Famous Funnies #214
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeFamous Funnies #214 sits at a remarkable crossroads: it is a late chapter in the run of what historians widely regard as the first true American comic book series, and its cover — painted by Frank Frazetta — is one of the most artistically distinctive pieces of the entire Golden Age. The composition, featuring Buck Rogers and Wilma Deering confronting an armed stowaway atop a spacecraft against a vast crimson planet, demonstrates a command of deep-space atmosphere that simply had no peer on newsstands in 1954. The eight Buck Rogers covers Frazetta produced for Famous Funnies issues #209–#216 collectively set a new visual standard for science-fiction comics, and George Lucas has personally acknowledged that Frazetta's Famous Funnies covers were among his inspirations during the early development of Star Wars.
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Famous Funnies was conceived by Eastern Color Printing's Maxwell Gaines and had run continuously since July 1934, making it the first ongoing monthly comic book series sold through newsstand distribution in the United States. By the early 1950s the anthology format was aging, and the Buck Rogers feature — illustrated inside by Rick Yager and Coulton Waugh, with additional work by Ed Moore — needed a visual jolt. Eastern Color brought in the young Frank Frazetta, then already working simultaneously as a ghost artist for Al Capp's L'il Abner strip, to paint covers beginning with issue #209 (December 1953); #214, cover-dated November 1954, falls sixth in that eight-issue run. Frazetta executed the covers in pen and ink on bristol board, and in a 1995 interview he described the period as one of total technical command, noting he deliberately varied his approach — subject matter and rendering technique — across all eight paintings.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Published November 1954 by Eastern Color Printing; issue #214 of a series that ran 218 issues from July 1934 to July 1955.
- Cover painted by Frank Frazetta — the sixth of eight consecutive Buck Rogers covers he produced for the series (issues #209–#216, December 1953 through early 1955).
- Interior stories and art credited to Rick Yager, Coulton Waugh, Ed Moore, and Matt Christopher, featuring characters including Buck Rogers, Wilma Deering, The Space Hermit, and Dickie Dare.
- The cover scene depicts Buck Rogers and Wilma Deering discovering an armed stowaway on their spacecraft, set against an enormous looming planet — rendered entirely in pen and ink on bristol board.
- Famous Funnies is considered by popular-culture historians to be the first true American comic book series distributed through newsstands, lending #214 its place as a late Golden Age artifact of the medium's founding publication.
- Frazetta's Famous Funnies covers directly influenced George Lucas during the early development of Star Wars; Lucas told Frazetta in person that the covers were among his inspirations.
- An unsolicited ninth Buck Rogers cover Frazetta submitted was rejected by Eastern Color editors as too violent; Bill Gaines of EC Comics subsequently purchased and published it (with minor alterations) as the cover of Weird Science-Fantasy #29 in 1955.
- In 1975, publisher Russ Cochran issued a limited portfolio reproducing all eight Famous Funnies covers from Frazetta's original drawings, with colors re-applied by Frazetta himself.
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Reprints
Reprinted in The Rocket's Blast-Comicollector #110 (1974), Space Cowboy #2003 (2003)
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