Even the comic shop that sold me this didn't know it existed...

In their defense, they've got a million books in there; but I didn't even recognize the publisher, Hermes Press: from 2013, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century #2-4, story and art by Howard Chaykin.

The first issue wasn't in this pile, so I don't know how exactly Buck ended up in the future from around the 1920's; but as was typical for the character's various incarnations, he doesn't get the "Whoo!" moment that Fry gets upon waking up in the future on Futurama. This 25th century future is somewhat more crapshack than usual, though: while America wasn't a radioactive crater like most of the rest of the world, it was being invaded by the Han (Chinese) who planned to eliminate most of the Americans left and put the collaborating rest in a theme park/nature preserve called "Americaland." The Han forces might have a pretty good shot at it, since the Americans were divided on mostly racial gang lines, and faced being picked apart unless Buck could rally them under a single banner.

Man, there are a lot of racial slurs in this one, and while Buck aspires to get Americans to see each other as Americans, there are several occasions in these three issues alone where he has to kill in a very cold-blooded fashion. This isn't as, well, smutty as you might usually expect from Chaykin; although there are some bits with Ardala Kane that probably would've gotten there if the series had more room.

Just to muddy up the waters, when I got this, I also picked up Dynamite's 2011 Buck Rogers Annual #1, "Dear Buck..." Written by Matt Brady and Troy Brownfield, art by Carlos Rafael. This version appears to be more sci-fi and less political than Chaykin's; but is also hung up on being a man out of time. Albeit, a time closer to our own, since this Buck references Major Tom and mixtapes rather than Louis Armstrong and records. When Dr. Huer works out Buck's birthday correlates with a mysterious burst transmission, they head out into the wastelands to investigate a historical archive, and find a message from his time-lost girlfriend. And robots and cannibals. Still, it ends with Buck a bit more ready to face the future, not that he had much of a choice in the matter.

At first glance, I would've assumed the shinier Dynamite version to have been more recent than Chaykin's, but nope! Still, I think that license gets passed like a mike; there's probably still some mileage for Buck in the next hundred years or so...