On This Day in 1929-Buck Rogers Cartoon Strip Launches

On this day in 1929 Buck Rogers, the first science fiction comic strip was launched.

The character of Buck Rogers was created by Philip Francis Nowlan in a novella “Armageddon 2419 AD”. It appeared in Amazing Stories in August 1928 in which the characters given name was Anthony. A sequel “The Airlords of Ham” appeared in the March 1929 issue.

The president of the National Newspaper Service syndicate, John F Dille arranged for Nowlan to turn his story into a comic strip for syndication, the first cartoonist to draw for the strip was Dick Calkins, an advertising artist. It was at Dilles’s suggestion that the lead character was given the nickname “Buck”.

The comic strip proved to be such a success with the public that on March 30^th 1930 a Sunday strip was added to be daily weekly offering of the Buck Rogers story.

The Buck Rogers comic strip lead to other newspaper syndicates to launch their own science fiction comic strips including “Flash Gordon” (1934 to 2003) and “John Carter of Mars” (1941 to 1943).