It's a short scene in which "Buck tries to talk his parents into letting him go to France to join the AEF in WWI." His parents are played by Gil Gerard and Erin Gray, the stars of the 1980's TV show, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. It's an appropriate scene given that Buck Rogers was originally a military sf story. In his comic strip incarnations the artist even signed his name "Lt. Dick Calkins" to reinforce the military overtones. The things for which the series became famous, the rocketships, spacesuits, spaceflight to other planets, "that crazy Buck Rogers stuff," wasn't added until much later.
That's not Buck on the cover, it's Dick Seaton.
But those things were to be found in the same issue of Amazing that Buck premiered in. They were the stuff of Doc Smith's seminal tale The Skylark of Space. But despite his importance to the history of the genre, Smith's works were eclipsed by Nowlan and Calkin's famous character, who didn't hesitate to borrow elements Smith's work with the same questionable nonchalance with which Seaton acquired ownership of "X". Maybe it's time for a film of Skylark, too.
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