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Aircraft in Comics - Part 5

The story so far...

In 1951, SPIROU, a comic magazine for young readers, published Buck Danny's WW2 episodes (see "Aircraft in Comics part 1"). After that, the authors, Hubinon and Charlier, decided to get their pilots back to civil life. But the Fans were disapointed. This led the creators of the series to make Buck Danny return to his military status and become a jet pilot fighting again (see "Aircraft in Comics part 2"). But the call of the sea was stronger and our heros returned to the Navy, their "first love" (see "Aircraft in Comics part 3"). In episode 4, they flew some prototypes and faced strange foreign Air Forces in hypothetical countries.

"Ghost Queen" was the 40th and last Buck Danny episode created by Victor Hubinon. After his death in 1979, Francis Bergèse replaced him and fortunately Buck Danny is still alive today! Episode 5 of "Aircraft in Comics" definitely installs the serie in the Modern Jet era and features some of the most fantastic and powerfull aviation artwork I've ever seen.

Aircraft in "Buck Danny" episode 5 (the cold war years)

Picture 1: Let's start in a spectacular way! In this picture, you can see a B-52 Stratofortress being ambushed over the Groenland area by terrorists equiped with S.A.-7 missiles. This episode was inspired by a real fact: the crash of a B-52 near Thule in 1968. Unlike in the comic, the real aircraft was lost because of bad weather but the fact that it carried four thermonuclear weapons is accurate!


Picture 2: A perfect example of Bergèse's spectacular drawing style: a Grumman F-14 "Tomcat" just took of from the "J.F. Kennedy" Aircraft Carrier".


Picture 3: This is what happens when an old Grumman "Goose" meets a F-14! Whooff! Kraaaa!


Picture 4: Now we have a serie of pictures for helicopters lovers. The first one is a Sea King with which Buck Danny managed to escape from a Cuban warship.


Picture 5: A nice flight of sikorsky S-65s over the ocean.


Picture 6:Here we have the presidential helicopter of Ronald reagan: a Sikorsky S-61 VH-3A.


Picture 7: why bother about enemy radars when you just have to fly under a commercial jetliner to avoid them! That's a tactic this "Tomcat" pilot is using thanks to this DC-10.


Picture 8: Ooops! it didn't worked! Tumbler just threw is F-8 Crusader into the F-14! A thermonuclear terrorist attack has just been avoided... Wow! That was close!


Picture 9: From the sunny Caribbean sea to the winter cold of Alaska! The MiG-29 of a defector is landing on the U.S. Airbase at Elmendorf.


Picture 10: A nice pair of F-5Es flying over Nellis A. F. base. One of them is piloted by the aformentioned defector...


Picture 11:... who is of course a Russian Spy who wants to take pictures of Top Secret "Stealth" fighters!


Picture 12:By chance Buck Danny is able to shoot down the MiG-29 with its F-5 using his cannons!


Picture 13:One of my favourite pictures! Two MiG-29s are firing missiles by night!


Picture 14:Our hero has the chance to visit the "Kustnetzov" and it's hangar full of Su-27s during the "Glasnost".


Picture 15:And to finish this serie, here is the mouth of a big A-90 Ekranoplan opened so to load 70 Russian "Spetnaz"!

To be continued...

The next episode will be the last one with pictures taken from the Adventures of Buck Danny. I can assure you it will be a real fireworks of aircraft!

All images reproduced in this article are Copyright © S.A. Éditions Dupuis