Description: “The reason why the Siegel / Keaton material has received so much attention lies in one of the hottest issues in the comics business today: work for hire. A creator cannot use termination rights to regain ownership of material created as work made for hire, since the creator did not own the material in the first place. However, the Siegel heirs were able to regain half of the copyright in the Superman material in Action Comics #1 in part because Jerry Siegel had co-authored it before entering into the September 22, 1938 employment agreement with Detective Comics”.90 years after it came out, the 9 5/8 x 6 3/4” pulp size magazine issue offered here is off the radar. But, when it hit the newsstands in 1933, I bet folks were excited to see these comic-art style (not ‘painted cover’ style) characters on the cover! Why? Well, they usually resided in the newspaper comic strip section…In 1933, there was no such thing as a superhero comic book, so what’s on the cover here was 5 years ahead of it’s time. Buck Rogers is a superhero just like Iron Man and Batman are. They don’t have superpowers but they’re costumed and use technology to fight the bad guys.From the wiki-pedia page on ACTION COMICS 1: “Christopher Knowles, author of Our Gods Wear Spandex: The Secret History of Comic Book Heroes, compared the cover to Hercules and the Hydra by Antonio del Pollaiuolo”.It seems like a real stretch to compare the cover of Action Comics #1 from 1938 to a 15th century Renaissance painting. The far better comparison would be to Buck Rogers comic art by the likes of Russell Keaton, who also illustrated an important series of Superman strips for Jerry Siegel in 1934.Keaton was a Superman co-creator / collaborator since he helped develop the character. He was also one of the early Buck Rogers comic strip artists, but ghosted so it can be unclear if a work was by him, Dick Calkins, or Rick Yeager. Let’s compare Russell Keaton characters Buck Rogers and Superman as depicted on the cover of the magazine offered here (1933) and Action Comics #1 (1938)…There is a vehicle on each cover, above the hero. One is a car and one is an aircraft. Both vehicles are tilted. Below the vehicle is the hero. One is Superman and the other is Buck Rogers. The proportions of hero to vehicle are similar, and would be about the same size if Buck Rogers was stretching upward instead of outward.Both have one knee up. Superman wears his spandex costume and Buck Rogers has his orange spandex shirt. Both are displaying their power: for Superman, it’s his super strength (like Popeye) and for Buck it’s power through technology like Batman and Iron Man. There is a car depicted on the cover here, but it’s a trolley car. When you see the word “mechanics” (sic) you think of auto repairmen, who would be needed to fix the bashed-up car on the cover of Action Comics 1 (!).Buck Rogers is in flight on this cover and even though we now know Superman can actually fly, his foot is on the ground on the cover of Action Comics #1. Both characters have blue leg coverings, both wear boots and long sleeve spandex tops, and both have yellow on their costumes.Both characters are displaced. Superman is sent to Earth from a more advanced society. Buck Rogers actually comes from a different time. Both characters are associated with spaceships. Superman arrived on one.It was in the year 1933, when the magazine offered here was published, that Siegel and Shuster came up with a Superman idea. But, it was completely different than Superman’s portrayal 5 years later. As teens, they’d worked together to produce a self-published magazine called Science Fiction: The Advance Guard of Future Civilization. The title of that might as well be referring to Buck Rogers.“In June 1934, Siegel found another partner: an artist in Chicago named Russell Keaton. Keaton drew the Buck Rogers and Skyroads comic strips. In the script that Siegel sent Keaton in June, Superman's origin story further evolved…”. “Keaton produced two weeks' worth of strips based on Siegel's script. In November, Keaton showed his strips to a newspaper syndicate, but they too were rejected, and he abandoned the project”.“Then 25-year-old Keaton had made his bones ghosting the Sunday Buck Rogers for three and a half years, and in 1934 was writing and drawing Dick Calkins’ daily Skyroads comic strip. Correspondence from Jerry to Russell surfaced years ago with Keaton samples of their Superman comic strip”.From the case text, Siegel v. Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.: “Both the illustrated strips and the scripts contain the by-line crediting its authorship to "Jerome Siegel and Russell Keaton”." “The story is also notable as it contained the first expression of Superman's now familiar super-human powers: That he had a "physical structure millions of years advanced from" those living in 1935, leading him to possess "colossal strength," the ability to "leap over a ten story building," "run as fast as an express train," and stated that "nothing less than a bursting shell could penetrate his tough skin”.“Cleveland native, Brad Ricca, … decided to set the record straight with his thoroughly researched Super Boys: The Amazing Adventures of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, originally published in 2013”. “…Brad Ricca points out that “the features of the original costume are rooted in Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, who wore full sci-fi space suits with emblems on their chests…”.From The Comics Journal review by Paul Tumey of ‘Superman: The Golden Age Sundays 1943-1946’: “Starting with a four-Sunday retelling of the Superman origin story, probably drawn by Boring for the first time, the series then inserts Lois Lane into a rocket and launches into a futuristic space opera, a la Buck Rogers, one of the prime influences on Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster when they created Superman”. 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Price: 8500 USD
Location: Pitman, New Jersey
End Time: 2024-08-11T21:54:25.000Z
Shipping Cost: 0 USD
Product Images
Item Specifics
All returns accepted: ReturnsNotAccepted
Ex Libris: No
Character: Toonerville Folks, Buck Rogers, Mickey Mouse, Popeye
Country/Region of Manufacture: United States
Issue Number: 1
Style: Partial Color
Format: Single Issue
Inscribed: No
Type: Comic Book
Features: First Printing, 1st Edition
Universe: Disney, Marvel (MCU)
Vintage: Yes
Series Title: Modern Mechanix And Inventions
Personalized: No
Publication Year: 1933
Language: English
Intended Audience: General Audience
Signed: No
Publisher: Fawcett Comics
Tradition: US Comics
Genre: Action, Adventure, Animal, Cartoon, Classics, Cosmic, Films, Horror & Sci-Fi, Humor/Satire, Non-Fiction, Pulp, Science Fiction, Superheroes
Story Title: How Comic Cartoons Make Fortunes
Unit of Sale: Single Unit
Era: Platinum Age (1897-1937)
Not a comic book: published before 1934
