Buck Rogers

Buck Rogers
Poster for Buck Rogers serial, 1939
Publication information
Publisher	Amazing Stories
First appearance	August 1928
Created by	Philip Francis Nowlan
In-story information
Full name	Anthony "Buck" Rogers
Partnerships	Wilma Deering Dr. Elias Huer

Buck Rogers is a fictional space opera character created by Philip Francis Nowlan in the novella, Armageddon 2419 A.D., and subsequently appearing in multiple media. In Armageddon 2419 A.D., published in the August 1928 issue of the pulp magazine, Amazing Stories, the character's given name was "Anthony". A sequel, The Airlords of Han, was published in the March 1929 issue.

Philip Nowlan and the syndicate John F. Dille Company, later known as the National Newspaper Syndicate, were contracted to adapt the story into a comic strip. After Nowlan and Dille enlisted editorial cartoonist Dick Calkins as the illustrator, Nowlan adapted the first episode from Armageddon 2419, A.D. and changed the hero's name from "Anthony" to "Buck". The strip made its first newspaper appearance on January 7, 1929. Later adaptations included a film serial, a television series (in which his first name was changed from "Anthony" to "William"), and other formats.

The adventures of Buck Rogers in comic strips, movies, radio and television became an important part of American popular culture. This popular phenomenon paralleled the development of space technology in the 20th century and introduced Americans to outer space as a familiar environment for swashbuckling adventure.

Buck Rogers has been credited with bringing into popular media the concept of space exploration, following in the footsteps of literary pioneers such as Jules Verne, H. G. Wells and Edgar Rice Burroughs.

The character first appeared as Anthony Rogers, the central character of Nowlan's Armageddon 2419 A.D. Born in 1898, Rogers is a veteran of the Great War (World War I) and by 1927 is working for the American Radioactive Gas Corporation investigating reports of unusual phenomena reported in abandoned coal mines near Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania. On December 15, there is a cave-in while he is in one of the lower levels of a mine. Exposed to radioactive gas, Rogers falls into "a state of suspended animation, free from the ravages of catabolic processes, and without any apparent effect on physical or mental faculties". Rogers remains in suspended animation for 492 years.