Famous Funnies #210
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeFamous Funnies #210 is the second chapter in Frank Frazetta's landmark eight-cover run on the title (issues #209–#216), a sequence widely regarded as one of the most significant bodies of cover art produced during the Golden Age of comics. It appeared in a title that holds a foundational place in American publishing history — Famous Funnies is considered by popular culture historians to be the first true American comic book. The Frazetta Buck Rogers covers on this run were so visually powerful that Star Wars creator George Lucas later credited them as direct inspirations for his films, giving these images a cultural reach that extends far beyond the newsstand era in which they were produced. As part of a series that was already winding toward its final issues, the Frazetta run gave Famous Funnies an electrifying artistic coda that would define the book's legacy for generations of collectors and historians.
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By February 1954, Frazetta was executing the Famous Funnies covers while simultaneously serving as a ghost artist for Al Capp's Li'l Abner newspaper strip — work he had in part secured because Capp noticed the quality of his comics cover output. The interior of #210 reprints Buck Rogers Sunday newspaper strips from early 1951 (the 'Mystery Planet' storyline), adapted and drawn by Rick Yager and Coulton Waugh, who also scripted the issue. Frazetta's working relationship with Eastern Color eventually soured over editorial disagreements: the publisher rejected what would have been his ninth Buck Rogers cover as too violent; he subsequently sold that painting to EC Comics, where it appeared as the cover of Weird Science-Fantasy #29 in 1955, altered slightly at editor Bill Gaines's request. In 1975, publisher Russ Cochran assembled all eight original Famous Funnies cover drawings into a portfolio printed on heavy stock, with new color added by Frazetta himself.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Published February 1954 by Eastern Color Printing; part of the series widely identified as the first true American comic book.
- Cover painted by Frank Frazetta — the second in his consecutive eight-cover run spanning Famous Funnies #209–#216, all featuring Buck Rogers.
- Cover composition depicts Buck Rogers in an underwater rescue scene, attempting to save Wilma Deering from an alien captor.
- Interior art by Rick Yager and Coulton Waugh; script by Coulton Waugh — reprinting Buck Rogers Sunday strips from January–February 1951 ('Mystery Planet,' strips Series II #486–491).
- Also contains a Dickie Dare strip segment (Grand Comics Database records characters Dickie Dare and Dan Flynn).
- Eastern Color infamously rejected Frazetta's proposed ninth cover for this series as too violent; that artwork was later published as the cover of EC Comics' Weird Science-Fantasy #29 (1955).
- George Lucas told Frazetta that the Famous Funnies Buck Rogers covers were among his inspirations for Star Wars.
- In 1975, Russ Cochran published the Frank Frazetta Famous Funnies Portfolio reproducing all eight cover illustrations on heavy stock, re-colored by Frazetta from the original drawings.
Full credits
Reprints
Reprinted in Comickazi #1 (1969), The Menomonee Falls Gazette #35 (1972)
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