THE READER : I AM THE BASTARD SON OF BUCK ROGERS.

Yes, at last the truth can be revealed; Buck Rogers is my father. The USAF serviceman who fell asleep for 500 years, and awoke in a changed world to do battle with Mongols, Martians and mutineers, was my pa. It was from him that I inherited my daring do and my Pepsodent smile. Yes sirree.

Since I'm in a confessional mood, I ought also to admit that my mother is the Amazonian princess known to the world at large as Wonder Woman. She wears satin tights, and more importantly, she fights for your rights. In the old red, white and blue, no less. I have her eyes, her nose, and her bracelets of submission.

It made for an interesting childhood. My mother was always instilling in me the virtues of feminism, while my father drilled me on space flight. I would be dropped off for school in a rocket ship, then picked up in the afternoon by an invisible plane. I was forever on the run from aliens (my dad's enemies), Nazis (my mother's), and alluring lesbian temptresses (from both sides of the family).

Now, it would be inappropriate of me to explain exactly how my parents came to be courting, though I can understand the question arising. Since one of them lived in the man-free utopia of Paradise Island, and the other spent much of his life in the 25th century, they would seem to be an unlikely pairing. In actual fact, the explanation is very simple. Strange as it may seem, I'm actually lying.

My parents are not Buck and Diana. My parents are not even Gil Gerard and Lynda Carter. No, my parents are David and Geraldine Wheeler, a retired journalist and a painter. My father has never been anywhere near the 25th century, and if my mother owns any bracelets of submission, I don't want to hear about it.

Yet all evidence to the contrary, this isn't all just deluded rambling. In actual fact, my parents are the same ages as Buck Rogers and Wonder Woman. Admittedly, the resemblance ends pretty quickly. My father was perhaps once a little more like another comic book contemporary, the boy reporter Tintin, and as strong willed as my mother is, she never did lasso bank robbers or wear a fetching tiara. I'm not sorry, though. My parents are big enough heroes already in m eyes, and they've lived full and interesting lives.

Now we have arrived at the 21st century, all quibbling aside, and we edge a hundred years closer to Buck's "future". So I find myself wondering; a hundred years from now, will Buck and Tweaky and Wilma Deering be reading comic books? Will they settle down to the latest pamphlet from the House of Ideas while waiting for the next interstellar dogfight to crop up? Because in the past few decades, my father has traveled the world and interviewed the powerful and the famous. My mother has achieved the greatest feat of all in raising four children, and still managed to work, paint, and become a respectable pillar of society. They have both lived a lifetime, and kept busy in doing so. Comics have been around just as long. Longer, in fact, in some form or another. In that same time, what exactly have comics been doing? If the medium hopes to last, how exactly does it plan to do so?

Buck Rogers was the first American science-fiction hero in comics, and Wonder Woman was the archetypal creation of respected psychologist William Marston. They were both immensely innovative ideas. Unfortunately, they were so big and clever that almost everyone who followed them did so under their shadow, and made little effort to build on the innovation. On the contrary; much of the purity of Buck and the depth of Diana has been drained away over the years. Super-heroes still reign supreme, and while super-heroes are not in themselves a bad thing, the version of them that we see today does not often live up to the legacy of madness and creativity set by the originals. There's a lot of crap in any medium, but really, comics do seem to get more than their fair share.

It doesn't mean the industry is dead, though. It doesn't mean Buck won't be reading comics in the 25th century. This industry often stumbles, often falls, but always carries on. The doomsayers proclaim that we are living in the end times, but that simply isn't true. The art form is not going to die. It will never attain the success of its big brother cinema, which has been around just as long, and it has found itself playing second fiddle to video games, because they too have found a broad appeal, but just measuring it against the yardstick of other art forms is foolish. Not all art was created equal. Comics don't need to aspire to be as big as cinema or games. They do need to learn a lesson, though. Cinema and video games have a broad appeal. Comics do not. Comics have never done much to broaden their appeal. Not in any concerted way. Comics remain fixed on the same old ideas, with only a fractional effort being made to expand that audience. The industry needs to innovate, the same way other media do. The same way comics used to do.

I inherited nothing genetic from Buck Rogers and Wonder Woman. What I did inherit was a medium, an art form, and an industry that has been riding their wave and living off their ideas for the best part of a century. In a lifetime, the medium has not done anywhere near enough to stretch to its full potential.

In fact, it's fair to say, comics just haven't lived.

Andrew Wheeler is an upstanding young lad.

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