Return of a Pulp Sci-Fi Hero

After stumbling across that archive of the (front page) story from the October 1978 issue of People magazine on Battlestar Galactica I decided to see if any of the other obscure sci-fi series from my youth had articles online. Sadly, aside from an article about Erin Gray, my Google-fu didn't turn up much else for any other obscure short run series besides Buck Rogers at the above site. However I did stumble across a few interesting news articles about potential new Buck Rogers productions elsewhere:

Drawing the Future: Carlos Rafael on Buck Rogers - An interesting article with sketches from a planned new Buck Rogers comic coming from Dynamite this May. Don't know if it's going to be a series as they're calling it Buck Rogers #0 and that sounds like a one-shot gimmick to me. But then I've not collected comic books in years. Maybe it's an attempt to cash in on:

Buck Rogers to reawake in the 21st century - Apparently Frank Miller has plans to do a Buck Rogers movie. Then again according to this earlier article (Back to the Future) the comic's been in the planning stages for at least a year. Here's an interesting tidbit of information from the latter:

"NRAMA: Finally, given that both you and Frank Miller are working on Buck Rogers around the same time, with you in comics and Miller in film, are you looking at keeping your versions coordinated?

NB: When it comes to the film they're two different beasts and I'm certain that Frank's vision of the film, and where the technology will allow them to go, will be much different than what we do in the comics. If there are similarities, that will be great but we wouldn't expect them to follow what we're doing as it’s taken us a bit to get to where we’re at. Each medium will live on its own. I'm also not sure how far they've gotten into the film, whether they would have materials to show us if and when the time is right and if it's a possibility we would like to look at it."

I think this is all really good news. There's been a dearth of good old fashioned pulp sci-fi heroes out there. There's a Buck Rogers revival underway and I, for one, think it's long overdue. With a new comic and movie pending I have hopes there may be a new television series in the offing. Now if it can only stay out of the claws of those brain dead zombies running the Sci-Fi channel. While their "original movies" have been showing signs of improvement their series have not. Too, with their re-envisioned Battlestar Galactica series in it's last episodes, there's a sci-fi vacuum at sciffy. Currently BSG anchors their Friday line-up in the 10 o'clock time slot and it's lead in are two syndicated series (read: re-runs of series canceled a year or more ago), one of which is about VAMPIRES! Can the suits get any more clueless? Their mission statement is right in the channel's name, but I digress.

I'll be looking forward to the movie and, yes, though I haven't bought a comic in years this new Buck Rogers may just get me back into the comic store. Assuming I can find one after all these years. ;)

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