Preview: Buck Danny’s War Gets Colder In ‘Operation Iron Curtain’

This latest Buck Danny Classic from Cinebook, English language publisher of the finest Euro comics, taking the ace pilot into new adventures set in significant moments in history, sees Buck and friends plunged into the Cold War and into the middle of a deadly game of spies.

Buck Danny the series is a best-selling 58-volume (and counting) series created by Georges Troisfontaines, Victor Hubinon, and Jean-Michel Charlier in 1947, with Francis Bergèse later taking over writing and drawing later. It’s known both for its action-packed storylines with its ageless hero and floating timeline where readers get to experience the action across the ages with the stories reflecting the conflicts of their times. But it’s also known for the realism in the artwork, particularly its military and aviation realism. Put them together with the skills of all involved and you get thrilling wartime tales with a classic Euro look.

These Buck Danny Classics, somewhat counterintuitively, are actually new works but set at significant moments in history, whether that’s the Korean War for the first two volumes, WWII for the second two, or the Cold War in volumes 5 and 6, each storyline across two volumes, with this volume just the start of Buck’s adventures in an all-new kind of war.

So, in Operation Iron Curtain, it’s October 1961 and the Soviet Union is working to create a supersonic bomber capable of launching nuclear weapons. But one of the scientists involved is still thinking his work is merely to stay ahead of the Americans and not to trigger World War III. So horrified in fact that he decides to defect to the West, complete with the aircraft’s blueprints. But he’s not counted on the KGB being as ruthless as history has shown them to be.

Meanwhile, Buck and his friends are seconded to Germany, where tensions between East and West are dangerously high, as they soon find out on their first recon mission, resulting in Tuckson coming down in East Germany. They may be out of their depth in this different sort of modern warfare, but that’s not going to stop them mounting a rescue mission to get Tuckson out of the East.

This latest Buck Danny Classic is customarily thrilling stuff, packed with some absolutely beautiful aircraft and machinery and great action, all with the very different Cold War feel to things to make this an excellent intro to the characters if you’ve not had the pleasure before.

Again, as with so much of what Cinebook publishes, this is something completely different (and wonderfully so) from so much of what North American comics are all about and something that’s definitely worth taking a look at.

Buck Danny Classics Volume 5 – Operation Iron Curtain by Frédéric Zumbiehl and Frédéric Marniquet; illustrated by Jean-Michal Arroyo, colours by Ketty Formaggio, translation by Jerome Saincantin.

Published by Cinebook on 25 January, 2024.

Now, preview time…