The boy insisted on being called "Buster." It wasn't his real name. That didn't matter. He idolized Buster Crabbe, the dashing, square-jawed actor who portrayed the interplanetary hero Flash Gordon in the Universal Studios serial of the same name. In them, Flash travels to the planet Mongo in a rocketship, where he encounters alien races, rights wrongs, and dazzles the camera with his suave, blond-haired good looks.
The boy named Buster was not blond. He was African-American with a branch of Cherokee in his family tree, possessing of kinky hair, a toothy grin, and wise-beyond-his-years eyes. His poverty-stricken family lived a less-than-dashing existence in Seattle in the 1950s. His mother and father were alcoholics. They fought violently and often. Buster would sometimes hide in the closet during his parents' rows, wishing he could somehow escape to Planet Mongo. There he could battle the villainous Ming the Merciless and rescue the swooning Dale Arden, earning the heroic virtue of his namesake, far from the squalor and broken bottles of home.
One night, Buster and his brother Leon witnessed something that would change their young lives. Outside their bedroom window, a disc-shaped UFO—like something straight out of Flash Gordon—hovered in their backyard. It floated there only a minute, but it was long enough to sear itself into Buster's tender young brain.
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