Cool Spaceships

Winchell Chung, well known for his gaming, (particularly Ogre) artwork, his work on bringing mathematical certitude to space map illustration and his collecting and cataloging of nifty (and often obscure) information and imagery related to spaceships, space drives, spacesuits and lots of other spacey stuff, sent along a pic of a Buck Rogers trading card that depicts one of the spaceships shown in the 1933 Buck Rogers vs the Tiger Men of Mars clip I recently added to the Classic Science Fiction Channel.

He did this in response to my post here yesterday, in which I stated that the Buck Rogers spaceship (actually, one of the Tiger Men’s ships) was very reminiscent of the Babylon 5 space station.

Looking at the side-by-side below, we can see that my memory was not as accurate as I originally thought – though the ships do bear a striking resemblance.

L-R: Trading card, movie model, B-5 station

Given what ‘Winch’ has sent along, it is probably a good guess that ALL of the ships depicted in the movie are models of ships that appeared in the comics.? Indeed, a bit of googling of “Buck Rogers” collectibles or memorabilia will reveal a fair number of tintypes, castings and other artwork that are strongly reminiscent of ships appearing in the film.

The other kind of cool thing revealed on the trading card is a bit of “proto” Creative Commons. The audience is encouraged to “Cut out and save!” the image.? Of course, back in the late 30’s and early 40’s, fans had virtually no technology at their disposal that would let them do more than perhaps color the ship with crayola crayons, mount it on some cardboard and make BrrrzzzGrrrrrzzzzzzz sounds as they manipulated it through space.? Primitive, maybe, but ‘mashup’ nonetheless.