Preview: Buck Danny’s Cold War Goes To Red Alert In The Latest Euro Thriller

by Richard Bruton

After the build-up of this spy tale of the Cold War in volume 5, Operation Iron Curtain, the events of Red Alert take things up a notch, with plenty of action and a hell of a lot of plot as Buck and pals have missions to complete behind the Iron Curtain…

The Buck Danny series is another example of a long-running and massively-selling series of Euro comics, doing what it does with some fine style. Created in 1947 by Georges Troisfontaines, Victor Hubinon, and Jean-Michel Charlier, with Francis Bergèse later taking on writing and drawing, the series documents the adventures of aviator Buck Danny through the ages, making use of a floating timeline to allow Danny and pals to operate in conflicts from WWII onwards, right up to near present day.

These Buck Danny Classics are different though, going back in time to significant moments in history, two volumes to each storyline, beginning with the Korean War, then back to the Second World War, and now, with volumes 5 and 6, to the 1960s and Cold War Germany.

With the first half of the tale, in Operation Iron Curtain, we’ve seen a Soviet plan to build a new supersonic bomber able to launch nuclear weapons and one Russian scientist’s attempted defection to the West together with the aircraft’s blueprints.

At the same time, with tensions rising in the region, Buck and his friends have been tasked to Germany and almost immediately get into trouble in an aerial dogfight with Russian MIGs, resulting in one of Buck’s two sidekicks, Sonny Tuckson being downed in East Germany.

A daring mission into East Germany has rescued Tuckson, sort of, and now Buck Danny, Tuckson, and Jerry ‘Tumb’ Tumbler are on the run on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain, including Buck Danny, with what seems like the entire East German Army and police on their trail.

But that’s only half of this story, as we’re also dealing in the spycraft and the deception of the Cold War in Germany, going from West Germany to the halls of British Intelligence and across to Langley and the CIA, all of them invested in getting the microfilm of the supersonic bomber out of the East, the microfilm that Buck and his pals have on them and need to get back to the West.

Meanwhile, as Sonny and Jerry head to East Berlin to a safe house with the microfilm and over the Wall, Buck Danny is off to the secret Russian air base with a view to stealing the supersonic bomber – but there’s a rather big surprise waiting for him there.

Red Alert is a hugely busy album this time with a hell of a lot going on, so many sub-plots to add to the usual action-adventure of a Buck Danny tale. It’s also one that’s perhaps darker than usual, quite fittingly due to the Cold War background to this and with the tragic lives of some of the Berliners they meet, their world torn apart by the separation of the city. But it’s also a damn fine Buck Danny adventure in the spirit of this grand series of adventures, packed full of the sort of wonderful aviation action that Buck Danny is all about…