The Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers movie serials were deliberately crafted for adolescent male fans. Early commercial Science-Fiction was often sold as an offshoot of so-called "Boy's Entertainment." This profitable genre included great writers like H.G. Wells and Jack London, plus facile entertainers like Edgar Rice Burroughs and Rafael Sabatini. There were many entrepeneurs who hired anonymous professional writers to hack out innumerable stories featuring popular copyrighted characters, like Doc Savage and The Shadow, plus magazines which sold recycled plots, slightly masked by eccentric variations of archetypical heroes, heroines, and villains.
Hugo Gernsback published Amazing Stories, a pulp magazine featuring "Scientifiction" stories as reprints from Jules Verne, Wells, Burroughs, etc. plus new tales, like the outrageously galactic Skylark series by E.E. (Doc) Smith. One odd story graced the pages of Amazing in the summer of 1928 -- Armageddon 2419 A.D. by Phil Nowlan, which introduced somnambulistic time-traveller Anthony (later Buck) Rogers to the world.
After a sequel demonstrated the character's appeal, John F. Dille, president of the National Newspaper Service turned him into a syndicated feature, drawn by Dick Calkins. It debuted on January 7, 1929 as Buck Rogers in the 25th Century A.D. -- the first science fiction comic strip. Harold Foster's magnificently-drawn visualization of Tarzan began on that same date too, but Calkins was no Foster. Despite the sometimes-crude drawing, Buck Rogers epitomized the Space Opera, for good or bad, over 38 years in the mind of the American public, until July 8, 1967, long after Nowlan and Calkins had been replaced by Rick Yager, George Tuska, Murphy Anderson and others.
King Featues Syndicate challenged Buck's predominance with Flash Gordon, a beautifully-drafted Sunday strip which primarily ran in the Hearst papers. The same company also competed with Tarzan by running Jungle Jim on the same page. Both features were illustrated by the brilliant Alex Raymond.
In the genre of "Boy's Entertainment," women characters were generally marginalized by the producers, editors, artists, and writers for various socio-economic reasons, as well as priggishness, prudery, and prejudice. This psychological repression made for some interesting results at times, but there was very little variation among stock passive heroines or scheming villainesses. Spitfires of the Spaceways discusses and illustrates a few preturbations of these benighted stereotypes.

Wilma Deering of Buck Rogers

Wilma wasn't exactly the typical Lady In Distress, although she specialized in finding trouble. (She was a soldier after all, and an officer to boot!) Deering seemed to be a combination of Aviatrix and Flapper from the Roaring 20's, in that she was competent with futuristic weaponry and equipment, but also seemed to suffer repeated streaks of bad luck whenever the bad guys went about their bad business. Buck Rogers rescued her from many bad situations in the newspapers.
As a native of the 25th Century, Deering knew more about life in her time than 20th Century relic Rogers could ever have conceived, and was an indispensible ally to him -- saving his skin more than once. In lockstep with the conventions of the times, there was no romance between the two principals, or anybody else for that matter. She was almost the equivalent of a matinee cowboy's comic sidekick, except she was a lady, and rarely cracked jokes.
Wilma was most often a sibling-like prescence -- so much so that her BROTHER was the protagonist of many newspaper adventures. Other times she was so sexually neutral, it was like Buck had taken his mom along with him.
In the Buster Crabbe serial of 1939. She was quietly effective, and took initiative now and then -- even breaking jail to rescue Buck, as her Spitfire chapter shows!.
There was one awkward moment when Crabbe ALMOST kissed big-band singer Constance Moore, but it passed quickly. I personally thought it was the least he could have done for her -- she looked awfully lonely as the one solitary woman in the entire film!