Posted in: Comics, Vintage Paper | Tagged: buck rogers, pulps

First Buck Rogers, Amazing Stories Aug. 1928 Goes for Record $105,000

Although the iconic Frank R. Paul cover is actually for E.E. Smith's The Skylark of Space, Amazing Stories Aug. 1928 is the debut of Buck Rogers

A copy of the pulp Amazing Stories August 1928 in stunning CGC 9.8 condition, featuring the debut of science fiction character Buck Rogers in the story Armageddon 2419 by author Philip Francis Nowlan, has just hammered at Heritage Auctions for $105,000.  The issue was published by pioneering science fiction figure Hugo Gernsback and featured a cover for E.E. Smith's Skylark of Space by legendary artist Frank R. Paul.  One of the most famous pulps ever published, this issue has become perhaps the best-known cover of the pulp era because it's an image that is often used to represent the past's vision of the future.  This sale puts this issue in rare air for pulps, joining a tiny handful of publicly-known six-figure pulp sales that includes a copy of All-Story October 1912 (first appearance of Tarzan) VG for $264,000 and the debut of the Shadow in The Shadow April 1931 FN-  for $156,000.  CGC began grading pulps in February 2024, and there are currently 30 entries for Amazing Stories August 1928 on the CGC census, with this CGC 9.8 copy the highest graded by a significant margin.

The iconic cover image doesn't feature Buck Rogers, but it's a historically important piece of work.  The cover feature of this issue is actually the character Richard Seaton from E.E. Smith's The Skylark of Space, his first published work of science fiction. Important and influential science fiction and comic cover artist Frank R. Paul created this cover and provided several interior illustrations for Amazing Stories volume 3 number 5.  As the blurb on the title page of the issue explains, "Our cover this month depicts a scene from the first installment in this issue of the story entitled THE SKYLARK OF SPACE, by Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby, in which the scientist, who has discovered a chemical substance for the liberation of intra-atomic energy, is making his initial tests, preparatory to his interstellar flight by means of this liberated energy, which makes possible his interstellar space-flyer."

Buck Rogers, Skylark, and the Amazing Stories Influence

While Buck Rogers would quickly go on to success in comic strips, radio, and film, the combination of both The Skylark of Space and Buck Rogers proved to be irresistible and memorable to a number of important figures from comics and science fiction history.  Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were influenced by both concepts and their creators, as were many others. For example:

While Mortimer [Weisinger] early showed a prediction for the imaginative works of Jules Verne and Edgar Allan Poe, he balanced this tendency with a healthy interest in the Rover Boys and Motor Boy series. The fatal shift came when his parents sent him to a camp one summer and he borrowed the counselor's copy of the August 1928, AMAZING STORIES featuring in the same issue Armageddon 2419, the first Buck Rogers story, by Philip Francis Nowlan. and the opening installment of The Skylark of Space by Edward E. Smith, Ph.D.

[Gene Roddenerry] would remember E.E. "Doc" Smith's "Skylark" series for over fifty years.
Buck Rogers was a program not to be missed and Gene rarely did… Ray  Bradbury once told Gene that he would get up early and sit on his front porch waiting for the morning newspaper to see what Buck did that day.

The Science and Science Fiction of E.E. Smith

A chemist by trade with a PhD in chemical engineering, E.E. Smith would go on to create work that would have an influence on the science and military technology of the subsequent decades.  For example, in a letter from Astounding Science-Fiction editor John W. Campbell Jr. to Smith, Campell notes that he has been informed that the concept of the Combat Information Center was inspired by Smith's Grey Lensman:

CIC was introduced into the Navy scheme by a navy officer who was not then, nor is not now, able to explain to the Navy precisely where he got the idea.
Unofficially, and in confidence, he has told me.

The entire set-up was taken specifically, directly, and consciously from the "Directrix." In your story, you reached the situation the Navy was in—more communication channels than integration techniques to handle it. You proposed such an integrating technique, and showed how advantageous it could be.

You, sir, were 100% right. As the Japanese Navy—not the hypothetical Boskonian fleet—learned at an appalling cost. Sitting in Michigan, some years before Pearl Harbor, you played a large share in the greatest and most decisive naval action of the recent war!

Unfortunately, in order that a Naval officer with imagination enough to apply the science-fiction ideas he studies may continue to have the maximum possible influence on the Navy, the source of his ideas—a source the Brass Hats wouldn't take to so well—must remain undisclosed. He's Capt. Cal Lanning. At present, he is in charge of all Naval electronic research, with special emphasis on advanced spy ray equipment, detector screens, and detector screen analysis techniques.

Buck Rogers and Robert H. Goddard

Buck Rogers would also go on to have a fascinating early influence of sorts on science — and one important scientist in particular.  In the Buck Rogers comic strip, the look of the character Dr. Huer was was inspired by the world's most famous rocket scientist and the father of modern rocketry, Robert H. Goddard.  And as noted in the 2003 biography of Goddard, Rocket Man:

In 1956, Esther Goddard told Milton Lehman that her husband had been proud of the association–once they even went out of their way to see a Buck Rogers exhibit in Chicago. Whenever there was a problem with Robert's rocket experiments, she said, she quoted Dr. Huer's refrain to him: "Now don't you worry, the old doctor will take care of that."

The Deductions of Philip Francis Nowlan

Unlike E.E. Smith, Philip Francis Nowlan did not have a formal education as a scientist. Six years younger than Robert H. Goddard, Nowlan was born in 1888. Before the late-1920s, he was primarily a newspaper, newspaper syndicate, and business magazine editor and writer who appears to have had outstanding research skills in a wide range of fields.  Such skills were evident in infotainment-style syndicated newspaper columns such as History of Your Name and First Jobs of Big Men.  As a business writer and editor who seems to have specialized in manufacturing industries, Nowlan brought a noteworthy acumen in math, economics and politics to his industry analysis.  He was confident enough in his command of such matters to give a talk at a meeting of the Engineer's Club of Philadelphia in 1918.

Despite keeping busy with such endeavors, Nowlan also wrote a fair bit of fiction during this period as well, much of which is now little-known.  Among his earliest published works of fiction is a short called Mars, Humorist in the May 1916 issue of The Black Cat — a now-obscure but incredibly important bridge between the dime novel and pulp eras which contains genre fiction from a number of important writers.  The Deductions of Harvey Hunt is another noteworthy forgotten Nowlan syndicated newspaper serial endeavor that invited readers to solve clues as the story progressed.

Amazing Stories and the Spirit of Science Fiction

A passage from the forward of Armageddon 2419  in this issue of Amazing Stories points the way towards one of the sparks of inspiration that nudged Nowlan towards the creation of Buck Rogers:

When I began my long sleep, man had just begun his real conquest of the air in a sudden series of trans-oceanic flights in airplanes driven by internal combustion motors. He had barely begun to speculate on the possibilities of harnessing sub-atomic forces, and had made no further practical penetration into the field of ethereal pulsations than the primitive radio and television of that day. The United States of America was the most powerful nation in the world, its political, financial, industrial and scientific influence being supreme; and in the arts also it was rapidly climbing into leadership.

1927, the year prior to the publication of Amazing Stories volume 3 number 5 was an important year for man's real conquest of the air and beyond — not to mention trans-oceanic flights. It was also the year that the character Anthony Rogers (his name in his initial pulp appearances, it was changed to "Buck" for the subsequent newspaper strip) made the fateful investigation of an abandoned Pennsylvania coal mine, which ultimately put him into a state of suspended animation for 492 years.

Charles Lindbergh completed the first solo, non-stop transatlantic flight with his single-engine plane The Spirit of St. Louis on May 21, 1927.  News of the historic flight and its implications had captured the world's imagination, and on the same day the flight was completed, the publicity-friendly Goddard was in newspapers around the country showing off a rocket design under the headline "Want to be the first to visit the Moon? Apply to Robert H Goddard, Clark University." Goddard was in the news again just weeks later floating the notion of "a passenger-carrying rocket for transatlantic service."  By the end of the year, newspapers were carrying a depiction of a Goddard-proposed "inter-planetary rocket" that wouldn't have looked at all out of place in an issue of Amazing Stories.

Such events helped influence Philip Francis Nowlan and primed a mass media audience who were becoming ever more interested in the science of the future.  Buck Rogers became a syndicated newspaper comic strip from John F. Dille Co. in 1929, written by Nowlan and drawn by Dick Calkins, who had been a pilot in World War I.  The strip became so popular that it served to inspire other science fiction comic strips, such as Flash Gordon and John Carter of Mars.  A Buck Rogers radio serial (1932), film serial (1939), and a 1979 television series eventually followed.  Meanwhile, E.E. Smith would go on to become one of the most influential science fiction writers of the 1930s-1950s.  And in 1930, Robert H. Goddard acquired new financial backing and moved his base of experimental operations to Roswell, New Mexico where he eventually garnered the support of the U.S. Air Force — making Roswell, well… Roswell.

Amazing Stories #29 August 1928 (Gernsback) CGC NM/MT 9.8 Off-white to white pages

A major turning point in the early days of the most iconic sci-fi pulp series, this key issue featured the first appearance in any medium of sci-fi adventure hero Buck Rogers! The success of Amazing Stories would go on to inspire other adjective-laden sci-fi titles including Astounding Stories, Famous Fantastic Mysteries, Thrilling Wonder Stories, and countless others. However, no combination of these adjectives can define how impressive a CGC NM/MT 9.8 pulp truly is!

The first and currently (as of July 2024) sole CGC-certified 9.8 pulp, this book is in truly incredible condition. We have never encountered a pulp in such impressive shape before, and it is a stunning sight even for the most seasoned of pulp collectors. Not only a 9.8 pulp, it is also a highly sought-after issue that commands premium prices even in low and mid-grade copies, and it is a bedsheet format issue (a large 1920s issue measuring a whopping 8.5" x 11.5"). Frank Paul's classic cover appears as vivid as it did nearly 100 years ago, with no visible wear to the issue's oversized covers and spine. This copy does have a printer's defect, with the Skylark's left arm appearing an unusual color and extending into his chest. We've never seen another copy with this defect, and the unusual appearance may have led to the book being held back and kept in such impeccable shape. As well, this copy was printed slightly off-center leaning towards the lower right, but it has the correct dimensions and is not trimmed. We have seen other non-trimmed copies with similar centering and this exhibits no signs of trimming.
Many collectors have been eagerly eyeing CGC's recent grading of pulps, excited to see high-grade books being certified and scanned for posterity. Pulps with overhangs reaching 8.5 or better, and factory-trimmed pulps reaching 9.4, have been the cause of much discussion in the ever-evolving world of pulp collecting, with some speculating these as the highest possible grades for their respective formats. High-grade copies of bedsheet issues are even harder to come by, with their size and early pulp paper easily leading to extensive handling wear.
Bookery's Guide to Pulps Second Edition describes Very Fine (8.0) as "quite rare for true pulp-format publications, and likely non-existing for many specific or especially early issues." Traditionally considered the nicest possible grade for a pulp, Bookery's does not list prices above Very Fine, although in their grading section they describe potential Very Fine to Near Mint (9.0) pulps as a grade that "would rarely come into play, though there have been a few examples".

This issue features the first appearance of Buck Rogers in "Armageddon 2419" by Phillip Frances Nowlan, as well as the first published story by E. E. "Doc" Smith, a prolific sci-fi writer often called "the father of space opera". Paul's classic cover illustrates a scene from Smith's story "The Skylark of Space". Buck Rogers would make his first cover appearance the following year in the March 1929 issue of Amazing Stories, his second and final pulp appearance. Both issues are highly coveted by sci-fi collectors, with the August 1928 issue regularly ranking among the most expensive of all science fiction pulps, alongside the first issues of long-running titles Amazing Stories and Astounding Stories. Our most recent high-grade sale of this issue was a FN+ copy in April 2023 for $10,200, and there is no telling what this may sell for. We last encountered a VF+ copy way back in March 2002, and have not offered a VF- or higher copy in the intervening decades. This is an unmissable opportunity for high-grade collectors and a major milestone in pulp collecting. Bookery's Guide to Pulps Second Edition VF value = $3,000. CGC census 7/24: 1 in 9.8, none higher.

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