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The Frazetta Buck Rogers Comic Book Covers that Influenced Star Wars

Published Sun, 21 Feb 2021 17:00:17 -0600

Last updated Tue, 23 Feb 2021 08:28:12 -0600

Buck Rogers has been one of the most enduring science fiction classics in American history since its debut in Amazing Stories volume 3 number 5 in 1928. From those pulp origins, it spread to become a popular favorite across media including comic strips, film, television, and much more. Legendary artist Frank Frazetta created eight Buck Rogers covers for the long-running comic book series Famous Funnies in 1953/54 (whose publisher infamously rejected a ninth cover for being too violent. This became the cover of Weird Science-Fantasy #29 from EC Comics in 1955) which have become highly influential in their own right. Six of the Frazetta Buck Rogers cover issues are available in today's session of the Sunday & Monday Comics, Animation, Video Games & Art Weekly Online Auction 122108 at Heritage Auctions.

Famous Funnies #214, Frank Frazetta cover, 1954.

As recently discussed, Buck Rogers was a formative influence on figures ranging from Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry to Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. But the combination of Frazetta and Buck Rogers had a special magic of its own, according to Star Wars creator George Lucas:

"When George Lucas came out to visit he told me that my Famous Funnies covers had been one of his inspirations for Star Wars," Frazetta relates, "which I thought was a pretty sweet thing to say." Fans were disappointed when they learned Frank had turned down Lucas' offer to paint the cover for a Star Wars novelization and mystified when his advertisements for the derivative "Battlestar Galactica" began to appear weekly in the TV Guide. "The simple answer," Frazetta explains, "is that I got to paint what I wanted and I retained my originals and my copyrights. I wouldn't have been able to keep either if I had taken the Star Wars job and I would not have had much creative freedom. That would have been a step backward for me."

The new book Fantastic Paintings of Frazetta from J. David Spurlock's Vanguard elaborates significantly on the Frazetta/Star Wars connection, as well as the inspiration that a pair of these Famous Funnies covers in particular had on George Lucas.