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Buck Rogers is back but can his return to comics be as successful as the Lone Rangers?

To me, Buck Rogers has always seemed like Flash Gordon-lite even though Buck preceded Flash by a few years. Even if the Buck Rogers television show back in the early 1980s was better than the Flash Gordon movie around the same time, Flash Gordon is the hero icon of early 20th century science fiction and Buck Rogers exists in the shadow.  In my own personal frame of reference, Buck Rogers has Twiki while Flash Gordon has Ming the Merciless.  There’s no real contest in who’s cooler here, is there?

Buck Rogers #0 opens up already in the future, with Buck fighting some gelatinous globular aliens.  The text introduction to this book recounts the familiar Buck Roger’s story: a man from our time flung into the future to fight for the survival of Earth.  Artist Carlos Rafael’s alien designs are a fun throwback, contrasted against the ultra-modern and glowing Alex Ross designed Buck Rogers’ uniform.  Buck’s new uniform is slick, all black except for glowing bands running down his arms and legs.  The book is full of nice designs that come out feeling a bit generic.  Change the color around a bit and Buck Rogers’ new uniform could easily be an updating of Adam Strange’s or Starlord’s.  If there is one criticism, it’s that Rogers’ uniform looks more like a superhero and less like a action/adventure hero.

Scott Beatty’s story is a simple teaser showing a futuristic science fictiony hero battling invading globby aliens.  You get a sense of Bucks’ character—shoot first and ask questions later—but the story is more designed to get you caught up in the action than in the deeper nuances of plot, characters and themes.  All you really need to know going into this issue is “guy in the future fighting green, cellular aliens.”  What really works in this book is the last few pages that, if you know anything of the story of Buck Rogers, throws you for a bit of a loop and tears down your expectations from the earlier parts of this issue.  Beatty comes up with a clever way to get you caught up in the story and then pulls one of those “nothing is what you thought it was” moments at the very end.

Buck Rogers #0 plays with the “man out of time” concept a bit and provides an effective hook at the end.  “Effective” is probably a good word to describe this issue.  While there’s nothing earth-shattering or monumental in this debut issue, it does an effective job introducing this take on the character and provides just enough of a hook at the very end to make the upcoming series something to check out at the comic shops.

Buck Rogers #0
Written by: Scott Beatty
Drawn by: Carlos Rafael
Colored by: Carlos Lopez
Lettered by: Simon Bowland

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