Flashback Friday - Flash Gordon and Buck Rodgers
Back when pulps first gained popularity, certain characters began to cross over into more popular forms of media. The two most notable characters to do this in the genre of science fiction were Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon, both of which began being circulated in newspapers all over the United States as comic strips.
Buck Rogers was first. He made his initial appearance in the August 1928 edition of Amazing Stories. In it, his character was introduced as Anthony Rogers in the story Armageddon 2419, written by Philip Francis Nowlan. The young Rogers was a veteran of The Great War (World War I), working for the American Radioactive Gas corporation, researching strange phenomenon in the abandoned coal mines of Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania. A cave-in took place, trapping Rogers inside, and exposing him to radioactive gases which slowed his metabolism and put him in a state of suspended animation. (Keep in mind, this is long before things like “cryogenic hibernation” had yet been introduced to science fiction, so it was rather a cutting-edge idea for the time.) Anthony eventually recovers from his long stasis, only to find a world where America has been overrun by hostile Asiatic forces. He happens upon a woman under attack, and rescues her by fending off the attackers. The woman, Wilma Deering, is allied with what is left of the United States, and he joins her in an effort to re-build the world he lost.
The story is not entirely unique. Stories of long-slumbering individuals who awaken to find their world radically altered are as well-known as Rip Van Winkle, and older even than the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus (a Christian legend recorded in the Koran). But Armageddon 2419 gave it a new twist, with ray-gun weaponry and more radically applied air-forces being chief among them.
The story of Anthony Rogers in Amazing Stories caught the attention of John F. Dille, president of the National Newspaper Service Syndicate. He contracted with Philip Nowlan to turn the story into a regular newspaper comic strip. Anthony received the nickname “Buck,” after the 1920’s cowboy actor Buck Jones, and a legend was born. It launched in late 1928 and was a major hit as daily readers were transported by Buck Rogers into the exciting, distant future. Its success spawned a Sunday strip, a radio show, a book by Philip Nowlan, and a ten-minute film which was shown at the 1933-1934 World’s Fair in Chicago.
By 1933, King Syndicate, a rival of NNS, decided that the Buck Rogers phenomenon wasn’t a fluke and launched its own science fiction character to compete with it. Thus was born the character of Flash Gordon, which was first published in newspapers in 1934. Conceived and drawn by comic artist and writer Alex Raymond, Flash Gordon was a gentleman pulled out of his element to become a hero. A professional polo-player and Yale graduate, he and his companion Dale Arden encounter a meteor storm which forces their plane to crash-land. After parachuting to safety, they seek help and chance upon the slightly cracked Dr. Hans Zarkov. He has long known about the meteor shower and has determined that it came from a rogue planet headed towards Earth. Having built a rocket that will take him to the strange planet, he reasons that he cannot accomplish his task of saving Earth alone, and so kidnaps Flash and Dale, forcing them at gunpoint to join him. They arrive on the rogue planet, called Mongo, where the evil Ming the Merciless is dictator. There, they have numerous adventures with the strange people of that planet as they try to unite them against Ming in an effort to defend Earth.
The idea of Flash Gordon was inspired partly by the novel When Worlds Collide (1933), co-written by Philip Wylie and Edwin Balmer. That story also featured an invading rogue planet, as well as a rocket which brought people from Earth to journey to it. The Flash Gordon comic expanded on this notion to make a truly interesting story, and so gave Buck Rogers a run for his money. Rogers had been, up until about that point, a decidedly earth-bound adventurer. But Flash Gordon depicted the exciting prospect of actually traveling to another world! Buck Rogers soon followed suit, soon having conflicts with aliens from other planets as a direct result. Flash not only competed with Buck on an equal footing, but also made the other’s storyline better.
In fact, the history of Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers really involves the one storyline trying to one-up the other’s, both in content and in format. Although Buck Rogers was the first to have short films based on him, Flash Gordon was the first to be featured in cinema films. The first of these came in 1936, with Larry “Buster” Crabbe (the actor best remembered for portraying Tarzan) playing the role of Flash. The serials were later condensed into a feature-length film. A second series came in 1938, which became another film. Not to be outdone, the first serial of Buck Rogers was released in 1939. As if the competitive link between the two franchises couldn’t be over-emphasized enough, the actor who played Buck Rogers was none other than Buster Crabbe! Since both storylines were filmed by Universal Pictures, the low-budget Buck Rogers film was able to save money by using some of the same scenery and backdrops as the Flash Gordon films, and Buster even wore much of his old costuming!
Television was the next competitive prize, and this one was taken first by Buck Rogers. It debuted on ABC, April 15th, 1950, running Saturday mornings at 6:00 in the morning. But then it was rescheduled to Tuesdays at 7:00 p.m., where it conflicted with Milton Bearle’s popular Texaco Star Theater show. Its ratings were crushed and as such, it lasted less than a year. It’s last broadcast was on January 30th, 1951. Seeing this fate, Flash Gordon never made the crossover into television during the 1950’s. Nevertheless, both franchises would continue delighting audiences in comic-strip form all through the 50’s 60’s and even 70’s
When the late ‘70’s came, NBC Studios decided it was time to revitalize the Buck Rogers franchise. A movie-length version of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century was released to cinema in 1979, and a new television series, using the movie as the TV pilot, was launched. Gil Gerard portrayed Buck and Erin Grey played Wilma Deering. The new series made some key changes, with the storyline being decidedly intergalactic from day one, and with Buck’s background story significantly altered. His rank is Captain, his first name is William rather than Anthony, and he is trained as a combat pilot, though never confesses to having fought in any particular war. His ship, Ranger III, is a decidedly space-shuttle-like craft which is launched by NASA as a “deep space probe,” although it is not specified what exactly that means, nor is it explained why anyone would be so daft as to launch an exploration craft with only one astronaut on board. The ship encounters a strange field of gases, and when life support fails, Buck is inadvertently frozen in cryogenic stasis. For all the failings of this revamped Rogers (and there were many) the pilot story, along with a handful of episodes, were not half bad. Unfortunately, it was produced by Glen A. Larson, the same person who would later produce (and ruin) the original version of Battlestar Galactica. The show suffered from cookie-cutter special effects, canned acting, and comic relief which was not so comical. Nevertheless, it enthralled a young audience, and gave the franchise new life, if temporarily.
Naturally, Flash Gordon had to follow suit. A Hal Sutherland production was made for television in cartoon form in 1979, and was quite good. But by 1980 the franchise went back to cinema, as Dino De-Laurentis Studios, a British-American entity, re-vamped the old classic. The changes that were made to Flash Gordon’s background story were quite radical. Rather than a gentlemanly Yale graduate who played polo, Flash was now a beefy, platinum-blond jock who played quarterback for the New York Jets. But aside from this, very little changed from the original story. Rather than shunning the campy past of the franchise, this movie embraced it, going for humor-value rather than serious plot. Male model Sam Jones played Flash, with Melody Anderson as Dale, Chaim Topol (who played Tavier in the movie, Fiddler on the Roof) as Zarkov, and the renowned Max Von Sydow as Ming the Merciless. Other notable actors included Brian Blessed as Vultan of the Hawk-Men. A sensationalist attitude was taken throughout the entire film, with certain scenes seeming to go out of their way to be either zany or outrageous. An original score provided by the rock band Queen only added to this effect. Critics relentlessly lampooned the film immediately upon release and it did poorly at the box office. Sam Jones was so difficult to work with that he had to be fired before the last scene had been filmed. Nevertheless it has weathered its original storm to become a cult favorite.
Flash Gordon received other remakes following the film, mostly in cartoons. An animated production called, Flash Gordon: The Greatest Adventure of All (1982) was produced prior to the animated series release in 1979. However, the television movie was not actually aired until a few years later. Critics have called it one of the greatest versions of Flash Gordon to have been made, and so it is! Yet it failed to be commercially released in the U.S. It is currently available via online video services, such as YouTube. Other cartoon versions include Defenders of the Earth (1986), which teamed Flash Gordon up with other comic characters like The Phantom. Yet another version was produced in 1996 which re-made Flash and his companions into hover-board riding teenagers.
Finally, a live version of Flash re-surfaced. The Sci Fi Channel produced a version in 2007, and as with most Sci Fi Channel productions, it took some liberties to make the show more amenable a modern audience. Travel between Earth and Mongo took place via gateway portals instead of rockets. Flash became dark-haired, the inhabitants of Mongo were less obviously anamorphic, and Ming was made into a media-savvy plutocrat who ruled by monopolizing the planet’s water supply. The show lasted barely one season, and was - to be blunt - awful. But it has since remained available on various streaming services such as Amazon Prime.
And Buck Rogers? Well, not much has been re-made of his franchise since the 80’s, except for a few video games. A new comic book series was released in 2009, and another one in 2012. What Glen Larson destroyed, he destroyed well. Yet Battlestar Galactica was resurrected, and so too yet may Buck Rogers. Rumors currently swirl about such a potential project, and if it happens, you can bet that Flash Gordon will not be far behind.
Eric
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