Theagenes

This is a very underrated cover IMO and one of my favorite books. The Buck Rogers strip was one of the main features in Famous Funnies from its debut in #3 to the end of the run twenty years later, and yet this is the only Buck Rogers cover from early part of the run - he wouldn't appear again until the Frazetta issues fourteen years later. It came out just after Buck Rogers 1 and about the same time as Buck Rogers 2, so its purpose was probably to help plug the new series.

That is a sweet copy!

Batman 11 and Tec 69 listed in the marketplace. (thumbs u LINK

That is really cool!

Yeah, me too.

So just for fun, here are the first few Buck Rogers daily strips, which debuted in January 1929. John F. Dille, the president of the National Newspaper Service, supposedly read "Armageddon 2419 AD" and approached Philip Nowlan about serializing. Other sources say it was Nowlan that went to Dille with the idea. These early strips were still written by Nowlan and one of Dille's staff artists, Calkins was assigned to illustrate it.

That is a sweet run! I'm thinking about making these my next project after I finish the Tip Tops.

That's exactly right. They turned down arguably one of the greatest covers of all time and replaced it with this less violent, less offensive snoozer:

My only Frazetta Buck Rogers: Unless you count this:

Buck Rogers second appearance was in the March 1929 issue of Amazing Stories in the story "Air Lords of Han." This time he made the cover. This would have been on the stands just before the daily strip started in late January of that year.

I did - it's a low grade copy (split cover), but I got it dirt cheap. It's a fun little book. There were reprints made of that premium weren't there. Is there a map too? bb Ektek put out the reprint in the early 90's. As Steve said, it does not have the kelloggs ad in the back. You can usually find them them for around $5 on ebay. If you're talking about the Solar System map, I'm not sure if that has been reprinted or not, but I think maybe it has. I'd love to pick up one those, but they don't show up very often.

Jeff, I have the over-sized reprint book of the Buck Rogers strips and can't say that I particularly appreciate the Calkins art in it ... Hermes Press is soliciting in the new Previews their own reprint line of the complete (well, we'll see if the project is a success ...) strip. My question to you: is this worth picking up? All I have is the same oversized reprint book you have, which does have a lot of the early strips in order, but it does skip around a little bit. It has strips 1-278 then skips to 327-429, then 583-730, etc. Basically it reprints the major story arcs, but I'd love to read the filler strips in between - I have no idea what's in them. As for Calkins' art - I'd call it charmingly quaint (but that's probably being charitible).

Buck Rogers first appeared in the August 1928 issue of Amazing Stories in a short story, "Armageddon 2419" by Philip Nowlan. Here he does not have the nickname "Buck" yet - he is just Anthony (or Tony) Rogers. Although the story does feature antigravity "jumping belts" the cover does not depict the Buck Rogers story, but Doc Smith's "Skylark of Space" another very important early sf work. Here are some interior shots, with some illustrations by Frank R. Paul.

Nice! I still need a copy of this one.

Sweet copy! Calkins art is definetly crude and his anatomy awkward, but to me that's part of the charm of his style. It has such an early pre-Golden Age feel to it.

I mentioned it in the white cover thread, but no. 6 in particular has really bad paper along with a number of other production issues that make it very difficult to find in anything but low grade. Almost every cover I ever seen has some tanning. It also only has one staple and several "half wraps" - partial wraps that are glued to a full wrap, which gives it an odd page count that is not a multiple of eight. The first copy I bought, I thought it was missing pages and restored with glue. All of these issues were of course related to the metal and paper shortages from the war. Steve, did you ever find a high grade Kelloggs premium?

Sweet books! I see you got the got Crippen No. 6 from Metro and the two 8.0s off ebay that have been tempting me for about a year now. It's great to see another Buck Rogers collector - they are few and far between nowadays. The Buck Rogers newspaper strip was far more influential than many collectors today realize. Not only does it tie with Tarzan as the first non-funny adventure strip (January 1929), but it was also the first time the general public was exposed to the new genre of Gernsback-style science fiction. For many years a synonym for "science fiction" was "that Buck Rogers stuff." The character has sadly slipped out of the pop culture arena since the 1979 T.V. show (which I loved as a kid!). I would love to see a modern take on Buck Rogers that is closer to Philip Nowlan's original stories, but after seeing what the SF channel did to Flash Gordon last year, maybe it's not a good idea. Jeff

Congratulations! That it is sweet run and one I'd like to put together some day.

Would love to have a copy of this book someday....what a great cover! Thanks to Sacramento's A-1 Comics, I finally got a copy for myself. One of the top 10 bizarre comic covers of all time. Cowboys, nazis and a kewpie doll with califlower ears!

That's cool!

That's sweet! One my favorite covers too.

Well the original Latin meaning for "super" is "above" or "on top."

Regarding public domain works: There's lots of useful links on this page. Link Bookmarked - Thanks! (thumbs u

Stanley Weinbaum at the Guttenberg Project (of which I am sure you were aware but the link is here for all) (thumbs u Sweet! Thanks for the link! Guttenburg is amazing! I also love Librivox.org which has been working with them to put public domain works avaible in audio for free. Over the last year I've listened to tons of Verne, Wells, Conan Doyle, Burroughs, Dunsany and others all on my MP3 (while digging or cleaning pot sherds ). Right now I'm on vol. 3 of Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. I am such a geek.