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 Harbor 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 than 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.
Read more about this topic: Aerial Anti-Mafia Mission