From the ShelfThe Collected Works Of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century

BUCK ROGERS started a lot of it. There was science-fiction before Buck, and there probably would have been a lot of sci-fi without him, but Buck Rogers turned on a lot of kids to anti-gravity and rayguns and flights to the moon-among them Ray Bradbury, who wrote the introduction to the present mammoth volume of Buck Rogers strips.

So without Buck Rogers there might not have been any Martian Chronicles. There almost certainly would not have been any Flash Gordon, Or "This Island Universe." Or "Fireball XL-5." Or Roger Ramjet.

So even if we went back now and discovered that Buck was a senile old relative in the sci-fi family-the kind of old uncle that falls asleep over his food and embarrasses evervone when he talks to himself in the movies-even so, we would have to respect him. After all, we owe him a lot.

But, unfortunately, this new book of strips covering the period from 1929 until 1946 shows that Buck had a lot on the ball then, and that he's still pertty good.

When John Dille, head of the National Newspaper Syndicate, decided to put out a science-fiction comicstrip, he did some reading in sci-fi magazines-then just entering their fabled Golden Age-and found two stories he liked; "Armageddon 2419 A. D." and "The Warlords of Han." both by Phil Nowlan. He fast-talked Nowlan into writing the new strip, got him together with an artist named Dick Calkins, and let him go. The strip that resulted ran for almost forty years in newspapers all over the world.

Nowlan, a deep-dyed sci-fi fanatic, was not going to let any garbage about what the public would accept stand in the way of his imagination. When I began the book I expected to see the usual massculture view of the future world: the glory of the future American superstate-usually a "World Government" democratically ruled by Americans-in which supercars zoom over mega-highways toward ultracities. But on page 21 found myself staring at the Destruction of the Washington Monument by the Mongols:

The Mongol Reds crossed the Atlantic in their great dirigibles. The Navy, America's first line of defense, was annihilated. The disintegrator beams bit deeply into the ocean, causing it to swirl and boil. Both ships and aerplanes were completely destroyed as the ray touched them. The Army made brave but futile resistance as the Mongolian aircraft swept across the country. Washington, D. C. was wiped out of existence in 3 hours by the terrible rays which cut the very foundations from under its magnificent buildings, . . . It was the death of a nation.

ARMED with pistols, World War I biplanes, and American determination, Buck and his true love Wilma Deering tackle the Mongol Reds, who fly by antigravity and fight with disintegrators. Naturally they win, and the struggle occupies the best quarter of the book: in the process, they make contact with Atlantis. Mars, and a resurgent, powerful Navaho nation. They also meet Black Barney, the Air Pirate of India, and the archfiends who will torment them for the next 40 years-Coe Kane, (a slick double agent known as "Killer" to everyone but his brother Nova) and his slithery sidekick Ardala.

After the first quarter of the book, which tells a complete story, the editing gets worse. Dille apparently considers the strip an historical artifact rather than a good story. In the selection of Sunday strips which follows, he cuts one story off arbitrarily to make room for an example from a later period. Black Barney and his companion Buddy Deering have just escaped from a Martian slave labor camp, and are looking for some way to remove the remote control bombs which the Martians have welded around their waists. In the last panel, Barney realizes that he has forgotten to dismantle the radio detonators which can blow them to Phobos and Deimos at any minute. Then the story is broken off.

Black Barney's anguished face still haunts my dreams. What happened?

In the second half of the book, the drawing improves, while the writing deteriorates dramatically. The gadgets are still fine, but after 1941 the Rocket Rangers attack the Martians screaming "Remember Pearl Harbor!" The Martians acquire slanted eyes and say things like: "First aid she are injurious treating of occidental victim so he no recover before arrival of overtaker! Ichiban jozu!"

I remarked to a friend of mine how much this new jingoism detracted from the strip. He told me to ignore it. "That's just the packaging they had to do. Concentrate on the product." He may be right. After all, Buck Rogers has lasted almost forty years, and as products go, that's damn fine.