Hello Buck!

What a strange course of events. Last weekend I was in San Francisco attending the WonderCon Comic book festival. At this show as well as previous events I was pleased to speak briefly to actress Erin Gray. I know her best as Wilma Deering from Buck Rogers. At this event Erin was accompanied by her lovely daughter Samantha, who will be starring in … (wait for it)….BUCK ROGERS!The Buck Rogers story began on January 7, 1929 with the debut of the first science fiction comic strip. It the Radio waves in 1932 followed by a ten-minute Buck Rogers film shown at the 1933-1934 World’s Fair in Chicago. A print of the film was discovered donated to UCLA and can be seen below.

To my mind, Buck Roger is most famously known as a 12-part serial film that was produced in 1939. This adventure serial along with the 1979 TV series helped to foster my own sci-fi imagination. Though I’m not sure where to find this information, but it has been said that George Lucas originally conceived Star Wars after deciding he wanted to create a Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers film and found the rights too expensive to obtain.XXxSo Back to Erin and Samantha Gray. The Buck Rogers story started as a comic strip, then became a serial film, the a tv series and now it returns as a WEB series. The teaser trailer below was launched late last year.

James Cawley is creating the web series and hopes to produce twenty 40-minute web episodes. He has secured the rights and will focus on how Rogers went from World War I to 25th century Earth. In this version of the story, Anthony “Buck” Rogers is now Lucas “Buck” Rogers. I wonder if that’s a nod to George? You can see some familiar faces in the video below.

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