Dynamite and Buck Rogers in the 21st Century
First, the news:
Dynamite Entertainment honcho Nicky Barrucci announced today that a series based on the classic space hero Buck Rogers will be joining The Lone Ranger, Red Sonja, Zorro and Battlestar Galactica in his project lineup, with participation of Alex Ross and John Cassaday, who will be doing character designs and covers. As of this typing, no regular story and art team has been announced.
Next, the history:
Publicly credited to John Flint Dille, Anthony “Buck” Rogers was the work of science fiction author Phillip Francis Nowlan. The first novel, Armageddon 2419, was anthologized in Amazing Stories Magazine cover-dated August 1928. It was successful and sequels were commissioned; the book came to the attention of wire service and newspaper syndicate owner Dille who hired Nowlan to create a newspaper comic strip version of his novel, teaming him up with artist Dick Calkins and renaming the character Buck.
It was awesomely successful, spinning off onto all the genres available in its time and the phrase “Buck Rogers” became a colloquialism for futuristic invention. It lasted until the mid-’60s and was revived a couple of times with varying degrees of success.
You don’t have to have read superhero comics for any great length of time before you get the message: perseverance plus righteousness will defeat the enemy every time. Despite the “maturation” of commercial comic books, this essential message remains at the core of the superhero concept.
Remember 
It used to be, if you wanted to reach for the comic art form for your sex education you had to send a couple bucks to those want ads in the back of the cheesy magazines for “Comics – the Kind Men Like!” That stuff was a bit distorted; well, in the case of the ones that featured [[[Popeye]]], I’d have to say they were quite a bit distorted.
is a sweet and sensitive series that focuses on the psychological aspects of sex as much as – actually, more than – the mechanics. The story is about a young couple, Makoto and Yura, who met through an arranged “marriage meeting.” This is sort of a counseled dating service, but one where the ultimate intent of marriage is upfront. The two 25 year olds dated, liked each other, got married, and only then discovered they were both virgins with a lot of understandable insecurities and a lack of any clue.
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has issued a recall of 6,600 Spider-Man water bottles sold exclusively at Sears last summer. These bottles carry a sufficient risk of choking, as the screws under the lid can come loose and fall into the cup.
