Buck Danny
Encyclopedia
Buck Danny is a Franco-Belgian comics
series about a military flying ace and his two sidekick
s serving (depending on the plots) in the United States Navy
or the United States Air Force
. The series is noted for its realism both in the drawings and the descriptions of air force procedures as part of the storyline. In particular the aircraft depicted are extremely accurate. Mixing historical references with fiction, Buck Danny is one of the most important 'classic' Franco-Belgian comic strips. Starting in 1947, the first albums were set against the backdrop of World War II
, but from 1954 onwards, the series started to play in 'the present' and has so ever since. Like this, the series reads as a chronology of military aviation as well as the events that were catching people's imagination at the time of publishing, ranging from the Korean war
, the cold war
, UFO's international terrorism and drug running, the space race
, rogue atomic bombs, the collapse of the Soviet bloc and recently the conflicts in Sarajevo
and Afghanistan
.
True to the Franco-Belgian tradition
the adventures are first published as a series in a weekly comic book magazine. After a complete story has run its course, it is bundled and published as a book. In the case of Buck Danny, the story appeared in Spirou
magazine in weekly installments of one page per issue and from 1947 to 2008, 52 albums have been published by Spirou's parent company Dupuis editions
. All are still in print today.
From 1947 to 1979, the first 40 albums were a collaboration between writer Jean-Michel Charlier
and draughtsman Victor Hubinon
. After the death of the latter in 1979, the series took a hiatus of 4 years before Charlier continued for 4 more albums with draughtsman Francis Bergèse. After Charlier's death in 1989, Bergèse tried one album with a scenario by Jacques de Douhet before writing his own stories. After 1996, 7 more stories appeared, combining realistic penmanship with continuously complex scenarios.
Bergèse announced his retirement after the publication of album 52 and since 2008, no new material has appeared. Officially however, the series is not 'dead' but simply on hiatus while the production company is looking for a new draughtsman and writer. Recently (May 2010) it was announced that Dupuis commissioned writer Frédéric Zumbiehl and draftsman Fabrice Lamy to continue the Buck Danny franchise. If successful, this would be the third artist and fourth scenarist for the series. With most of the Franco-Belgian comics
belonging to strictly one team and dying with the departure of either draughtsman or writer, this is a tribute to the importance of the series and the place Buck Danny has taken in popular culture for 50 years and running.
up to the current day. Although the first two adventures starred Danny alone, in the third album he met up with his sidekicks Jerry 'Tumb' Tumbler and Sonny Tuckson and from there on all subsequent adventures were done as a trio.
When the first stories started appearing in 1947, their themes—the Battle of the Coral Sea
, the Battle of Midway
and General Chennault
's Flying Tigers
—were recent history, but after 9 albums, the series caught up with current times and from then on the adventures always played in 'the present'. Since then, the series consists of a chronological string of adventures: In the 10th album, which is something like a watershed for the series, the trio become test pilots and at the end of the album re-enlist into the U.S. Air Force
. The Air Force promptly sends them to the Korean war
where the trio battles spies and unmanned aircraft. After that they are somehow transferred to the Navy
and for the next 55 years they will serve on the latest supercarriers, fly the latest jets and helicopters and witness the latest progress in aviation firsthand. Flying a SBD Dauntless on his first mission, Buck Danny has flown Sabres in Korea, Grumman Panthers, Cougars, Tigers and F14 Tomcats for the Navy. In his latest albums, under stewardship of Francis Bergèse, Buck Danny and his team fly the F-18 for the navy, but simultaneously serve as test pilots for the Air force's F-22 program.
Besides flying for the Navy and helping out the Air Force, several adventures feature Buck and his friends as test pilots for NASA
, for instance flying the X-15 rocket-plane or finding rogue transmitters interfering with rocket testing at Cape Kennedy. In addition the trio regularly changes into civilian clothes to work directly for the U.S. government, posing as charter pilots, flight instructors or mercenaries to investigate, uncover and finally thwart, criminal activities all over the world.
Realism has always been a trademark of Buck Danny, especially when it comes to depicting the aircraft and the procedures and jargon
used by the air force. Often, despite the heroics of Danny, Tumbler or Tuckson, the aircraft and carriers drawn are the real heroes. Helping with this is the fact that, contrary to American comic magazines, Belgian magazines were letter-sized like regular news magazines (technically they were in A4 paper format). Consequently the resulting albums are letter-sized hard- or softcovers as well, considerably larger than American comics or Japanese Manga
. Also they are printed on top-quality paper rather than pulp
. All this gives the artist more opportunity to add detail to his drawings.
Realism also is reflected in the grim atmosphere of the books. Especially the cold war
albums are slowly built-up mysteries where the heroes are constantly under the treat of attack by an unseen enemy. Sabotage
, often with deadly results is a common feature in more than one album and several supporting characters are shot, ambushed, blown up by booby-traps or otherwise die violent deaths. Often Buck and his team mates escape more by luck then by their own cunning and the feeling that they could have died lingers deep through the following pages.
The realism of the stories playing in the present even goes so far that there are over the 53 stories no prequels nor flashback nor secrets from Buck's past as a plot device. Each new stories follows the other chronologically, although some time may have elapsed between one adventure and another. An exception to that are a couple of short stories drawn by Francis Bergèse included in the large collection books, but not distributed in the official list of albums.
As is traditional in the Franco-Belgian comic business
, the size of a published comic book is limited to 40-45 pages. Adventures that run longer are either distributed as 40-page chapters of a saga or designed to form independent stories within a longer arc. In the case of Buck Danny, 52 albums form 30 distinct stories: 15 albums are stand-alone adventures, 11 stories are spread out over two albums, 4 stories even use 3 albums. However, especially after the 10th album, the albums of a multi-story arc are laid out as closed chapters with a distinctive ending point, often a cliffhanger
at the end of the album and a short recap at the beginning of the next album.
was for a few years the hotbed of the emerging comic industry. As such editor Georges Troisfontaines
owned an agency called 'World Press' which he modeled after the American comic strip syndicates. Part of his staff were the draughtsman Victor Hubinon
and Jean-Michel Charlier
, who quickly became a talented writer. Soon, Troisfontaines proposed that the two work together. They first collaborated on L'Agonie du Bismark
(The Agony of the Bismark), a war account serialized in Spirou
in 1946.
Seeing the success of American pilot strips, Troisfontaines suggested to Hubinon and Charlier that they should produce a series about an American pilot just as well and even came up with the name Buck Danny. Keeping in line with their war account stories, the two came up with a semi-historical account of a young engineer working in Hawaii
at the beginning of the war. Firsthand witnessing the Attack on Pearl Harbor
, Buck Danny enlists in the Navy
as a pilot and has a series of adventures serving on the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown
against the backdrop of the Battle of the Coral Sea
. The story was serialized in weekly installments in Spirou
from January 2, 1947 onwards. After the story ran its course, it was gathered and published in book form in 1948. By that time Hubinon and Charlier were already working on a second part, keeping the same formula but this time having Buck Danny live through his adventures against the Battle of Midway
.
The storyline of these two albums consists of a string of smaller adventures of Buck Danny as a pilot and the real life events of the Battle of the Coral Sea
and the Battle of Midway
. In the fictionalized adventures, Buck Danny flies attack missions, engages in dogfights, gets shot down, escapes, returns to his carrier in a stolen Japanese plane and even rescues a hostage. At the end of each album, Buck Danny takes a back seat as his carrier readies for battle and in the description of the historical battle, individual historical pilots, commanders and raids are described in detail. As to the artwork, the pages are laid out classically in 4 'strips' of 3 to 4 panels each, although on occasion, two strips combine to a large shot. Panels often include inserts describing aircraft, carrier procedures, historical figures or maps of the area.
Two years is an incredibly short span to draw two 40-page albums and so, although officially the series was owned by Victor Hubinon and Jean-Michel Charlier
, everyone at 'World Press' contributed to the albums in various degrees. As a consequence, the artwork is sometimes sketchy and the realism, especially in the aircraft depicted is certainly not up to par with later albums.
While working on the first Buck Danny albums, they also produced Tarawa Atoll Sanglant ('Tarawa, Bloody Atoll'), a historical account published in Belgium from the end of 1948 to the end of 1949 in the bi-weekly magazine Moustique. Like the Bismark account, this story retells the Battle of Tarawa
in the Pacific Campaign. (The story was reprinted in Spirou in 1980 and subsequently republished in two 40-page books as a part of the Buck Danny series.)
. In China Buck meets up with his teammates Tumbler and Tuckson and by the end of the first Chinese adventure, the three become an inseparable team.
During 1951 and 1952, three more adventures follow in which Buck and his companions team up with Susan Holmes, an army nurse who'd previously had a small role in one of the adventures of the Midway album. During a Japanese attack on their city, the trio and Holmes are separated from their base and over the next albums they are chased all through Asia by the traitor Mo Choung Young on behalf of a semi-fictional Black Dragon Society
(which owes more to American pulp fiction than to historical accuracy).
Again in 1952 and 1953, three more adventures followed. The war having ended, Danny, Tumbler and Tuckson reunite and go to fly for a dubious airline in the Near East
. Quickly they are involved in a hornets' nest of gun-runners, opium smugglers and palace revolutions. (For a more detailed description of this story arc, see Pilots Demobilized (Buck Danny)
.)
Although playing in completely different times and countries, the 'Black Dragon' and 'Desert Pirates' cycles are unique in that they no longer have a historic event as an anchor and instead focus on a series of adventures, often having nothing to do with flying at all. The adventures follow the yarn of a classic U.S. adventure comic of that time and similarities with the adventures of Steve Canyon
abound. This becomes obvious in the character of Susan Holmes who tagged along in the entire 'Asian' adventure just so she could be the stereotypical Damsel in Distress
, having to be rescued again and again. Although the 'Demobilized' story arc featured more flying, readers were still unsatisfied with the story and demanded more aircraft and less scheming villains.
The two story arcs were drawn at a very rapid pace, seven albums in barely four years, and the level of detail is far less than in the later albums. Especially the secondary characters sometimes appear sketchy and unfinished. Yet, inconsistencies in the storylines and drawings are kept to a minimum. Improbable plot twists do however occur more than once and it is clear that the series were not only drawn, but also written week by week with little thought to layout in books and chapters, but rather as a series of adventurous situations.
. The Korean adventure only lasted two albums, both written in 1954, but the next year, Buck Danny was back again, this time transferred back to the Navy
and serving as squadron commander on an aircraft carrier.
From there on the series would continue to play in 'the present' and Danny would continue to serve in the navy for the next 25 years and 26 albums. Keeping with the latest technology, Danny (and his friends Tumbler and Tuckson) would serve on the latest aircraft carriers and fly the latest Navy jet fighters and from here on aircraft carriers and navy jets would play an important part in the adventures.
Although the Korean War
is explicitly used as a setting in the 1954 albums, Buck Danny would not participate in any more real war or conflict until Francis Bergèse took over the scenarios. Instead many of the adventures played either on the open sea or on U.S. soil. When the action takes Buck Danny and his team abroad, the adventures either play in an unnamed country, or in a fictitious state as the South Asia
n countries of 'Viet-Tan' and 'Malakka' or the Central America
n dictator state of 'Mantegua'
Similarly, although playing in the midst of the Cold War
after Korea, Buck Danny never directly engaged either the Soviet Union
nor any of the Eastern Bloc
states. Charlier rightly felt that his readers wanted their hero in far-away adventurous-sounding places, not their own backyard. Buck Danny never battled the Soviet Bloc military either: the adversaries of the Cold War Years were invariably criminal organizations, most of them employing or headed by Lady X. Even the occasional spy rings that appear do not steal military secrets out of duty or ideology; their aim is invariably to sell them to the highest bidder. When (usually fictional) foreign countries are involved, they are either headed by megalomaniacal small-time dictators, or by a puppet government installed to give credibility to the pirates or drug lords financing them.
The pace of the series was still furious (30 albums in 25 years) and could only be achieved by continuously turning out one page a week year round. On top of that, from 1959 to 1979, Hubinon and Charlier also made the pirate strip Barbe Rouge ('Redbeard') for the new French magazine Pilote
. The workload was enormous, especially for Hubinon, who did all the drawing. Still, the albums quickly came to display the high level of realism that would be a trademark of the series ever since. And somehow Hubinon still found time to write and draw stories on his own. Just before his death, he published one album of the pirate series La Mouette (The Seagull) which he both drew and scripted.
In terms of layout, one page still consisted of four strips of panels, but the ordening of the panels became more loose. Actually, the layout was that of two half-pages. In most cases, each half-page would display two strips of equal size, but variations in strip height were possible and wide-shots taking up the whole half-page were not unheard of. The occasional 'instructional' panel with aircraft stats disappeared, but maps or schematics still showed up from time to time.
Victor Hubinon died in 1979, shortly after finishing album 39 and for several years it looked as if with the death of the draughtsman, after 32 years, the series had ended for good.
a series only has one artist and one writer and almost invariably the departure of one of them means the end of the series. Also a lucky break was that the last Buck Danny album was also the finishing album of a three-part story arc. Thus, there were no loose ends left and no half-finished stories to take care of. Jean-Michel Charlier
instead devoted his time to finishing his and Hubinon's other big series, Redbeard, which he continued with jijé
as artist.
However Jijé himself died in 1980 and Charlier openly declared that he would end the series Redbeard as he knew no one with the skills of Jijé and Hubinon to do the series justice. This however only made him more determined to look for a draughtsman to take over Buck Danny. He finally found an artist in the person of Francis Bergèse, who had previously drawn a string of aircraft-related strips with mixed success and openly admitted he started drawing comics because he grew up reading Buck Danny. Furthermore, Bergèse could imitate Hubinon's drawing style almost perfectly.
So in 1982, after almost 4 years of inactivity, Buck Danny returned with an ambitious 3-album story: Mission Apocalypse,Les Pilotes de l'enfer and Le Feu du ciel, ( Translated and published in English by Amusement Int (USA) in 1988 as 'Mission Apocalypse', 'The Pilots from Hell' and 'Fire from the sky'). (These albums are discussed more deeply in a separate Wikipedia article Nuclear Alert (Buck Danny)
). Drawing the albums took 4 years with the last album only appearing in 1986. However, this slower pace only enabled Bergese to make his drawings more detailed and his work is au par with that of Hubinon in every aspect.
Bergèse and Charlier made one more album, Les Agresseurs (the Aggressors
) in 1988 and started work on another two-album story afterwards. It looked like with his new artist, Buck Danny was back and up to speed again when on July 10, 1989 Charlier himself died. At that time, Bergese had drawn the first 16 pages of what would have been Buck Danny's 45th album, Les Oiseaux noire, (the blackbirds). Although Charlier left behind scenario directions for all but the last pages of this book, it was decided that, with no clue on the second album and the conclusion of the story, work on Buck Danny would be stopped, this time for good. The 16-pages already drawn and Charlier's directions surviving directions for the next pages have since appeared in a number of specials, but are no part of the official Buck Danny canon
.
As to graphics, the 4 1/2 albums of the Bergèse-Charlier team fit in seamlessly with the earlier albums drawn by Hubinon. As a draughtsman, Bergèse copied Hubinon's style perfectly and the ships and planes drawn radiate the same level of technical realism. Bergèse even stayed true to the layout of the pages in four strips with the occasional half-page wide shot
. The only difference is that with Hubinon the characters could sometimes come over as wooden or stiff where as Bergese's persons seem more lifelike. Especially their clothes seem to fit them more loosely and display an occasional wrinkle.
In terms of plot, the albums follow the typical cold war Buck Danny layout of either a mysterious criminal organization threatening world peace (in the Mission Apocalypse albums a terrorist organization steals two nuclear bombs to wipe out a summit of world leaders), international espionage aimed at America's military secrets (in the Agressors a Russian defector may not be what he seems to be) and cold war U.S. air power (in the blackbirds Buck is assigned a covert mission on a U-2 spyplane).
There are changes however: Although the first scenes of Operation Apocalypse still play in the fictional Central-American state of Mantegua, for the rest of the stories, cities and nations are openly called by name: The two stolen F14 fighters are flown by renegade pilots from Iran hired by Lady X, the peace summit the terrorists want to bomb is in Cancun
, Mexico
and when marooned on a Caribbean islet, Buck and Sony are rescued by a destroyer that is openly Cuban. (With Hubinon, the ship would be from a fictional Caribbean state). Furthermore, where in earlier albums, 'terrorists' were solely motivated by greed or revenge, the terrorists of the 'Apocalypse' story have a distinct left wing radical ideology reminiscent of the Baader Meinhoff or Red Brigade groups. Also, where former albums just make allusions to 'Washington; or 'the President', here an accurately drawn President Reagan
is addressed by name as he gives out orders firsthand.
The new realism continues in the next albums: In the Agressors, for the first time in his career, Buck Danny openly enters a dogfight with a Russian fighter plane... and gets outmaneuvered. Later the pilot of that plane resurfaces as a defector and becomes Buck Danny's teammate while training for the Air Force's Aggressor Squadron
. He turns out to be a double agent in a plot orchestrated no longer by a group of criminals but by the KGB
itself. In the Blackbirds it is openly stated that the target of Buck Danny's spy mission is a nuclear facility near Vladivostok. All in all, with the 'new' Buck Danny scenarist Charlier now displays a level of directness that would have been unthinkable in previous albums.
By now however, at the age of 48 Bergèse had found his calling in drawing aviation comics, so in 1990 for tintin he took on a comic book adaptation of 'that other famous aviation ace' Biggles
. At that time, the 'Biggles' adventure books by W. E. Johns
were well known in Belgium and France, but as Johns had died in 1968, no new material meant no younger fans.
For Bergèse, the new strip meant a complete departure from his Buck Danny work. for starters, there was the artwork: The series playing during and shortly after World War II
with a British
flying ace as a hero, the aircraft of his choice now were Spitfires
painted in colorful green and brown camouflage schemes compared to the dull namy blue and navy gray of the Buck Danny aircraft. Eventually, Bergèse played into this by painting the whole artwork in more vibrant, almost aquarel-like colors, giving the panels a look and feel reminiscent of early 1940s color photographs
.
More importantly, as the series was based on a series of books written on average 45 years ago, there were no detailed instructions on panel-to-panel layout like the ones Charlier provided for the Buck Danny albums. Bergèse had to do most of the writing himself, starting with the selection of suitable adventures up to the page-by-page layout. As a result, with every album, Bergèse became more and more skilled as a scenarist himself.
By that time however Dupuis
was yearning to remake the commercial success of Buck Danny, and so in 1995, through intermediary of Charlier's son Philippe, the documentary maker Jacques de Douhet was asked to supply some outlines for a possible Buck Danny scenario. One of the ideas caught on and so in 1995, Dupuis asked Bergese back and he and de Douhet teamed up for Buck Danny album number 45: Les Secrets de la Mer Noire (The secrets of the Black Sea).
The album is at the same time a complete departure from the Charlier-Hubinon series as well as a logical development of their work: Playing in the new political realities of the 1990s, in particular the collapse of the Warsaw Pact
and the fall of the Iron curtain
: Set in 1991, after Buck Danny 'looses' his aircraft carrier in a war game
exercise, he is sent on a diplomatic mission to be an observer on the Soviet Union
's latest aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov and arrives there just in time to be a pawn in the attempted 1991 August Coup.
For the artwork, Bergèse immediately took over from where he had left of in 1989 and comparing the new album 45 with album 44, it is hard to tell the difference. There are however subtle details such as the air battle over the Ukraine, which plays out against the backdrop of a deep blue night sky illuminated by a full moon. This poetic accent makes the battle appear almost dreamlike, something more fit for the Biggles albums then for Hubinon's hard technical edge. There is enough technical detail however in the realistic depiction of the various Soviet aircraft, helicopters and ships, especially the Kuznetsov and the A-90 Orlyonok
ekranoplan which plays a key role in the later part of the adventure. Whereas the images are a delight, the story itself has its problems: Although it starts off with a bang and has several tong-in-cheek references to the 'classic' Buck Danny adventures (Buck's wingman on the Kuznetsov is a Volga German named Tumbler who later turns out to be a traitor), the story fizzles toward the end. Various secondary personages and side plots are introduced in the first part only to be forgotten later on and after Buck Danny is saved, the final conclusion of the big event, the August 1991 coup is only mentioned in one panel.
Nevertheless, the 'new' Buck Danny series had his potentials, and expectations were high for a second de Douhet/Bergèse album, a synopsis
for which was already written. However in 1996, de Douhet announced that he would retire from comic book writing for 'personal reasons' and once again Buck Danny was without an author.
De Douhet died on August 19, 2009.
Bergèse only made three Biggles comic books from 1990 until 1993, when he started working on Buck Danny again. All three were adaptations of the Biggles
adventures written by W. E. Johns
between 1932 and 1968, slavishly following the plot of the books. This even went so far that in the second album The Pirates of the South Pole Bergèse wrote a foreword where he appopogized for having to draw polar bear
s in the Antarctic because the original book mentioned them. In 1994 however, while Bergèse was working on Buck Danny, Lombard
gave the series to author Michel Oleffe and draughtsman Eric Loutte. In a radical departure to the series Oleffe produced The Flight of the Wallenstein, an adventure written entirely by himself, without any reference to W.E.Johns, other than the names of the characters.
After Buck Danny no.45, Bergèse returned to Biggles for two more albums: Squadron Biggles was a collection of short stories reaped from different books of W.E. Johns, for The Last Zeppelin he wrote his own scenario keeping the original characters. As the album So when de Douhet departed as a writer for Buck Danny, Bergèse felt that he was ready to take over the writing part as well as the drawing and in 1996 he returned to Dupuis
to draw and write Buck Danny no.46
(The Biggles series continued with Michel Oleffe as writer and Eric Loutte (sometimes also Frank Leclercq) as artist. It is still running with the release of album No. 14 in 2010)
As between 1989 and 1994, by 1996 the world had changed again and so Buck Danny's next album L'escadrille fantôme / Ghost Squadron plays against the backdrop of the Bosnian War
, in particular the siege of Sarajevo
. The theme was nothing but controversial: Frustrated by being forbidden to respond to obvious crimes committed by Serbia
n forces, the U.S. sets up a secret squadron of unmarked F 16 jets to combat Serbia
n warlord
s.... Only to find out that 'the other side' operates a similar squadron of Mig 29 jet fighters. In spite of this controversy, the album was well received and Bergèse followed up with a two-album adventure Zone interdite - Tonnerre sur la cordillère (Restricted zone - Thunder over the Cordilleras) in which Buck and his friends revisit the fictional country of Mantegua. Although the story was less controversial: the fight against cocaine
traffickers, it still showed the U.S maintaining an uneasy alliance with a local dictator and dared to give a little background on WHY so many farmers in Mantegua shose to cultivate coca
rather than foodcrops. In a plot twist Charlier would be proud of however the real culprit is an international ring of criminals run -again- by Lady X. Unlike Charlier, this time they are in cahoots with criminal elements on the Navy aircraft carrier USS Eisenhower who use their supply aircraft to fly the drugs from Mantegua to the US.
In 'Ghost Squadron', Bergèse also introduced a new recurring character: the female Navy pilot: Cindy McPherson. Cindy resurfaced in the 'forbidden zone' albums as a pilot in the same transport squadron of the traffickers and played an important part in unmasking the plot. She has cameos and minor roles in all of the following adventures and could be considered the fourth 'man' on the team in a way Susan Holmes was in the 'Black Dragon' adventures. However even as Cindy will occasionally get into trouble and have to be rescued by Buck, she is an accomplished pilot and definitely capable of taking care of herself.
After the Mantequa adventure four more albums followed, each a closed adventure and each again situated against the backdrop of real-life events and so from 2000 to 2008 Buck and his Friends have to rescue a downed pilot from South Korea, uncover sabotage and political power play in the F22 testing program, uncover illegal mining in the Antarctic and find a CIA agent investigating a ring of gun-runners in Afghanistan
Apart from skirting today's hot-button topics and naming states and events by name, something that would be absolutely taboo
in a scenario by Jean-Michel Charlier
, there are several other differences between the two authors: Under Bergèse, both Buck Danny and Jerry Tumbler seem to mellow a bit and on several occasions Buck actually shows genuine caring, if not fatherly, feelings for Cindy McPherson. The most important change is however in the behavior of Sonny Tuckson who more than often reacts with outrage to perceived injustice. In this he has become the inner voice of Bergèse himself: When Sony asks in 'Ghost Squadron' "Why isn't the world doing anything?" it is Bergese's question to the reader just as much as it is Sony's question to Buck.
7 albums between 1996 and 2008 make for a bit less than two years per album. About twice as long as Charlier and Hubinon took. This shows in the artwork: planes, ships and other technical details are as realistic as ever and the characters, especially Buck, do not only seem to be realistically drawn but also lifelike, compared to the sometimes wooden face and straight-as-a-rod postures drawn by Hubinon
In 2008, After writing his 12th Buck Danny album, (Porté disparu / Listed Missing the 52nd in the series,) Francis Bergèse, now 67 announced his retirement. Since then, no new Buck Danny material has appeared.
comic strip 'Colt Walker while Zumbiel bursted into the scene in 2007 with the one-shot album Team Rafale: a yarn about industrial espionage and economic warfare surrounding the Rafale fighter
. In lay-out, Rafale closely follows the later Bergese albums with their combination of flying, crime and politics and, apart of the flying taking part in a French plane for the French military, similarity between this album and Buck Danny are abound.
According to Dupuis, a new album, the 53'rd of the series, is in the make and is scheduled for late 2010 or 2011.
- the series aims to depict aircraft very realistically, and often includes the most recent technological developments, such as VTOL
(Vertical Take Off and Landing) aircraft, stealth aircraft, the newest Soviet/Russian aircraft, the effects of low-flying, etc.
The ships and bases where the adventures take place are also very close to reality (most are American, but a Russian and a French aircraft carrier have also been depicted, as well as real American bases). Certain events were also taken more or less directly from reality, when the censors allowed it; examples include the Korean War, the Bosnian War
and the War in Afghanistan. More often, Charlier simply invented entire countries, thus allowing him to take greater liberties with the story. Since the Vietnam War
, for example, had been declared off-limits by French censors, Charlier wrote the "Return of the Flying Tigers" story arc to take place in the fictional country of Vien-tan.
The realism of the series is also enhanced by short definitions or explanations of technical terms, such as RADAR
, Radio direction finding
. Novels also often contain technical or historical notes, and at other times, English aviator jargon (such as "Scramble" or "Overshoot") is translated into French for the readers' benefit.
Although in the course of 60 years of stories Buck Danny is promoted from simple pilot to squadron leader, captain and colonel (Tumbler and Tuckson having the rank of captains) the characters themselves never seem to age. From the first album on, Hubinon always drew Buck Danny with a realistic, weathered face and a military crew cut for his blond hair. Like this his visible age has always been somewhere between 25 and 49. Although Bergèse, as a scenarist makes 'his' Buck Danny appear more grizzled and war-weary, as a draughtsman, he mostly kept to Buck Danny's original look, although in the latest albums the lines on his face appear a bit deeper. Likewise his companions Tumbler and Tuckson have kept their same look throughout the series, but as Tumbler appears just as weathered ageless as Buck Danny, with Sonny Tuckson's round face and distinctive flock of red hair his not aging becomes apparent.
Buck Danny enlists in the United States Navy
, and soon finds his sidekick
s Jerry 'Tumb' Tumbler and Sonny Tuckson, with the three quickly becoming inseparable friends. Together, they participate in many dangerous missions, their adventures taking them all over the world. In missions ranging from the Korean War
in the 1950s to the Balkan War in 1996, they prove themselves as true defenders of the United States of America.
Colonel Buck Danny: Buck Danny is the title character, and his rank advances fastest throughout the series (however, he never attains a rank higher than Colonel
, as this would remove him from the status of active pilot). He represents the stereotypical fighter pilot (tall, blond haired, athletic, and rather handsome) and also the ideal leader; strict but fair, brave but level-headed, tough but easily approachable, an unquestioned patriot, and loyal to a fault. In the comics, Danny is described many times as "the best pilot in the Navy."
Captain Sonny Tuckson: a proud Texan, Sonny often serves as comic relief, a role which accentuates as the series goes on (in the form of pie-in-the-face pranks, failed sporting stunts, and prodigiously bad luck in romance). He is nevertheless an excellent pilot, and has proven himself to be extremely capable in combat situations. He is also the most loyal and risk-taking of the three, and is often willing to violate orders and ignore the chain of command to help a friend in danger.
Major Jerry "Tumb" Tumbler: Tumbler is the least well developed of the characters, and also the most serious, cynical and suspicious of the three heroes. He serves mainly as a foil for Buck Danny's character. The two were antagonists when they first met in China; Tumbler, a veteran in the Flying Tigers, resented the fact that Danny, who had just come in from the Navy, was promoted to squadron commander before him. This feeling faded away when Danny saved Tumb's life from the Japanese at great risk to his own; they, along with Sonny, have been best friends ever since.
. She often works as a spy or secret agent, gathering information or running sabotage operations for the highest bidder (including foreign powers, the Mafia
, drug cartels, nefarious business conglomerates and various terrorists and dictators). However, she has also at times been called upon for more hands-on tasks, as in the "Return of the Flying Tigers" story arc, where she is put in command of an Asian despot's air force. She has been reported dead many times during the series, but invariably resurfaces to the dismay of Danny, Tumbler and Tuckson. Originally a blonde, she is seen with brown hair in the later volumes, and was always shown as having eyes of "blue steel." Jean-Michel Charlier based her on famous German test pilot Hanna Reitsch
.
Mo Choung Young: a Chinese pilot in the Flying Tigers. He is secretly a traitor for the Japanese and a member of the Black Dragon Society
, whose goal is to create a pan-Asian empire
led by Japan and free of Western influence. His main objective in the story is to prevent Danny and Tuckson from bringing the Flying Tigers the plans for the Allied offensive in Burma. He and his Black Dragon superiors commit suicide at the end of Attack in Burma to avoid falling into Allied hands. Although he only appears in the "Flying Tigers" story arc, Mo is an iconic figure in the franchise.
Lieutenant Cindy McPherson: the first female U.S. Navy pilot portrayed in the series, she has appeared in several of the later novels (nineties and onwards). A crack pilot, she is also very attractive and a frequent target for Sonny Tuckson's advances.
Admiral Walker: an admiral in the U.S. Navy, and the trio's direct superior since the "Mission Apocalypse" story arc. Sometimes impulsive and easily displeased, especially when Sonny Tuckson is involved. His most memorable attribute is his dog, O'Connor, who lives on board with him and quickly became Sonny's worst nightmare.
General Scott: a general in the U.S. Air Force, often in charge of classified and extremely delicate operations. He first appears in "Restricted Zone," where he and Danny command an off-the-books fighter unit in the Bosnian War
, and is referred to only as "General X." His name is revealed in "The Night of the Serpent," in which he directs an operation to recover an American pilot in North Korea.
took it upon him to re-issue the previous albums in a collectors edition under the new format "Tout Buck Danny" ('Everything Buck Danny' or 'The complete Buck Danny'). This differed from the original albums still in print with each volume being a solid hardcover book with three or four of the original novels plus some additional material. With most of the Buck Danny stories stretching out over two or three albums, this enabled the reader to have a complete adventure in one novel. Yet the addition of magazine artwork, promotional material and other work made it clear that this editions were aimed at the elder collector. During the hiatus years after the death of Charlier, this series continued with the accumulated material and its success no doubt prompted Dupuis to press Bergèse into continuing the series. At present, with 'complete' album 16 covering the 'loose' albums 49, 50 and 51, the 'complete' books have caught up with the loose album series.
After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Buck Danny enters the Navy and becomes an aviator. He participates in several naval engagements, rises to the rank of Commander, and is eventually transferred to the Flying Tigers, where he encounters Jerry Tumbler and Sonny Tuckson.
Danny and Tuckson are ordered to fly to the Allied headquarters in Rangoon and bring back the plans for the upcoming offensive into Burma. When the mission goes wrong, they are trapped in the middle of the jungle and must dodge Japanese troops, hostile natives, Chinese pirates and various traitors to bring the plans back to the Flying Tigers.
Unemployed after the end of the war, Danny, Tumbler and Tuckson are hired by a shady airline company operating in the Middle-East, and find themselves swept up in a nest of intrigue involving Arab tribal politics and the rush for oil.
Danny, Tumbler and Tuckson are persuaded by their old CO to return to the military as test pilots, and are eventually transferred to a fighter unit in Korea. There, they encounter not only Communist pilots but also drones
against which Danny is ordered to find a response.
Danny, Tumbler and Tuckson are transferred to the U.S. Navy, where their adventures continue in three stand-alone novels. In the first, they train a squadron of new recruits to work as a team. In the second, they are racing against a group of ex-Nazis to uncover a treasure from a sunken U-boat. In the third, they take down a group of pirates disrupting air traffic over the Arctic.
Two story arcs. In the first, Danny and his wingmen provide fly defensive patrols over the military's newest ICBM test base in Alaska, and find themselves facing the spies of the mysterious Lady X. In the second, they are returned to the Navy, this time on a mission against pirates in the South China Seas, who are using weapons and bases abandoned by the Japanese to become a near-military force.
Two story arcs. In the first, Danny and his wingmen are testing new prototypes with VTOL
technology for the Navy. In the second, they are sent to Tibet to retrieve a German rocket scientist vital to the U.S. space program before the Soviets do.
Danny and his wingmen test new aircraft for the Navy, first the brand-new X-13 (based on the A-5 Vigilante
), then the X-15. They must overcome rivalries within their own squadron, and root out several saboteurs hired by foreign powers and disgruntled aircraft constructors.
When a revolution begins in the Southeast Asian nation of Vien-tan, the U.S. finds itself unable to intervene officially. Instead, Danny and thirty Navy pilots are retired from the service and sent to fight in Vien-tan, under the flag of the newly reconstituted Flying Tigers.
One story arc and two stand-alone novels. In the story arc, Danny and his wingmen try to recover a Mercury
space capsule
lost at sea. In the first novel, he must defuse the threats of a Caribbean dictator bent on causing a nuclear war between East and West. In the second, he and his wingmen investigate the sightings of unidentified aircraft over the Arctic.
Two story arcs. In the first, the Navy loses a nuclear weapon over the Central American republic of Mantegua; Danny, Tumbler and Tuckson are infiltrated among the rebels who recovered it to try to steal it back. In the second, they enter the Blue Angels
and are sent to a high-profile airshow in Karachi, where they must again face the threat of Lady X as well as deal with racial tensions within the squadron itself.
Danny and his wingmen discover a Mafia-run opium
plantation in the Bornean
nation of North Sarrawak. With the United States politically unable to act, the admiral in charge of the carrier group defies the Pentagon's orders and decides to take down the operation himself.
NATO is being blackmailed by the International Front of Armed Revolutionary Groups, a red terrorist organization which has stolen a nuclear weapon and two F-14s from the U.S. military. Danny, Tumbler and Tuckson must locate the terrorists' base in the Caribbean before the Front can use the weapon on an upcoming UN summit.
Two stand-alone novels, heavily influenced by international developments in the last few years of the Cold War. In the first, Danny is sent to Nellis
to take charge of a defecting MiG-29 pilot. In the second, he is sent to visit the Soviet Union's newest aircraft carrier and finds himself swept up in a web of perestroika politics; some parties want him eliminated, while others want to use him for their own ends.
One stand-alone novel and one story arc. In the former, Danny commands an off-the-books fighter unit in Yugoslavia. In the latter, they are sent to train fighter pilots in Central America making a transition from F-104 to F-18. There they find themselves facing a powerful drug cartel which plans to take control of several Central American nations... with a little help from Lady X.
Three stand-alone novels. In the first, Danny and his wingmen help recover an American pilot shot down over North Korea. In the second, they are sent to test the new F-22's performance, which has recently been hindered by several sabotage actions. In the third, they locate a flight of unidentified aircraft over the Antarctic, and are sent to investigate.
Cinebook has started publishing the series with the album Night of the Serpent (La Nuit du serpent) released in April 2009 ISBN 9781905460854 . A second book The Secrets of the Black Sea (Les Secrets de la mer noire) was released in February 2010 ISBN 9781849180184.
Franco-Belgian comics
Franco-Belgian comics are comics that are created in Belgium and France. These countries have a long tradition in comics and comic books, where they are known as BDs, an abbreviation of bande dessinée in French and stripverhalen in Dutch...
series about a military flying ace and his two sidekick
Sidekick
A sidekick is a close companion who is generally regarded as subordinate to the one he accompanies. Some well-known fictional sidekicks are Don Quixote's Sancho Panza, Sherlock Holmes' Doctor Watson, The Lone Ranger's Tonto, The Green Hornet's Kato and Batman's Robin.-Origins:The origin of the...
s serving (depending on the plots) in the United States Navy
United States Navy
The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...
or the United States Air Force
United States Air Force
The United States Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the American uniformed services. Initially part of the United States Army, the USAF was formed as a separate branch of the military on September 18, 1947 under the National Security Act of...
. The series is noted for its realism both in the drawings and the descriptions of air force procedures as part of the storyline. In particular the aircraft depicted are extremely accurate. Mixing historical references with fiction, Buck Danny is one of the most important 'classic' Franco-Belgian comic strips. Starting in 1947, the first albums were set against the backdrop of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, but from 1954 onwards, the series started to play in 'the present' and has so ever since. Like this, the series reads as a chronology of military aviation as well as the events that were catching people's imagination at the time of publishing, ranging from the Korean war
Korean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...
, the cold war
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
, UFO's international terrorism and drug running, the space race
Space Race
The Space Race was a mid-to-late 20th century competition between the Soviet Union and the United States for supremacy in space exploration. Between 1957 and 1975, Cold War rivalry between the two nations focused on attaining firsts in space exploration, which were seen as necessary for national...
, rogue atomic bombs, the collapse of the Soviet bloc and recently the conflicts in Sarajevo
Sarajevo
Sarajevo |Bosnia]], surrounded by the Dinaric Alps and situated along the Miljacka River in the heart of Southeastern Europe and the Balkans....
and Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
.
True to the Franco-Belgian tradition
Franco-Belgian comics
Franco-Belgian comics are comics that are created in Belgium and France. These countries have a long tradition in comics and comic books, where they are known as BDs, an abbreviation of bande dessinée in French and stripverhalen in Dutch...
the adventures are first published as a series in a weekly comic book magazine. After a complete story has run its course, it is bundled and published as a book. In the case of Buck Danny, the story appeared in Spirou
Spirou (magazine)
Spirou magazine is a weekly Belgian comics magazine published by the Dupuis company...
magazine in weekly installments of one page per issue and from 1947 to 2008, 52 albums have been published by Spirou's parent company Dupuis editions
Dupuis
Éditions Dupuis S.A. is a Belgian publisher of comic books and magazines.Based in Marcinelle near Charleroi, Dupuis was founded in 1922 by Jean Dupuis, and is mostly famous for its comic albums and magazines. It is originally a French language publisher, but publishes many editions both in French...
. All are still in print today.
From 1947 to 1979, the first 40 albums were a collaboration between writer Jean-Michel Charlier
Jean-Michel Charlier
Jean-Michel Charlier was a Belgian script writer best known as a writer of realistic European comics. He was a co-founder of the famed European comics magazine Pilote.-Biography:...
and draughtsman Victor Hubinon
Victor Hubinon
Victor Hubinon was a Belgian comic-book artist, best known for the series Buck Danny and Redbeard.-Biography:...
. After the death of the latter in 1979, the series took a hiatus of 4 years before Charlier continued for 4 more albums with draughtsman Francis Bergèse. After Charlier's death in 1989, Bergèse tried one album with a scenario by Jacques de Douhet before writing his own stories. After 1996, 7 more stories appeared, combining realistic penmanship with continuously complex scenarios.
Bergèse announced his retirement after the publication of album 52 and since 2008, no new material has appeared. Officially however, the series is not 'dead' but simply on hiatus while the production company is looking for a new draughtsman and writer. Recently (May 2010) it was announced that Dupuis commissioned writer Frédéric Zumbiehl and draftsman Fabrice Lamy to continue the Buck Danny franchise. If successful, this would be the third artist and fourth scenarist for the series. With most of the Franco-Belgian comics
Franco-Belgian comics
Franco-Belgian comics are comics that are created in Belgium and France. These countries have a long tradition in comics and comic books, where they are known as BDs, an abbreviation of bande dessinée in French and stripverhalen in Dutch...
belonging to strictly one team and dying with the departure of either draughtsman or writer, this is a tribute to the importance of the series and the place Buck Danny has taken in popular culture for 50 years and running.
Synopsis
The comic series follows the exploits of the American military aviator Buck Danny over a period of time from the Japanese attack on Pearl HarborAttack on Pearl Harbor
The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike conducted by the Imperial Japanese Navy against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on the morning of December 7, 1941...
up to the current day. Although the first two adventures starred Danny alone, in the third album he met up with his sidekicks Jerry 'Tumb' Tumbler and Sonny Tuckson and from there on all subsequent adventures were done as a trio.
When the first stories started appearing in 1947, their themes—the Battle of the Coral Sea
Battle of the Coral Sea
The Battle of the Coral Sea, fought from 4–8 May 1942, was a major naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II between the Imperial Japanese Navy and Allied naval and air forces from the United States and Australia. The battle was the first fleet action in which aircraft carriers engaged...
, the Battle of Midway
Battle of Midway
The Battle of Midway is widely regarded as the most important naval battle of the Pacific Campaign of World War II. Between 4 and 7 June 1942, approximately one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea and six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States Navy decisively defeated...
and General Chennault
Claire Lee Chennault
Lieutenant General Claire Lee Chennault , was an American military aviator. A contentious officer, he was a fierce advocate of "pursuit" or fight-interceptor aircraft during the 1930s when the U.S. Army Air Corps was focused primarily on high-altitude bombardment...
's Flying Tigers
Flying Tigers
The 1st American Volunteer Group of the Chinese Air Force in 1941–1942, famously nicknamed the Flying Tigers, was composed of pilots from the United States Army , Navy , and Marine Corps , recruited under presidential sanction and commanded by Claire Lee Chennault. The ground crew and headquarters...
—were recent history, but after 9 albums, the series caught up with current times and from then on the adventures always played in 'the present'. Since then, the series consists of a chronological string of adventures: In the 10th album, which is something like a watershed for the series, the trio become test pilots and at the end of the album re-enlist into the U.S. Air Force
United States Air Force
The United States Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the American uniformed services. Initially part of the United States Army, the USAF was formed as a separate branch of the military on September 18, 1947 under the National Security Act of...
. The Air Force promptly sends them to the Korean war
Korean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...
where the trio battles spies and unmanned aircraft. After that they are somehow transferred to the Navy
United States Navy
The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...
and for the next 55 years they will serve on the latest supercarriers, fly the latest jets and helicopters and witness the latest progress in aviation firsthand. Flying a SBD Dauntless on his first mission, Buck Danny has flown Sabres in Korea, Grumman Panthers, Cougars, Tigers and F14 Tomcats for the Navy. In his latest albums, under stewardship of Francis Bergèse, Buck Danny and his team fly the F-18 for the navy, but simultaneously serve as test pilots for the Air force's F-22 program.
Besides flying for the Navy and helping out the Air Force, several adventures feature Buck and his friends as test pilots for NASA
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
, for instance flying the X-15 rocket-plane or finding rogue transmitters interfering with rocket testing at Cape Kennedy. In addition the trio regularly changes into civilian clothes to work directly for the U.S. government, posing as charter pilots, flight instructors or mercenaries to investigate, uncover and finally thwart, criminal activities all over the world.
Realism has always been a trademark of Buck Danny, especially when it comes to depicting the aircraft and the procedures and jargon
Jargon
Jargon is terminology which is especially defined in relationship to a specific activity, profession, group, or event. The philosophe Condillac observed in 1782 that "Every science requires a special language because every science has its own ideas." As a rationalist member of the Enlightenment he...
used by the air force. Often, despite the heroics of Danny, Tumbler or Tuckson, the aircraft and carriers drawn are the real heroes. Helping with this is the fact that, contrary to American comic magazines, Belgian magazines were letter-sized like regular news magazines (technically they were in A4 paper format). Consequently the resulting albums are letter-sized hard- or softcovers as well, considerably larger than American comics or Japanese Manga
Manga
Manga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...
. Also they are printed on top-quality paper rather than pulp
Pulp magazine
Pulp magazines , also collectively known as pulp fiction, refers to inexpensive fiction magazines published from 1896 through the 1950s. The typical pulp magazine was seven inches wide by ten inches high, half an inch thick, and 128 pages long...
. All this gives the artist more opportunity to add detail to his drawings.
Realism also is reflected in the grim atmosphere of the books. Especially the cold war
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
albums are slowly built-up mysteries where the heroes are constantly under the treat of attack by an unseen enemy. Sabotage
Sabotage
Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening another entity through subversion, obstruction, disruption, or destruction. In a workplace setting, sabotage is the conscious withdrawal of efficiency generally directed at causing some change in workplace conditions. One who engages in sabotage is...
, often with deadly results is a common feature in more than one album and several supporting characters are shot, ambushed, blown up by booby-traps or otherwise die violent deaths. Often Buck and his team mates escape more by luck then by their own cunning and the feeling that they could have died lingers deep through the following pages.
The realism of the stories playing in the present even goes so far that there are over the 53 stories no prequels nor flashback nor secrets from Buck's past as a plot device. Each new stories follows the other chronologically, although some time may have elapsed between one adventure and another. An exception to that are a couple of short stories drawn by Francis Bergèse included in the large collection books, but not distributed in the official list of albums.
As is traditional in the Franco-Belgian comic business
Franco-Belgian comics
Franco-Belgian comics are comics that are created in Belgium and France. These countries have a long tradition in comics and comic books, where they are known as BDs, an abbreviation of bande dessinée in French and stripverhalen in Dutch...
, the size of a published comic book is limited to 40-45 pages. Adventures that run longer are either distributed as 40-page chapters of a saga or designed to form independent stories within a longer arc. In the case of Buck Danny, 52 albums form 30 distinct stories: 15 albums are stand-alone adventures, 11 stories are spread out over two albums, 4 stories even use 3 albums. However, especially after the 10th album, the albums of a multi-story arc are laid out as closed chapters with a distinctive ending point, often a cliffhanger
Cliffhanger
A cliffhanger or cliffhanger ending is a plot device in fiction which features a main character in a precarious or difficult dilemma, or confronted with a shocking revelation at the end of an episode of serialized fiction...
at the end of the album and a short recap at the beginning of the next album.
The History of the Pacific War: 1947-1948
Shortly after the end of World War II, BrusselsBrussels
Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...
was for a few years the hotbed of the emerging comic industry. As such editor Georges Troisfontaines
Georges Troisfontaines
Georges Troisfontaines was the founder of the World Press agency, and one of the co-authors of the series Buck Danny.After his first work for the comics magazine Spirou before WWII, in which he published strips in relation to aviation, he created in the 1940s the World Press agency...
owned an agency called 'World Press' which he modeled after the American comic strip syndicates. Part of his staff were the draughtsman Victor Hubinon
Victor Hubinon
Victor Hubinon was a Belgian comic-book artist, best known for the series Buck Danny and Redbeard.-Biography:...
and Jean-Michel Charlier
Jean-Michel Charlier
Jean-Michel Charlier was a Belgian script writer best known as a writer of realistic European comics. He was a co-founder of the famed European comics magazine Pilote.-Biography:...
, who quickly became a talented writer. Soon, Troisfontaines proposed that the two work together. They first collaborated on L'Agonie du Bismark
German battleship Bismarck
Bismarck was the first of two s built for the German Kriegsmarine during World War II. Named after Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, the primary force behind the German unification in 1871, the ship was laid down at the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg in July 1936 and launched nearly three years later...
(The Agony of the Bismark), a war account serialized in Spirou
Spirou (magazine)
Spirou magazine is a weekly Belgian comics magazine published by the Dupuis company...
in 1946.
Seeing the success of American pilot strips, Troisfontaines suggested to Hubinon and Charlier that they should produce a series about an American pilot just as well and even came up with the name Buck Danny. Keeping in line with their war account stories, the two came up with a semi-historical account of a young engineer working in Hawaii
Hawaii
Hawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states , and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of...
at the beginning of the war. Firsthand witnessing the Attack on Pearl Harbor
Attack on Pearl Harbor
The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike conducted by the Imperial Japanese Navy against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on the morning of December 7, 1941...
, Buck Danny enlists in the Navy
United States Navy
The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...
as a pilot and has a series of adventures serving on the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown
USS Yorktown (CV-5)
was an aircraft carrier commissioned in the United States Navy from 1937 until she was sunk at the Battle of Midway in June 1942. She was named after the Battle of Yorktown in 1781 and the lead ship of the Yorktown class which was designed after lessons learned from operations with the large...
against the backdrop of the Battle of the Coral Sea
Battle of the Coral Sea
The Battle of the Coral Sea, fought from 4–8 May 1942, was a major naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II between the Imperial Japanese Navy and Allied naval and air forces from the United States and Australia. The battle was the first fleet action in which aircraft carriers engaged...
. The story was serialized in weekly installments in Spirou
Spirou (magazine)
Spirou magazine is a weekly Belgian comics magazine published by the Dupuis company...
from January 2, 1947 onwards. After the story ran its course, it was gathered and published in book form in 1948. By that time Hubinon and Charlier were already working on a second part, keeping the same formula but this time having Buck Danny live through his adventures against the Battle of Midway
Battle of Midway
The Battle of Midway is widely regarded as the most important naval battle of the Pacific Campaign of World War II. Between 4 and 7 June 1942, approximately one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea and six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States Navy decisively defeated...
.
The storyline of these two albums consists of a string of smaller adventures of Buck Danny as a pilot and the real life events of the Battle of the Coral Sea
Battle of the Coral Sea
The Battle of the Coral Sea, fought from 4–8 May 1942, was a major naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II between the Imperial Japanese Navy and Allied naval and air forces from the United States and Australia. The battle was the first fleet action in which aircraft carriers engaged...
and the Battle of Midway
Battle of Midway
The Battle of Midway is widely regarded as the most important naval battle of the Pacific Campaign of World War II. Between 4 and 7 June 1942, approximately one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea and six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States Navy decisively defeated...
. In the fictionalized adventures, Buck Danny flies attack missions, engages in dogfights, gets shot down, escapes, returns to his carrier in a stolen Japanese plane and even rescues a hostage. At the end of each album, Buck Danny takes a back seat as his carrier readies for battle and in the description of the historical battle, individual historical pilots, commanders and raids are described in detail. As to the artwork, the pages are laid out classically in 4 'strips' of 3 to 4 panels each, although on occasion, two strips combine to a large shot. Panels often include inserts describing aircraft, carrier procedures, historical figures or maps of the area.
Two years is an incredibly short span to draw two 40-page albums and so, although officially the series was owned by Victor Hubinon and Jean-Michel Charlier
Jean-Michel Charlier
Jean-Michel Charlier was a Belgian script writer best known as a writer of realistic European comics. He was a co-founder of the famed European comics magazine Pilote.-Biography:...
, everyone at 'World Press' contributed to the albums in various degrees. As a consequence, the artwork is sometimes sketchy and the realism, especially in the aircraft depicted is certainly not up to par with later albums.
While working on the first Buck Danny albums, they also produced Tarawa Atoll Sanglant ('Tarawa, Bloody Atoll'), a historical account published in Belgium from the end of 1948 to the end of 1949 in the bi-weekly magazine Moustique. Like the Bismark account, this story retells the Battle of Tarawa
Battle of Tarawa
The Battle of Tarawa, code named Operation Galvanic, was a battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II, largely fought from November 20 to November 23, 1943. It was the first American offensive in the critical central Pacific region....
in the Pacific Campaign. (The story was reprinted in Spirou in 1980 and subsequently republished in two 40-page books as a part of the Buck Danny series.)
Flying tigers and desert pirates: 1950-1953
The series took a next step in 1950 with the publication of La revanche des fils du ciel (The Revenge of the Sons of Heaven) in which Buck Danny is sent to China to become a commander for the Flying TigersFlying Tigers
The 1st American Volunteer Group of the Chinese Air Force in 1941–1942, famously nicknamed the Flying Tigers, was composed of pilots from the United States Army , Navy , and Marine Corps , recruited under presidential sanction and commanded by Claire Lee Chennault. The ground crew and headquarters...
. In China Buck meets up with his teammates Tumbler and Tuckson and by the end of the first Chinese adventure, the three become an inseparable team.
During 1951 and 1952, three more adventures follow in which Buck and his companions team up with Susan Holmes, an army nurse who'd previously had a small role in one of the adventures of the Midway album. During a Japanese attack on their city, the trio and Holmes are separated from their base and over the next albums they are chased all through Asia by the traitor Mo Choung Young on behalf of a semi-fictional Black Dragon Society
Black Dragon Society
The was a prominent paramilitary, ultranationalist right-wing group in Japan.-History:The Kokuryūkai was founded in 1901 by Uchida Ryohei, and was descended from the Genyōsha. Its name is derived from the Amur River, called Heilongjiang or "Black Dragon River" in Chinese , read as Kokuryū-kō in...
(which owes more to American pulp fiction than to historical accuracy).
Again in 1952 and 1953, three more adventures followed. The war having ended, Danny, Tumbler and Tuckson reunite and go to fly for a dubious airline in the Near East
Near East
The Near East is a geographical term that covers different countries for geographers, archeologists, and historians, on the one hand, and for political scientists, economists, and journalists, on the other...
. Quickly they are involved in a hornets' nest of gun-runners, opium smugglers and palace revolutions. (For a more detailed description of this story arc, see Pilots Demobilized (Buck Danny)
Pilots Demobilized (Buck Danny)
Pilots Demobilized is the third story arc in the Franco-Belgian Buck Danny comic book series, by Jean-Michel Charlier and Victor Hubinon.- Publication history :...
.)
Although playing in completely different times and countries, the 'Black Dragon' and 'Desert Pirates' cycles are unique in that they no longer have a historic event as an anchor and instead focus on a series of adventures, often having nothing to do with flying at all. The adventures follow the yarn of a classic U.S. adventure comic of that time and similarities with the adventures of Steve Canyon
Steve Canyon
Steve Canyon was a long-running American adventure comic strip by writer-artist Milton Caniff. Launched shortly after Caniff retired from his previous strip, Terry and the Pirates, Steve Canyon ran from January 13, 1947 until June 4, 1988, shortly after Caniff's death...
abound. This becomes obvious in the character of Susan Holmes who tagged along in the entire 'Asian' adventure just so she could be the stereotypical Damsel in Distress
Damsel in distress
The subject of the damsel in distress, or persecuted maiden, is a classic theme in world literature, art, and film. She is usually a beautiful young woman placed in a dire predicament by a villain or monster and who requires a hero to achieve her rescue. She has become a stock character of fiction,...
, having to be rescued again and again. Although the 'Demobilized' story arc featured more flying, readers were still unsatisfied with the story and demanded more aircraft and less scheming villains.
The two story arcs were drawn at a very rapid pace, seven albums in barely four years, and the level of detail is far less than in the later albums. Especially the secondary characters sometimes appear sketchy and unfinished. Yet, inconsistencies in the storylines and drawings are kept to a minimum. Improbable plot twists do however occur more than once and it is clear that the series were not only drawn, but also written week by week with little thought to layout in books and chapters, but rather as a series of adventurous situations.
The Cold War by Hubinon and Charlier 1954-1979
Still in 1953, Buck Danny returned to flying in his 10th album Pilotes d'essai (Test Pilots). Here the trio returns to the States and promptly re-enlists as test pilots for the air force. This album is buzzing with aircraft and flying feats and apparently here Charlier and Hubinon found their winning formula because at the end of the album the trio is placed back on active duty and promptly sent to fight the war in KoreaKorea
Korea ) is an East Asian geographic region that is currently divided into two separate sovereign states — North Korea and South Korea. Located on the Korean Peninsula, Korea is bordered by the People's Republic of China to the northwest, Russia to the northeast, and is separated from Japan to the...
. The Korean adventure only lasted two albums, both written in 1954, but the next year, Buck Danny was back again, this time transferred back to the Navy
United States Navy
The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...
and serving as squadron commander on an aircraft carrier.
From there on the series would continue to play in 'the present' and Danny would continue to serve in the navy for the next 25 years and 26 albums. Keeping with the latest technology, Danny (and his friends Tumbler and Tuckson) would serve on the latest aircraft carriers and fly the latest Navy jet fighters and from here on aircraft carriers and navy jets would play an important part in the adventures.
Although the Korean War
Korean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...
is explicitly used as a setting in the 1954 albums, Buck Danny would not participate in any more real war or conflict until Francis Bergèse took over the scenarios. Instead many of the adventures played either on the open sea or on U.S. soil. When the action takes Buck Danny and his team abroad, the adventures either play in an unnamed country, or in a fictitious state as the South Asia
South Asia
South Asia, also known as Southern Asia, is the southern region of the Asian continent, which comprises the sub-Himalayan countries and, for some authorities , also includes the adjoining countries to the west and the east...
n countries of 'Viet-Tan' and 'Malakka' or the Central America
Central America
Central America is the central geographic region of the Americas. It is the southernmost, isthmian portion of the North American continent, which connects with South America on the southeast. When considered part of the unified continental model, it is considered a subcontinent...
n dictator state of 'Mantegua'
Similarly, although playing in the midst of the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
after Korea, Buck Danny never directly engaged either the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
nor any of the Eastern Bloc
Eastern bloc
The term Eastern Bloc or Communist Bloc refers to the former communist states of Eastern and Central Europe, generally the Soviet Union and the countries of the Warsaw Pact...
states. Charlier rightly felt that his readers wanted their hero in far-away adventurous-sounding places, not their own backyard. Buck Danny never battled the Soviet Bloc military either: the adversaries of the Cold War Years were invariably criminal organizations, most of them employing or headed by Lady X. Even the occasional spy rings that appear do not steal military secrets out of duty or ideology; their aim is invariably to sell them to the highest bidder. When (usually fictional) foreign countries are involved, they are either headed by megalomaniacal small-time dictators, or by a puppet government installed to give credibility to the pirates or drug lords financing them.
The pace of the series was still furious (30 albums in 25 years) and could only be achieved by continuously turning out one page a week year round. On top of that, from 1959 to 1979, Hubinon and Charlier also made the pirate strip Barbe Rouge ('Redbeard') for the new French magazine Pilote
Pilote
thumb|Cover of the first Pilote teaser issue, #0.Pilote was a French comics periodical published from 1959 to 1989. Showcasing most of the major French or Belgian comics talents of its day the magazine introduced major series such as Astérix le Gaulois, Blueberry, Achille Talon, and Valérian et...
. The workload was enormous, especially for Hubinon, who did all the drawing. Still, the albums quickly came to display the high level of realism that would be a trademark of the series ever since. And somehow Hubinon still found time to write and draw stories on his own. Just before his death, he published one album of the pirate series La Mouette (The Seagull) which he both drew and scripted.
In terms of layout, one page still consisted of four strips of panels, but the ordening of the panels became more loose. Actually, the layout was that of two half-pages. In most cases, each half-page would display two strips of equal size, but variations in strip height were possible and wide-shots taking up the whole half-page were not unheard of. The occasional 'instructional' panel with aircraft stats disappeared, but maps or schematics still showed up from time to time.
Victor Hubinon died in 1979, shortly after finishing album 39 and for several years it looked as if with the death of the draughtsman, after 32 years, the series had ended for good.
Charlier and Bergèse, 1982-1989
On January 8, 1979, while working on his second book for 'La Mouette' Victor Hubinon died at his drawing table following a heart attack. In the Franco Belgian comic sceneFranco-Belgian comics
Franco-Belgian comics are comics that are created in Belgium and France. These countries have a long tradition in comics and comic books, where they are known as BDs, an abbreviation of bande dessinée in French and stripverhalen in Dutch...
a series only has one artist and one writer and almost invariably the departure of one of them means the end of the series. Also a lucky break was that the last Buck Danny album was also the finishing album of a three-part story arc. Thus, there were no loose ends left and no half-finished stories to take care of. Jean-Michel Charlier
Jean-Michel Charlier
Jean-Michel Charlier was a Belgian script writer best known as a writer of realistic European comics. He was a co-founder of the famed European comics magazine Pilote.-Biography:...
instead devoted his time to finishing his and Hubinon's other big series, Redbeard, which he continued with jijé
Jijé
Jijé was a Belgian comics artist, best known for being a seminal artist on the Spirou et Fantasio strip and the creator of one of the first major European western strips, Jerry Spring.-Biography:Born Joseph Gillain in Gedinne, Namur, he completed various art studies Jijé (13 January 1914 – 20...
as artist.
However Jijé himself died in 1980 and Charlier openly declared that he would end the series Redbeard as he knew no one with the skills of Jijé and Hubinon to do the series justice. This however only made him more determined to look for a draughtsman to take over Buck Danny. He finally found an artist in the person of Francis Bergèse, who had previously drawn a string of aircraft-related strips with mixed success and openly admitted he started drawing comics because he grew up reading Buck Danny. Furthermore, Bergèse could imitate Hubinon's drawing style almost perfectly.
So in 1982, after almost 4 years of inactivity, Buck Danny returned with an ambitious 3-album story: Mission Apocalypse,Les Pilotes de l'enfer and Le Feu du ciel, ( Translated and published in English by Amusement Int (USA) in 1988 as 'Mission Apocalypse', 'The Pilots from Hell' and 'Fire from the sky'). (These albums are discussed more deeply in a separate Wikipedia article Nuclear Alert (Buck Danny)
Nuclear Alert (Buck Danny)
Nuclear Alert is the thirteenth story arc in Buck Danny, a Franco-Belgian comic book series by Jean-Michel Charlier and Francis Bergèse.- Publication history :...
). Drawing the albums took 4 years with the last album only appearing in 1986. However, this slower pace only enabled Bergese to make his drawings more detailed and his work is au par with that of Hubinon in every aspect.
Bergèse and Charlier made one more album, Les Agresseurs (the Aggressors
65th Aggressor Squadron
The 65th Aggressor Squadron ' is a United States Air Force unit. It is assigned to the 57th Adversary Tactics Group and stationed at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada.-Overview:...
) in 1988 and started work on another two-album story afterwards. It looked like with his new artist, Buck Danny was back and up to speed again when on July 10, 1989 Charlier himself died. At that time, Bergese had drawn the first 16 pages of what would have been Buck Danny's 45th album, Les Oiseaux noire, (the blackbirds). Although Charlier left behind scenario directions for all but the last pages of this book, it was decided that, with no clue on the second album and the conclusion of the story, work on Buck Danny would be stopped, this time for good. The 16-pages already drawn and Charlier's directions surviving directions for the next pages have since appeared in a number of specials, but are no part of the official Buck Danny canon
Canon (fiction)
In the context of a work of fiction, the term canon denotes the material accepted as "official" in a fictional universe's fan base. It is often contrasted with, or used as the basis for, works of fan fiction, which are not considered canonical...
.
As to graphics, the 4 1/2 albums of the Bergèse-Charlier team fit in seamlessly with the earlier albums drawn by Hubinon. As a draughtsman, Bergèse copied Hubinon's style perfectly and the ships and planes drawn radiate the same level of technical realism. Bergèse even stayed true to the layout of the pages in four strips with the occasional half-page wide shot
Long shot
In photography, filmmaking and video production, a long shot typically shows the entire object or human figure and is usually intended to place it in some relation to its surroundings...
. The only difference is that with Hubinon the characters could sometimes come over as wooden or stiff where as Bergese's persons seem more lifelike. Especially their clothes seem to fit them more loosely and display an occasional wrinkle.
In terms of plot, the albums follow the typical cold war Buck Danny layout of either a mysterious criminal organization threatening world peace (in the Mission Apocalypse albums a terrorist organization steals two nuclear bombs to wipe out a summit of world leaders), international espionage aimed at America's military secrets (in the Agressors a Russian defector may not be what he seems to be) and cold war U.S. air power (in the blackbirds Buck is assigned a covert mission on a U-2 spyplane).
There are changes however: Although the first scenes of Operation Apocalypse still play in the fictional Central-American state of Mantegua, for the rest of the stories, cities and nations are openly called by name: The two stolen F14 fighters are flown by renegade pilots from Iran hired by Lady X, the peace summit the terrorists want to bomb is in Cancun
Cancún
Cancún is a city of international tourism development certified by the UNWTO . Located on the northeast coast of Quintana Roo in southern Mexico, more than 1,700 km from Mexico City, the Project began operations in 1974 as Integrally Planned Center, a pioneer of FONATUR Cancún is a city of...
, Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
and when marooned on a Caribbean islet, Buck and Sony are rescued by a destroyer that is openly Cuban. (With Hubinon, the ship would be from a fictional Caribbean state). Furthermore, where in earlier albums, 'terrorists' were solely motivated by greed or revenge, the terrorists of the 'Apocalypse' story have a distinct left wing radical ideology reminiscent of the Baader Meinhoff or Red Brigade groups. Also, where former albums just make allusions to 'Washington; or 'the President', here an accurately drawn President Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
is addressed by name as he gives out orders firsthand.
The new realism continues in the next albums: In the Agressors, for the first time in his career, Buck Danny openly enters a dogfight with a Russian fighter plane... and gets outmaneuvered. Later the pilot of that plane resurfaces as a defector and becomes Buck Danny's teammate while training for the Air Force's Aggressor Squadron
Aggressor squadron
An aggressor squadron or adversary squadron is a squadron that is trained to act as an opposing force in military wargames. Aggressor squadrons use enemy tactics, techniques, and procedures to give a realistic simulation of air combat...
. He turns out to be a double agent in a plot orchestrated no longer by a group of criminals but by the KGB
KGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
itself. In the Blackbirds it is openly stated that the target of Buck Danny's spy mission is a nuclear facility near Vladivostok. All in all, with the 'new' Buck Danny scenarist Charlier now displays a level of directness that would have been unthinkable in previous albums.
After Charlier: Bergèse and De Douhet, 1996
When Charlier died in 1989, the series lost not only its author, but also the last person of its original team and it seemed certain that with both Charlier and Hubinon, Buck Danny had died as well. Francis Bergèse was still around, but as good as he was an illustrator, he was no writer, especially not of the skill level expected for the Buck Danny series.By now however, at the age of 48 Bergèse had found his calling in drawing aviation comics, so in 1990 for tintin he took on a comic book adaptation of 'that other famous aviation ace' Biggles
Biggles
"Biggles" , a pilot and adventurer, is the title character and main hero of the Biggles series of youth-oriented adventure books written by W. E. Johns....
. At that time, the 'Biggles' adventure books by W. E. Johns
W. E. Johns
William Earl Johns was an English pilot and writer of adventure stories, usually written under the name Captain W. E. Johns. He is best remembered as the creator of the ace pilot and adventurer Biggles.-Early life:...
were well known in Belgium and France, but as Johns had died in 1968, no new material meant no younger fans.
For Bergèse, the new strip meant a complete departure from his Buck Danny work. for starters, there was the artwork: The series playing during and shortly after World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
with a British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
flying ace as a hero, the aircraft of his choice now were Spitfires
Supermarine Spitfire
The Supermarine Spitfire is a British single-seat fighter aircraft that was used by the Royal Air Force and many other Allied countries throughout the Second World War. The Spitfire continued to be used as a front line fighter and in secondary roles into the 1950s...
painted in colorful green and brown camouflage schemes compared to the dull namy blue and navy gray of the Buck Danny aircraft. Eventually, Bergèse played into this by painting the whole artwork in more vibrant, almost aquarel-like colors, giving the panels a look and feel reminiscent of early 1940s color photographs
Color photography
Color photography is photography that uses media capable of representing colors, which are traditionally produced chemically during the photographic processing phase...
.
More importantly, as the series was based on a series of books written on average 45 years ago, there were no detailed instructions on panel-to-panel layout like the ones Charlier provided for the Buck Danny albums. Bergèse had to do most of the writing himself, starting with the selection of suitable adventures up to the page-by-page layout. As a result, with every album, Bergèse became more and more skilled as a scenarist himself.
By that time however Dupuis
Dupuis
Éditions Dupuis S.A. is a Belgian publisher of comic books and magazines.Based in Marcinelle near Charleroi, Dupuis was founded in 1922 by Jean Dupuis, and is mostly famous for its comic albums and magazines. It is originally a French language publisher, but publishes many editions both in French...
was yearning to remake the commercial success of Buck Danny, and so in 1995, through intermediary of Charlier's son Philippe, the documentary maker Jacques de Douhet was asked to supply some outlines for a possible Buck Danny scenario. One of the ideas caught on and so in 1995, Dupuis asked Bergese back and he and de Douhet teamed up for Buck Danny album number 45: Les Secrets de la Mer Noire (The secrets of the Black Sea).
The album is at the same time a complete departure from the Charlier-Hubinon series as well as a logical development of their work: Playing in the new political realities of the 1990s, in particular the collapse of the Warsaw Pact
Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Treaty Organization of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance , or more commonly referred to as the Warsaw Pact, was a mutual defense treaty subscribed to by eight communist states in Eastern Europe...
and the fall of the Iron curtain
Iron Curtain
The concept of the Iron Curtain symbolized the ideological fighting and physical boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1989...
: Set in 1991, after Buck Danny 'looses' his aircraft carrier in a war game
War Game
War Game or War Games refer normally to: wargaming, a recreational game that simulates a military operation. It can also be a:* Military exercise* Military simulation, live or computer warfare simulations to develop real-world military strategies...
exercise, he is sent on a diplomatic mission to be an observer on the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
's latest aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov and arrives there just in time to be a pawn in the attempted 1991 August Coup.
For the artwork, Bergèse immediately took over from where he had left of in 1989 and comparing the new album 45 with album 44, it is hard to tell the difference. There are however subtle details such as the air battle over the Ukraine, which plays out against the backdrop of a deep blue night sky illuminated by a full moon. This poetic accent makes the battle appear almost dreamlike, something more fit for the Biggles albums then for Hubinon's hard technical edge. There is enough technical detail however in the realistic depiction of the various Soviet aircraft, helicopters and ships, especially the Kuznetsov and the A-90 Orlyonok
A-90 Orlyonok
-External links:* * * * * *...
ekranoplan which plays a key role in the later part of the adventure. Whereas the images are a delight, the story itself has its problems: Although it starts off with a bang and has several tong-in-cheek references to the 'classic' Buck Danny adventures (Buck's wingman on the Kuznetsov is a Volga German named Tumbler who later turns out to be a traitor), the story fizzles toward the end. Various secondary personages and side plots are introduced in the first part only to be forgotten later on and after Buck Danny is saved, the final conclusion of the big event, the August 1991 coup is only mentioned in one panel.
Nevertheless, the 'new' Buck Danny series had his potentials, and expectations were high for a second de Douhet/Bergèse album, a synopsis
Synopsis
A synopsis is a brief summary of the major points of a written work, either as prose or as a table; an abridgment or condensation of a work.-See also:*Synopsys, an electronic design automation company based in Mountain View, California...
for which was already written. However in 1996, de Douhet announced that he would retire from comic book writing for 'personal reasons' and once again Buck Danny was without an author.
De Douhet died on August 19, 2009.
Francis Bergèse, 1996-2008
In 1996, the series was back where it was in 1989: A good formula, a superb artist, but no writer. However, whereas in 1989 Francis Bergèse clearly lacked the knowledge to produce a script that would live up to Charlier's standard, he since gained experience as a writer working on the Biggles albums.Bergèse only made three Biggles comic books from 1990 until 1993, when he started working on Buck Danny again. All three were adaptations of the Biggles
Biggles
"Biggles" , a pilot and adventurer, is the title character and main hero of the Biggles series of youth-oriented adventure books written by W. E. Johns....
adventures written by W. E. Johns
W. E. Johns
William Earl Johns was an English pilot and writer of adventure stories, usually written under the name Captain W. E. Johns. He is best remembered as the creator of the ace pilot and adventurer Biggles.-Early life:...
between 1932 and 1968, slavishly following the plot of the books. This even went so far that in the second album The Pirates of the South Pole Bergèse wrote a foreword where he appopogized for having to draw polar bear
Polar Bear
The polar bear is a bear native largely within the Arctic Circle encompassing the Arctic Ocean, its surrounding seas and surrounding land masses. It is the world's largest land carnivore and also the largest bear, together with the omnivorous Kodiak Bear, which is approximately the same size...
s in the Antarctic because the original book mentioned them. In 1994 however, while Bergèse was working on Buck Danny, Lombard
Le Lombard
Le Lombard or Lombard Editions is a Belgian comic book publisher established in 1946 when the Tintin magazine was launched. In 1986 the company was acquired by Média-Participations.-Titles:Lombard's more famous series include:*Clifton...
gave the series to author Michel Oleffe and draughtsman Eric Loutte. In a radical departure to the series Oleffe produced The Flight of the Wallenstein, an adventure written entirely by himself, without any reference to W.E.Johns, other than the names of the characters.
After Buck Danny no.45, Bergèse returned to Biggles for two more albums: Squadron Biggles was a collection of short stories reaped from different books of W.E. Johns, for The Last Zeppelin he wrote his own scenario keeping the original characters. As the album So when de Douhet departed as a writer for Buck Danny, Bergèse felt that he was ready to take over the writing part as well as the drawing and in 1996 he returned to Dupuis
Dupuis
Éditions Dupuis S.A. is a Belgian publisher of comic books and magazines.Based in Marcinelle near Charleroi, Dupuis was founded in 1922 by Jean Dupuis, and is mostly famous for its comic albums and magazines. It is originally a French language publisher, but publishes many editions both in French...
to draw and write Buck Danny no.46
(The Biggles series continued with Michel Oleffe as writer and Eric Loutte (sometimes also Frank Leclercq) as artist. It is still running with the release of album No. 14 in 2010)
As between 1989 and 1994, by 1996 the world had changed again and so Buck Danny's next album L'escadrille fantôme / Ghost Squadron plays against the backdrop of the Bosnian War
Bosnian War
The Bosnian War or the War in Bosnia and Herzegovina was an international armed conflict that took place in Bosnia and Herzegovina between April 1992 and December 1995. The war involved several sides...
, in particular the siege of Sarajevo
Sarajevo
Sarajevo |Bosnia]], surrounded by the Dinaric Alps and situated along the Miljacka River in the heart of Southeastern Europe and the Balkans....
. The theme was nothing but controversial: Frustrated by being forbidden to respond to obvious crimes committed by Serbia
Serbia
Serbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...
n forces, the U.S. sets up a secret squadron of unmarked F 16 jets to combat Serbia
Serbia
Serbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...
n warlord
Warlord
A warlord is a person with power who has both military and civil control over a subnational area due to armed forces loyal to the warlord and not to a central authority. The term can also mean one who espouses the ideal that war is necessary, and has the means and authority to engage in war...
s.... Only to find out that 'the other side' operates a similar squadron of Mig 29 jet fighters. In spite of this controversy, the album was well received and Bergèse followed up with a two-album adventure Zone interdite - Tonnerre sur la cordillère (Restricted zone - Thunder over the Cordilleras) in which Buck and his friends revisit the fictional country of Mantegua. Although the story was less controversial: the fight against cocaine
Cocaine
Cocaine is a crystalline tropane alkaloid that is obtained from the leaves of the coca plant. The name comes from "coca" in addition to the alkaloid suffix -ine, forming cocaine. It is a stimulant of the central nervous system, an appetite suppressant, and a topical anesthetic...
traffickers, it still showed the U.S maintaining an uneasy alliance with a local dictator and dared to give a little background on WHY so many farmers in Mantegua shose to cultivate coca
Coca
Coca, Erythroxylum coca, is a plant in the family Erythroxylaceae, native to western South America. The plant plays a significant role in many traditional Andean cultures...
rather than foodcrops. In a plot twist Charlier would be proud of however the real culprit is an international ring of criminals run -again- by Lady X. Unlike Charlier, this time they are in cahoots with criminal elements on the Navy aircraft carrier USS Eisenhower who use their supply aircraft to fly the drugs from Mantegua to the US.
In 'Ghost Squadron', Bergèse also introduced a new recurring character: the female Navy pilot: Cindy McPherson. Cindy resurfaced in the 'forbidden zone' albums as a pilot in the same transport squadron of the traffickers and played an important part in unmasking the plot. She has cameos and minor roles in all of the following adventures and could be considered the fourth 'man' on the team in a way Susan Holmes was in the 'Black Dragon' adventures. However even as Cindy will occasionally get into trouble and have to be rescued by Buck, she is an accomplished pilot and definitely capable of taking care of herself.
After the Mantequa adventure four more albums followed, each a closed adventure and each again situated against the backdrop of real-life events and so from 2000 to 2008 Buck and his Friends have to rescue a downed pilot from South Korea, uncover sabotage and political power play in the F22 testing program, uncover illegal mining in the Antarctic and find a CIA agent investigating a ring of gun-runners in Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
Apart from skirting today's hot-button topics and naming states and events by name, something that would be absolutely taboo
Taboo
A taboo is a strong social prohibition relating to any area of human activity or social custom that is sacred and or forbidden based on moral judgment, religious beliefs and or scientific consensus. Breaking the taboo is usually considered objectionable or abhorrent by society...
in a scenario by Jean-Michel Charlier
Jean-Michel Charlier
Jean-Michel Charlier was a Belgian script writer best known as a writer of realistic European comics. He was a co-founder of the famed European comics magazine Pilote.-Biography:...
, there are several other differences between the two authors: Under Bergèse, both Buck Danny and Jerry Tumbler seem to mellow a bit and on several occasions Buck actually shows genuine caring, if not fatherly, feelings for Cindy McPherson. The most important change is however in the behavior of Sonny Tuckson who more than often reacts with outrage to perceived injustice. In this he has become the inner voice of Bergèse himself: When Sony asks in 'Ghost Squadron' "Why isn't the world doing anything?" it is Bergese's question to the reader just as much as it is Sony's question to Buck.
7 albums between 1996 and 2008 make for a bit less than two years per album. About twice as long as Charlier and Hubinon took. This shows in the artwork: planes, ships and other technical details are as realistic as ever and the characters, especially Buck, do not only seem to be realistically drawn but also lifelike, compared to the sometimes wooden face and straight-as-a-rod postures drawn by Hubinon
In 2008, After writing his 12th Buck Danny album, (Porté disparu / Listed Missing the 52nd in the series,) Francis Bergèse, now 67 announced his retirement. Since then, no new Buck Danny material has appeared.
A new team?
In May 2010 it was announced that the Buck Danny series will continue with an all new team of writer Frédéric Zumbiehl and draftsman Fabrice Lamy. Lamy is known up to now for drawing the realistic westernWestern (genre)
The Western is a genre of various visual arts, such as film, television, radio, literature, painting and others. Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the latter half of the 19th century in the American Old West, hence the name. Some Westerns are set as early as the Battle of...
comic strip 'Colt Walker while Zumbiel bursted into the scene in 2007 with the one-shot album Team Rafale: a yarn about industrial espionage and economic warfare surrounding the Rafale fighter
Dassault Rafale
The Dassault Rafale is a French twin-engine delta-wing multi-role jet fighter aircraft designed and built by Dassault Aviation. Introduced in 2000, the Rafale is being produced both for land-based use with the French Air Force and for carrier-based operations with the French Navy...
. In lay-out, Rafale closely follows the later Bergese albums with their combination of flying, crime and politics and, apart of the flying taking part in a French plane for the French military, similarity between this album and Buck Danny are abound.
According to Dupuis, a new album, the 53'rd of the series, is in the make and is scheduled for late 2010 or 2011.
Realism
Except for smaller oversights - for example, the early WWII episodes use "Zero" as a generic term for all manners of Japanese fighter aircraft rather than the Mitsubishi A6M ZeroA6M Zero
The Mitsubishi A6M Zero was a long-range fighter aircraft operated by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service from 1940 to 1945. The A6M was designated as the , and also designated as the Mitsubishi A6M Rei-sen and Mitsubishi Navy 12-shi Carrier Fighter. The A6M was usually referred to by the...
- the series aims to depict aircraft very realistically, and often includes the most recent technological developments, such as VTOL
VTOL
A vertical take-off and landing aircraft is one that can hover, take off and land vertically. This classification includes fixed-wing aircraft as well as helicopters and other aircraft with powered rotors, such as cyclogyros/cyclocopters and tiltrotors...
(Vertical Take Off and Landing) aircraft, stealth aircraft, the newest Soviet/Russian aircraft, the effects of low-flying, etc.
The ships and bases where the adventures take place are also very close to reality (most are American, but a Russian and a French aircraft carrier have also been depicted, as well as real American bases). Certain events were also taken more or less directly from reality, when the censors allowed it; examples include the Korean War, the Bosnian War
Bosnian War
The Bosnian War or the War in Bosnia and Herzegovina was an international armed conflict that took place in Bosnia and Herzegovina between April 1992 and December 1995. The war involved several sides...
and the War in Afghanistan. More often, Charlier simply invented entire countries, thus allowing him to take greater liberties with the story. Since the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
, for example, had been declared off-limits by French censors, Charlier wrote the "Return of the Flying Tigers" story arc to take place in the fictional country of Vien-tan.
The realism of the series is also enhanced by short definitions or explanations of technical terms, such as RADAR
Radar
Radar is an object-detection system which uses radio waves to determine the range, altitude, direction, or speed of objects. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, weather formations, and terrain. The radar dish or antenna transmits pulses of radio...
, Radio direction finding
Direction finding
Direction finding refers to the establishment of the direction from which a received signal was transmitted. This can refer to radio or other forms of wireless communication...
. Novels also often contain technical or historical notes, and at other times, English aviator jargon (such as "Scramble" or "Overshoot") is translated into French for the readers' benefit.
Although in the course of 60 years of stories Buck Danny is promoted from simple pilot to squadron leader, captain and colonel (Tumbler and Tuckson having the rank of captains) the characters themselves never seem to age. From the first album on, Hubinon always drew Buck Danny with a realistic, weathered face and a military crew cut for his blond hair. Like this his visible age has always been somewhere between 25 and 49. Although Bergèse, as a scenarist makes 'his' Buck Danny appear more grizzled and war-weary, as a draughtsman, he mostly kept to Buck Danny's original look, although in the latest albums the lines on his face appear a bit deeper. Likewise his companions Tumbler and Tuckson have kept their same look throughout the series, but as Tumbler appears just as weathered ageless as Buck Danny, with Sonny Tuckson's round face and distinctive flock of red hair his not aging becomes apparent.
Racism
In the early comics, Japanese soldiers are portrayed as squinty-eyed, shallow-skinned war criminals with overbites, driven by pure hatred and/or sadism. Furthermore, in the series of three episodes following World War II that finds the heroes in the Middle East, one of the negative characters is Jewish, named "Bronstein," and depicted in a manner reminiscent of the antisemitic strips of the World War II era. It is only in the 1950s that youth commissions, notably in France, insisted on the non-stereotyping of characters. By the 1960s, the series in fact alluded to racial tensions in the US as part of its story arcs, with Buck Danny taking a strong stance against discrimination and racism, such as in the album "Les Anges bleus" (The Blue Angels).Characters
Main characters
After Pearl HarborAttack on Pearl Harbor
The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike conducted by the Imperial Japanese Navy against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on the morning of December 7, 1941...
Buck Danny enlists in the United States Navy
United States Navy
The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...
, and soon finds his sidekick
Sidekick
A sidekick is a close companion who is generally regarded as subordinate to the one he accompanies. Some well-known fictional sidekicks are Don Quixote's Sancho Panza, Sherlock Holmes' Doctor Watson, The Lone Ranger's Tonto, The Green Hornet's Kato and Batman's Robin.-Origins:The origin of the...
s Jerry 'Tumb' Tumbler and Sonny Tuckson, with the three quickly becoming inseparable friends. Together, they participate in many dangerous missions, their adventures taking them all over the world. In missions ranging from the Korean War
Korean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...
in the 1950s to the Balkan War in 1996, they prove themselves as true defenders of the United States of America.
Colonel Buck Danny: Buck Danny is the title character, and his rank advances fastest throughout the series (however, he never attains a rank higher than Colonel
Colonel
Colonel , abbreviated Col or COL, is a military rank of a senior commissioned officer. It or a corresponding rank exists in most armies and in many air forces; the naval equivalent rank is generally "Captain". It is also used in some police forces and other paramilitary rank structures...
, as this would remove him from the status of active pilot). He represents the stereotypical fighter pilot (tall, blond haired, athletic, and rather handsome) and also the ideal leader; strict but fair, brave but level-headed, tough but easily approachable, an unquestioned patriot, and loyal to a fault. In the comics, Danny is described many times as "the best pilot in the Navy."
Captain Sonny Tuckson: a proud Texan, Sonny often serves as comic relief, a role which accentuates as the series goes on (in the form of pie-in-the-face pranks, failed sporting stunts, and prodigiously bad luck in romance). He is nevertheless an excellent pilot, and has proven himself to be extremely capable in combat situations. He is also the most loyal and risk-taking of the three, and is often willing to violate orders and ignore the chain of command to help a friend in danger.
Major Jerry "Tumb" Tumbler: Tumbler is the least well developed of the characters, and also the most serious, cynical and suspicious of the three heroes. He serves mainly as a foil for Buck Danny's character. The two were antagonists when they first met in China; Tumbler, a veteran in the Flying Tigers, resented the fact that Danny, who had just come in from the Navy, was promoted to squadron commander before him. This feeling faded away when Danny saved Tumb's life from the Japanese at great risk to his own; they, along with Sonny, have been best friends ever since.
Antagonists
Lady X (Jane Hamilton): first showing up in Northern Menace, Lady X is the heroes' only recurring antagonist. She is a world-class pilot who was once "the fastest woman in the world," and is today a beautiful, mysterious and unscrupulous mercenaryMercenary
A mercenary, is a person who takes part in an armed conflict based on the promise of material compensation rather than having a direct interest in, or a legal obligation to, the conflict itself. A non-conscript professional member of a regular army is not considered to be a mercenary although he...
. She often works as a spy or secret agent, gathering information or running sabotage operations for the highest bidder (including foreign powers, the Mafia
Mafia
The Mafia is a criminal syndicate that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century in Sicily, Italy. It is a loose association of criminal groups that share a common organizational structure and code of conduct, and whose common enterprise is protection racketeering...
, drug cartels, nefarious business conglomerates and various terrorists and dictators). However, she has also at times been called upon for more hands-on tasks, as in the "Return of the Flying Tigers" story arc, where she is put in command of an Asian despot's air force. She has been reported dead many times during the series, but invariably resurfaces to the dismay of Danny, Tumbler and Tuckson. Originally a blonde, she is seen with brown hair in the later volumes, and was always shown as having eyes of "blue steel." Jean-Michel Charlier based her on famous German test pilot Hanna Reitsch
Hanna Reitsch
Hanna Reitsch was a German aviator and the only woman awarded the Iron Cross First Class and the Luftwaffe Combined Pilots-Observation Badge in Gold with Diamonds during World War II...
.
Mo Choung Young: a Chinese pilot in the Flying Tigers. He is secretly a traitor for the Japanese and a member of the Black Dragon Society
Black Dragon Society
The was a prominent paramilitary, ultranationalist right-wing group in Japan.-History:The Kokuryūkai was founded in 1901 by Uchida Ryohei, and was descended from the Genyōsha. Its name is derived from the Amur River, called Heilongjiang or "Black Dragon River" in Chinese , read as Kokuryū-kō in...
, whose goal is to create a pan-Asian empire
Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere
The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere was a concept created and promulgated during the Shōwa era by the government and military of the Empire of Japan. It represented the desire to create a self-sufficient "bloc of Asian nations led by the Japanese and free of Western powers"...
led by Japan and free of Western influence. His main objective in the story is to prevent Danny and Tuckson from bringing the Flying Tigers the plans for the Allied offensive in Burma. He and his Black Dragon superiors commit suicide at the end of Attack in Burma to avoid falling into Allied hands. Although he only appears in the "Flying Tigers" story arc, Mo is an iconic figure in the franchise.
Recurring characters
Slim Holden: a Navy fighter pilot and TOPGUN strike fighter tactics instructor with the rank of Lieutenant Commander who has a long history with the three main characters. Although as good a pilot as Danny, Tumbler or Tuckson, Holden's impulsiveness, fondness for the bottle, confrontational nature and lack of respect for authority have made it harder for him to progress through the ranks; this is occasionally a sore point between him and Danny. Despite their differences, they remain friends and Danny has more than once requested his presence on dangerous missions. Based on his personality, Slim is comparable to Tom Cruise's character Maverick from the movie Top GunTop Gun
Top Gun may refer to:* Top Gun is a 1986 film starring Tom Cruise.**Top Gun , soundtrack to the movie**Top Gun , a number of games based on the movie...
Lieutenant Cindy McPherson: the first female U.S. Navy pilot portrayed in the series, she has appeared in several of the later novels (nineties and onwards). A crack pilot, she is also very attractive and a frequent target for Sonny Tuckson's advances.
Admiral Walker: an admiral in the U.S. Navy, and the trio's direct superior since the "Mission Apocalypse" story arc. Sometimes impulsive and easily displeased, especially when Sonny Tuckson is involved. His most memorable attribute is his dog, O'Connor, who lives on board with him and quickly became Sonny's worst nightmare.
General Scott: a general in the U.S. Air Force, often in charge of classified and extremely delicate operations. He first appears in "Restricted Zone," where he and Danny command an off-the-books fighter unit in the Bosnian War
Bosnian War
The Bosnian War or the War in Bosnia and Herzegovina was an international armed conflict that took place in Bosnia and Herzegovina between April 1992 and December 1995. The war involved several sides...
, and is referred to only as "General X." His name is revealed in "The Night of the Serpent," in which he directs an operation to recover an American pilot in North Korea.
Jean-Michel Charlier and Victor Hubinon
| No. | Original French title | English title | Story arc | Publication date (album) |
| 1) | Les japs attaquent | The Japs Attack | Stand-alone adventure | 1948 |
| 2) | Les mystères de Midway | The Mysteries of Midway | Stand-alone adventure, but follows 1 | 1948 |
| 3) | La revanche des fils du ciel | The Revenge of the Sons of Heaven | Stand-alone adventure | 1950 |
| 4) | Tigres volants | Flying Tigers | First of a 3-part adventure, follows events of 3 | 1951 |
| 5) | Dans les griffes du dragon noir | In the Claws of the Black Dragon | Second of 3-part adventure begun in 4 | 1951 |
| 6) | Attaque en Birmanie | Attack in Burma | Third of 3-part adventure begun in 4 | 1952 |
| 7) | Les trafiquants de la mer rouge | The Red Sea Smugglers | First of a two-part adventure | 1952 |
| 8) | Les pirates du désert | Desert Pirates | Completes 7 | 01/1952 |
| 9) | Les gangsters du pétrole | The Oil Gangsters | Stand-alone adventure but follows events of 8 & 9 | 1953 |
| 10) | Pilotes d'essai | Test Pilots | Stand-alone adventure | 1953 |
| 11) | Ciel de Corée | Korean Skies | First of a two-part adventure | 1954 |
| 12) | Avions sans pilotes | Unmanned Aircraft | Completes 11 | 1954 |
| 13) | Un avion n'est pas rentré | A Plane Has Not Returned | First of a two-part adventure | 1954 |
| 14) | Patrouille à l'aube | Dawn Patrol | Completes 13 | 1955 |
| 15) | NC-22654 ne répond plus | NC-22654 Does Not Respond | Stand-alone adventure | 1957 |
| 16) | Menace au nord | Menace in the North | First of a two-part adventure | 1957 |
| 17) | Buck Danny contre Lady X | Buck Danny Against Lady X | Completes 16 | 1958 |
| 18) | Alerte en Malaisie | Alert in Malaysia | First of a two-part adventure | 1958 |
| 19) | Le tigre de Malaisie | The Tiger of Malaysia | Completes 18 | 1959 |
| 20) | S.O.S. soucoupes volantes! | S.O.S. Flying Saucers! | First of a two-part adventure | 1959 |
| 21) | Un prototype a disparu | A Prototype Has Vanished | Completes 20 | 1960 |
| 22) | Top secret | Top Secret | First of a two-part adventure | 1960 |
| 23) | Mission vers la vallée perdue | Mission to the Lost Valley | Completes 22 | 1960 |
| 24) | Prototype FX-13 | Prototype FX-13 | Stand-alone adventure | 1961 |
| 25) | Escadrille ZZ | ZZ Squadron | Stand-alone adventure, but follows 25 | |
| 26) | Le retour des tigres volants | The Return of the Flying Tigers | First of a 3-part adventure | 1962 |
| 27) | Les tigres volants à la rescousse! | Flying Tigers to the Rescue! | Second of 3-part adventure begun in 26 | 1962 |
| 28) | Tigres volants contre pirates | Flying Tigers Versus Pirates | Third of 3-part adventure begun in 26 | 1963 |
| 29) | Opération Mercury | Operation Mercury | First of two-part adventure | 1964 |
| 30) | Les voleurs de satellites | The Satellite Thieves | Completes 30 | 1964 |
| 31) | X-15 | X-15 | Stand-alone adventure | 1965 |
| 32) | Alerte à Cap Kennedy | Alert at Cape Kennedy | Stand-alone adventure | 1965 |
| 33) | Le mystère des avions fantomes | The Mystery of the Ghost Planes | Stand-alone adventure | 1966 |
| 34) | Alerte atomique | Atomic Alert | First of a two-part adventure | 1967 |
| 35) | L'escadrille de la mort | The Squadron of Death | Completes 34 | 1968 |
| 36) | Les anges bleus | The Blue Angels | First of a two-part adventure | 1970 |
| 37) | Le pilote au masque de cuir | The Pilot in the Leather Mask | Completes 36 | 1971 |
| 38) | La vallée de la mort verte | The Valley of Green Death | First of a 3-part adventure | 1973 |
| 39) | Requins en mer de chine | Sharks in the China Sea | Second of 3-part adventure begun in 38 | 1977 |
| 40) | "Ghost Queen" | "Ghost Queen" | Third of 3-part adventure begun in 38 | 1979 |
Jean-Michel Charlier and Francis Bergèse
| No. | Original French title | English title | Story arc | Publication date (album) |
| 41) | Mission apocalypse | Mission Apocalypse | First album of a three-part adventure | 05/1983 |
| 42) | Les pilotes de l'enfer | The Pilots of Hell | second part of adventure begun in 41 | 09/1984 |
| 43) | Le feu du ciel | Fire from the Sky | Last part of adventure begun in 41 | 01/1986 |
| 44) | Les "Agresseurs" | The Aggressors | Stand-alone adventure | 02/1988 |
| Les Oiseaux noirs | The Blackbirds | projected first album of a 2-part adventure | unfinished, never appeared in album form |
Jacques De Douhet and Francis Bergèse
| No. | Original French title | English title | Story arc | Publication date (album) |
| 45) | Les secrets de la Mer Noire | The Secrets of the Black Sea | Stand-alone adventure | 03/1994 |
Francis Bergèse
| No. | Original French title | English title | Story arc | Publication date (album) |
| 46) | L'escadrille fantôme | Ghost Squadron | Stand-alone adventure | 05/1996 |
| 47) | Zone interdite | Restricted Zone | first album of a two-part adventure | 4/1998 |
| 48) | Tonnerre sur la cordillère | Thunder over the Cordilleras | completes album 47 | 04/1999 |
| 49) | La nuit du serpent | The Night of the Snake | Stand-alone adventure | 10/2000 |
| 50) | Sabotage au Texas | Sabotage in Texas | Stand-alone adventure | 12/2002 |
| 51) | Mystère en Antarctique | Mystery in Antarctica | Stand-alone adventure | 06/2005 |
| 52) | Porté disparu | Reported Missing | Stand-alone adventure | 03/2008 |
New edition albums
Beginning in 1983, in the line of the New "Buck Danny" novels by Charlier and Bergèse, DupuisDupuis
Éditions Dupuis S.A. is a Belgian publisher of comic books and magazines.Based in Marcinelle near Charleroi, Dupuis was founded in 1922 by Jean Dupuis, and is mostly famous for its comic albums and magazines. It is originally a French language publisher, but publishes many editions both in French...
took it upon him to re-issue the previous albums in a collectors edition under the new format "Tout Buck Danny" ('Everything Buck Danny' or 'The complete Buck Danny'). This differed from the original albums still in print with each volume being a solid hardcover book with three or four of the original novels plus some additional material. With most of the Buck Danny stories stretching out over two or three albums, this enabled the reader to have a complete adventure in one novel. Yet the addition of magazine artwork, promotional material and other work made it clear that this editions were aimed at the elder collector. During the hiatus years after the death of Charlier, this series continued with the accumulated material and its success no doubt prompted Dupuis to press Bergèse into continuing the series. At present, with 'complete' album 16 covering the 'loose' albums 49, 50 and 51, the 'complete' books have caught up with the loose album series.
- La Guerre du Pacifique, première partie (War in the Pacific, Part 1).
- Covers the albums 1) 2) and 3) and Charlier and Hubinon's first collaboration: The Agony of the Bismark
After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Buck Danny enters the Navy and becomes an aviator. He participates in several naval engagements, rises to the rank of Commander, and is eventually transferred to the Flying Tigers, where he encounters Jerry Tumbler and Sonny Tuckson.
- La Guerre du Pacifique, seconde partie (War in the Pacific, Part 2).
- Covers the albums 4) 5) and 6)
Danny and Tuckson are ordered to fly to the Allied headquarters in Rangoon and bring back the plans for the upcoming offensive into Burma. When the mission goes wrong, they are trapped in the middle of the jungle and must dodge Japanese troops, hostile natives, Chinese pirates and various traitors to bring the plans back to the Flying Tigers.
- Les Aviateurs Démobilisés (Pilots DemobilizedPilots Demobilized (Buck Danny)Pilots Demobilized is the third story arc in the Franco-Belgian Buck Danny comic book series, by Jean-Michel Charlier and Victor Hubinon.- Publication history :...
).
- Covers the albums 7) 8) and 9)
Unemployed after the end of the war, Danny, Tumbler and Tuckson are hired by a shady airline company operating in the Middle-East, and find themselves swept up in a nest of intrigue involving Arab tribal politics and the rush for oil.
- La Guerre de Corée (The Korean War).
- Covers the albums 10) 11) and 12) plus three short stories written for the magazine Sprint
Danny, Tumbler and Tuckson are persuaded by their old CO to return to the military as test pilots, and are eventually transferred to a fighter unit in Korea. There, they encounter not only Communist pilots but also drones
Unmanned aerial vehicle
An unmanned aerial vehicle , also known as a unmanned aircraft system , remotely piloted aircraft or unmanned aircraft, is a machine which functions either by the remote control of a navigator or pilot or autonomously, that is, as a self-directing entity...
against which Danny is ordered to find a response.
- Pilotes de Porte-avions (Aircraft carrier pilots).
- Covers the albums 13) 14) and 15)
Danny, Tumbler and Tuckson are transferred to the U.S. Navy, where their adventures continue in three stand-alone novels. In the first, they train a squadron of new recruits to work as a team. In the second, they are racing against a group of ex-Nazis to uncover a treasure from a sunken U-boat. In the third, they take down a group of pirates disrupting air traffic over the Arctic.
- De l'Extrême-Nord a l'Extrême-Orient (From the Far North to the Far East).
- Covers the albums 16) 17),18) and 19) plus three parodies by Hubinon
Two story arcs. In the first, Danny and his wingmen provide fly defensive patrols over the military's newest ICBM test base in Alaska, and find themselves facing the spies of the mysterious Lady X. In the second, they are returned to the Navy, this time on a mission against pirates in the South China Seas, who are using weapons and bases abandoned by the Japanese to become a near-military force.
- Vols Vers l'Inconnu (Flights into the Unknown).
- Covers the albums 20) 21),22) and 23) plus a previously unpublished short story
Two story arcs. In the first, Danny and his wingmen are testing new prototypes with VTOL
VTOL
A vertical take-off and landing aircraft is one that can hover, take off and land vertically. This classification includes fixed-wing aircraft as well as helicopters and other aircraft with powered rotors, such as cyclogyros/cyclocopters and tiltrotors...
technology for the Navy. In the second, they are sent to Tibet to retrieve a German rocket scientist vital to the U.S. space program before the Soviets do.
- Pilotes de Prototypes (Prototype pilots).
- Covers the albums 24) 25) and 31) plus a previously unpublished short story
Danny and his wingmen test new aircraft for the Navy, first the brand-new X-13 (based on the A-5 Vigilante
A-5 Vigilante
The North American A-5 Vigilante was a carrier-based supersonic bomber designed for the United States Navy. Its service in the nuclear strike role to replace the A-3 Skywarrior was very short; however, as the RA-5C, it saw extensive service during the Vietnam War in the tactical strike...
), then the X-15. They must overcome rivalries within their own squadron, and root out several saboteurs hired by foreign powers and disgruntled aircraft constructors.
- Le Retour des Tigres Volants (Return of the Flying TigersReturn of the Flying Tigers (Buck Danny)Return of the Flying Tigers is the ninth story arc in the Franco-Belgian comic book series Buck Danny, published by Jean-Michel Charlier and Victor Hubinon.-Publication history:...
).
- Covers the albums 26), 27) and 28) plus a short parody
When a revolution begins in the Southeast Asian nation of Vien-tan, the U.S. finds itself unable to intervene officially. Instead, Danny and thirty Navy pilots are retired from the service and sent to fight in Vien-tan, under the flag of the newly reconstituted Flying Tigers.
- Missions Top-Secret (Top secret missions).
- Covers the albums 29) 30), 32) and 33)
One story arc and two stand-alone novels. In the story arc, Danny and his wingmen try to recover a Mercury
Project Mercury
In January 1960 NASA awarded Western Electric Company a contract for the Mercury tracking network. The value of the contract was over $33 million. Also in January, McDonnell delivered the first production-type Mercury spacecraft, less than a year after award of the formal contract. On February 12,...
space capsule
Space capsule
A space capsule is an often manned spacecraft which has a simple shape for the main section, without any wings or other features to create lift during atmospheric reentry....
lost at sea. In the first novel, he must defuse the threats of a Caribbean dictator bent on causing a nuclear war between East and West. In the second, he and his wingmen investigate the sightings of unidentified aircraft over the Arctic.
- Missions a Très Haut Risque (High-risk missions).
- Covers the albums 34) 35) 36)and 37) plus a previously unpublished short story
Two story arcs. In the first, the Navy loses a nuclear weapon over the Central American republic of Mantegua; Danny, Tumbler and Tuckson are infiltrated among the rebels who recovered it to try to steal it back. In the second, they enter the Blue Angels
Blue Angels
The United States Navy's Navy Flight Demonstration Squadron, popularly known as the Blue Angels, was formed in 1946 and is currently the oldest formal flying aerobatic team...
and are sent to a high-profile airshow in Karachi, where they must again face the threat of Lady X as well as deal with racial tensions within the squadron itself.
- Mission Aérienne Anti-Mafia (Aerial Anti-Mafia MissionAerial Anti-Mafia MissionAerial Anti-Mafia Mission is the name of the twelfth story arc in the Buck Danny comic book series by Jean-Michel Charlier and Victor Hubinon.-Publication history:...
).
- Covers the albums 38) 39) and 40) plus four short stories
Danny and his wingmen discover a Mafia-run opium
Opium
Opium is the dried latex obtained from the opium poppy . Opium contains up to 12% morphine, an alkaloid, which is frequently processed chemically to produce heroin for the illegal drug trade. The latex also includes codeine and non-narcotic alkaloids such as papaverine, thebaine and noscapine...
plantation in the Bornean
Borneo
Borneo is the third largest island in the world and is located north of Java Island, Indonesia, at the geographic centre of Maritime Southeast Asia....
nation of North Sarrawak. With the United States politically unable to act, the admiral in charge of the carrier group defies the Pentagon's orders and decides to take down the operation himself.
- Alerte Nucléaire (Nuclear AlertNuclear Alert (Buck Danny)Nuclear Alert is the thirteenth story arc in Buck Danny, a Franco-Belgian comic book series by Jean-Michel Charlier and Francis Bergèse.- Publication history :...
).
- Covers the albums 41) 42) and 43)
NATO is being blackmailed by the International Front of Armed Revolutionary Groups, a red terrorist organization which has stolen a nuclear weapon and two F-14s from the U.S. military. Danny, Tumbler and Tuckson must locate the terrorists' base in the Caribbean before the Front can use the weapon on an upcoming UN summit.
- Ennemis Intérieurs (Enemies within).
- Covers the albums 44) and 45) plus the unfinished version of the Blackbirds
Two stand-alone novels, heavily influenced by international developments in the last few years of the Cold War. In the first, Danny is sent to Nellis
Nellis Air Force Base
Nellis Air Force Base is a United States Air Force Base, located approximately northeast of Las Vegas, Nevada. It is under the jurisdiction of Air Combat Command .-Overview:...
to take charge of a defecting MiG-29 pilot. In the second, he is sent to visit the Soviet Union's newest aircraft carrier and finds himself swept up in a web of perestroika politics; some parties want him eliminated, while others want to use him for their own ends.
- Zones de Combat (Combat zones).
- Covers the albums 46) 47) and 48) plus a special short story 'the Mascotte (Buck Danny)The Mascotte'
One stand-alone novel and one story arc. In the former, Danny commands an off-the-books fighter unit in Yugoslavia. In the latter, they are sent to train fighter pilots in Central America making a transition from F-104 to F-18. There they find themselves facing a powerful drug cartel which plans to take control of several Central American nations... with a little help from Lady X.
- Embrouilles en Temps de Paix (Troubles in peacetime).
- Covers the albums 49) 50) and 51) and two unpublished short stories
Three stand-alone novels. In the first, Danny and his wingmen help recover an American pilot shot down over North Korea. In the second, they are sent to test the new F-22's performance, which has recently been hindered by several sabotage actions. In the third, they locate a flight of unidentified aircraft over the Antarctic, and are sent to investigate.
English publications
A few albums have been translated into English, including Mission Apocalypse (Mission apocalypse) in 1988, and Mystery In The Antarctic (Mystère en Antarctique) in 2005.Cinebook has started publishing the series with the album Night of the Serpent (La Nuit du serpent) released in April 2009 ISBN 9781905460854 . A second book The Secrets of the Black Sea (Les Secrets de la mer noire) was released in February 2010 ISBN 9781849180184.
See also
- Aviation portal
- US Airforce portal
- Tanguy et LaverdureTanguy et LaverdureLes Aventures de Tanguy et Laverdure is a Franco-Belgian comics series created by Jean-Michel Charlier and Albert Uderzo, about the two pilots Michel Tanguy and Ernest Laverdure, and their adventures in the French Air Force.-Publication history:...
External links
- English Publisher of Buck Danny - Cinebook
- Buck Danny at its original publisher Dupuis/Spirou
- The adventures of Buck Danny US Military Aviation
- Buck Danny Artelio
- Buck Danny Non official website