DENVER, Pa. – Compared to modern film depictions of time-traveling space explorers who effortlessly venture to galaxies where no man has gone before, the early 20th-century spaceman Buck Rogers looks positively primitive. The invention of artist Philip Francis Nowlan, Rogers was introduced in the August 1928 issue of the pulp magazine Amazing Stories and later evolved into a star of syndicated comic strips, movies, radio and television. Along the way, a Buck Rogers franchise developed and became a money machine through an array of licensed products, especially toys. Some say the Buck Rogers “raygun” of 1934 was the item that launched the era of pop-culture merchandising.
