avalon edition put together by one of my personal heroes, the great Robert W. Lowndes.

“You know, there’s a Buck Rogers TV series in the works,” my agent went on. “There’s a chance to novelize a couple of screenplays. Are you interested?”

I hadn’t quite reached the point of stealing bread for my children, but this looked like a heaven-sent chance to earn some dollars. Okay, novelizing screenplays might be the lowest form of fiction writing. It was definitely lower than writing pornography; Larry Shaw had offered me a chance to do that. I realized that I couldn’t do it. I phone Larry and told them that I was willing, and I ought to be good at it, I really, really liked women and sex, but when I hit the on button on my Selectric it just didn’t happen.

“Oh, that explains it,” Larry replied sympathetically. “If you really like women and sex, you’ll never be a good pornographer. Don’t waste your time trying.”

Hey, where was I? Oh, novelizing screenplays.

Dell Books had arranged to publish a series of novels based on the forthcoming television show. The editor responsible was Jim Frenkel, for whom I’d done a couple of science fiction novels. We got along well and this looked like a reasonably pleasant relationship, if not exactly a very creative one.

Bill Rotsler had done a few novelizations and referred to the process as “creative typing.” Well, I think Bill was at least half right.

While my agent tussled with the other parties involved, Jim and I talked about the project. The contract negotiations were more complex than they are for a normal book. You don’t just have an author and a publisher involved. You have a license holder, a production studio, and a television network, too. After a while my agent sent me a preliminary binder-agreement to sign and return while everybody and his lawyer worked out the full-scale contract.

Jim Frenkel, in the meanwhile, promised to send me the scripts of the two episodes I was supposed to novelize, along with production notes, character and background bibles, and cast photos.

I would have to write fast because they wanted to get the books onto the stands while the TV series was fresh and getting a publicity rush. There was another reason for me to write fast. Nobody was certain that the TV series was even going to happen. The network brass were dithering. I guess this is par for the course. It certainly accounts for some of the heavy drinking that goes on in the industry, not to mention the strains on personal relationships.

The arrangement, then, was this: Glen Larson Productions would send all the source materials to Dell. Dell would send them on to me. I would start work. If the TV series aired, I would complete two novels, Dell would publish them, and I would receive a nice paycheck. If the decision was made not to air the series, I would be notified to stop work forthwith and deliver to Jim Frenkel as much “product” as I had completed. Dell would presumably deep-six it. Or, more likely, cold storage it in case the project was ever revived. And I would be paid pro rata for however much work I had done.

Yes, that will assure promptness, won’t it?

The package from Dell arrived late in the afternoon. The older kids were home from school. The little guy was playing on the swing set in the backyard. Pat was working on dinner. I opened the package, took one look at the contents, and decided that I was not going to let it ruin my evening with my family.

Next morning I sat down with the materials Frenkel had sent me.

There were two scripts, one titled simply, “Buck Rogers in the 25th Century;” the other, “Buck Rogers: That Man on Beta.” No bible. No cast photos. I picked up the phone and called Jim Frenkel. Where was all the material I’d been promised?

Tough luck, buddy, you’ve got all we’ve got.

Well, when you can’t write through a problem, you write around it. If I wasn’t going to be able to describe “Buck’s steely gray eyes” or his “deep brown eyes” or his “brilliant blue eyes,” I’d just write something like “Buck’s glinting, determined eyes.”

Ah, well.

I started reading. “Buck Rogers in the 25th Century” would be the pilot episode of the series. As scripted by Glen A. Larson and Leslie Stevens, this was a wildly revisioned version of the Buck Rogers story, created by Phil Nowlan in Amazing Stories and processed and reprocessed through endless comic strip and comic book and Big Little Book and movie versions. I finished reading the script, heaved a sigh of resignation and turned to “That Man on Beta.”

Pictured here are examples from one of Richard Lupoff’s Buck Rogers memorabilia. It is a popup book showing the type and arrangement of artwork used in it. Courtesy Richard Lupoff Collection.

This one really bothered me. It concerned a plot by the Evil Alien Empire to create an army of ubermenschen with which they intended to conquer the Earth. Buck Rogers is kidnapped and assigned the task of impregnating all the prospective mothers. What a wild Nazi fantasy. The mothers involved were selected for perfection in their own infancy and fed some kind of wacko growth hormone that brings them to full maturity at age four or five.

What kind of weird sickos were writing for Glen Larson? And what in the world made them ever think that this kind of stuff could make it onto network TV? These guys were talking about serial rape of four- and five-year-olds.

I grabbed my telephone again and called poor Jim Frenkel. I asked if he’d read those Buck Rogers scripts. Of course he hadn’t. So I told him about them. He said there was nothing he could do. Just shut up and write.

I said, “There’s no way I’m going to put my name on this kind of disgusting trash.”

Jim said that Dell had already had the covers designed and sent out publicity materials with my byline prominently displayed on the covers of the books.

I told him I didn’t care; I wasn’t going to have my name besmirched that way. Unless he agreed to remove my name from the books, I was not going to write them. This was not easy for me to say. Not with three small kids to feed. B