History ComicBook / BuckDanny

As was standard at the [[FrancoBelgianComics Franco-Belgian comic industry]] the stories were first published at a rate of one page a week in the parent company's weekly magazine. (In buck Danny's case, they were published in [[Magazine/Spirou Spirou/Robbedoes]] by the publishing house Dupuis). After the series had run its course, the story was published as softcover album and later possibly bundled with several other albums in a hardcover anthology. As the standard for an album was 40 pages in one year, stories that ran longer were split into several albums forming one story arch. 12 stories are spread out over 2 albums each, 4 more over three.

* NiceHat: the captain of the aircraft carrier has one that never leaves his head.

* CallBack: The villains in the "Specter" story arc are Japanese nationalists aligned with the Kokuryu-Kai, a.k.a. the Black Dragon Society. This is the same Black Dragon Society that featured prominently as antagonists in the original World War Two era comics (where it effectively functioned as an arm of Japanese intelligence), making this their first appearance in sixty years.

* CoolPlane: Comes with the premise.
* ComicBookTime: The characters join the US Air Force in 1941, and as of the 1990s were still young enough to be fighter pilots. The suspension of disbelief is all the harder as the characters get to meet US presidents Kennedy and later Reagan, without having aged in the meantime. The only thing that changes is the characters' ranks (and even then, they won't go higher than Colonel).

* DodgeByBraking: A Soviet pilot in a [=MiG=]-29 pulls the stunt against both Buck Danny and Sonny Tuckson--twice--in "Les Agresseurs".

* EvilPaysBetter: [[spoiler: Lady X, the heroes' rival and international mercenary spy]], is a former USAF test pilot who defected after seeing there is way more profit to be made by breaking the law.

* FauxActionGirl: She may be one of the United States Navy's first fighter pilots and quite talented in the role, but Cindy McPherson in the more recent stories spends more time being captured, blackmailed, and otherwise in need of rescue than in her plane.

** Played with in "Mission Vers La Vallée Perdue." The adventure takes place in Tibet, which is a real location, and its portrayal as ruled by a Buddhist sect whose spiritual leader, the Dalai-Lama, is waiting to come of age is broadly accurate. However, the book was released in 1966, by which point Tibet had long since been conquered by the Chinese and its Buddhist rulers overthrown.

* FriendlyEnemy: occasionally. The most memorable one is [[spoiler:Soviet Air Force colonel and FakeDefector Colonel Ouchinsky]], as mentally acknowledged by Buck after shooting him down.

* FormulaBreakingEpisode: Most of Buck Danny's adventures involve him being on a mission for the U.S. Navy or Air Force. The exception is the "oil gangsters" story arc, where he, Tumb, and Sonny, demobilized at the end of World War Two, accept a job as cargo pilots in the Middle East and find themselves involved in a crime/conspiracy story involving arms dealing, drug trafficking, oil politics, and palace plots. (The next story arc returns them to military service).

** In the aptly-named "A Prototype Has Vanished," Lady X's espionage organization successfully steals the prototype of a new U.S. Navy fighter that can take off and land vertically. The heroes aren't able to get it back, but they do destroy it.

** Very common villains, especially mooks. Lady X is the most memorable version, a spy and pilot who will work for anybody if the price is right. Even without her, however, the villains' air forces are usually manned by mercenaries. The PrivateMilitaryContractors type is the most common, but FormerRegimePersonnel will also appear from time to time, including several Imperial Japanese veterans and two pilots from the former Shah of Iran's air force. At times, the heroes will also pose as hired guns when infiltrating a villain's lair.
** The heroes also become this in the "Return of the Flying Tigers" story arc, where they're officially retired from the U.S. Navy and volunteer to fly in the air force of the U.S.-aligned king of Vien Tan, who's facing a revolution supported by mercenary pilots flying modern war planes. The entire thing is agreed to between the U.S. government and its Vientannese allies. However, as far as the law's concerned, they're now mercenaries with the same status as their enemies.

* PragmaticVillainy: Lady X has worked for absolutely anybody that was willing to pay her, including foreign powers, the Mafia, drug cartels, nefarious business conglomerates, and various terrorists and dictators. However, even she turns on her employers in the Circle when they plan to release a virus in order to profit from selling the cure, despite the fact that the virus is extremely lethal, poorly understood, mutates quickly, and is likely to kill most or all of the planet's population before it can be effectively countered.

** Averted in the "Vostok" storyline. The plot of the story revolves around a plot to release the most deadly virus since the Spanish Flu into the world. The first novel in the story arc was actually published in 2018, two years before the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic. However, the latter instantly made it HarsherInHindsight.

** Generally speaking, the series prefers to use the Imperial Japanese in the role where most similar franchises would use Nazis. Not only are they the main antagonists of the World War Two era stories, but escaped Japanese war criminals appear periodically in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, often working in major criminal organizations or otherwise as TheDragon for the villain of the story. And when the "Specter" story arc finally gives us a story of extreme-right World War Two revanchists looking to restore fascism to their country, those revanchists are Japanese.

** In "Alert At Cape Kennedy", the villain is a Caribbean dictator trying to provoke a war between the United States and the Soviet Union, in the hopes of freeing South America from both Russian and American imperialism.
** In the "Atomic Alert" story arc, the heroes are able to infiltrate the Manteguan rebels' forces by posing as mercenaries and allowing themselves to be recruited by Guenther, an arms dealer in a neighboring country who sells arms to both rebel and government forces.
** In the "Specter" story arc, the villains are Japanese nationalist radicals using the titular stealth aircraft to incite a war between the United States and China, removing the two greatest powers in the Pacific from the equation and paving the way for the rise of the newly rearmed Japan they're planning to take over.

** The Black Dragon Society in World War Two successfully recruits multiple moles in the Flying Tigers base (though this turns against them when the Tigers begin to identify and feed them), and is shown to have members throughout China and Indochina. Justified by the fact that it's shown in this case as a society encouraging a pan-Asian anti-colonialism rather than purely Japanese nationalism.
** The crisis in the "Vostok" story arc alerts the American, French, and Russian governments alike; the Circle turns out to have moles in all three. It's bad enough that the heroes end up doing much of the work to prevent their final terrorist attack alone, rather than risk alerting them by operating through channels.
** Deconstructed in the "Oil Gangsters" story arc early in the series. The villains are an oil company bent on overthrowing the ruler of the Oulai Sheikhdom and replacing him with someone who'll open its oil reserves to them. As such, they're wealthy and powerful enough to corrupt multiple highly placed people. This bites them in the ass, however, when the exiled ruler of the Oulai and the current leader of their armies meet up, at which point they discover that they've each been promised the Sheikh's throne. This quickly degenerates into a battle between their armies that leaves them both dead.

** Cindy McPherson. As discussed below, her stories often veer her into FauxActionGirl territory, but she's still an F-18 pilot.

** In "The Pact," Danny and Tuckson need to intercept terrorist aircraft headed for the United States, regular channels have been compromised, and the nearest military base is the Boneyard in Arizona[[note]]the U.S. military's main repository for out of service aircraft[[/note]]. They talk the base commander into lending them a couple of aircraft, but the only ones available are a Phantom (a Vietnam War era fighter) and a Warthog (still in service, but first introduced in the 1970s). This turns into a moment of awesome when the Phantom is nevertheless able to bring down an F-35, the most modern fighter jet in the U.S. military.

** Averted hard with Sonny, but his tastes in women are homelessly self-defeating.

* ChromosomeCasting: Enforced for most of the series, but averted in the earlier and later novels. The first few books will feature at least one female protagonist (an intrepid nurse, an MI-5 agent, an Arabian princess), who like her male counterparts is allowed to move the plot forward and given her share of moments of awesome. Beginning in the mid-fifties, however, such characters largely disappear from the series: for the next forty years, the only significant female character is Lady X, the ArchEnemy. The nineties finally began to reverse this, with Cindy McPherson, a female F-18 pilot who sometimes accompanies the heroes.

* HiredGuns: very common villains, especially mooks. Lady X is the most memorable version, a spy and pilot who will work for anybody if the price is right. Even without her, however, the villains' air forces are usually manned by mercenaries. The PrivateMilitaryContractors type is the most common, but FormerRegimePersonnel will also appear from time to time, including several Imperial Japanese veterans and two pilots from the former Shah of Iran's air force.

** A few appear in the 1950s and 1960s stories as [[MysteriousBacker Mysterious Backers]] for the main villains. However, they're always in the background and we never learn anything about them, or follow up on them in later stories. They serve largely as plot devices meant to explain who had provided modern fighter jets or other advanced technology and qualified personnel to the enemy dictator or warlord of the story, since the comics code's ban on excessively "political" material prevented the writers from using the Soviet Union in this role.

** Averted in the "Vostok" storyline. The plot of the story revolves around a plot to release the most deadly virus since the Spanish Flu into the world. The story arc began in 2018, two years before the Covid19 pandemic: however, the latter instantly made it HarsherInHindsight.

* ThoseWackyNazis: surprisingly, completely averted. Danny encounters a one-off villain who's a former U-boat commander trying to recover the NaziGold he was entrusted with at the end of the war: however, he displays none of the cliches associated with this trope (other than a monocle) and his ideology and past service to Hitler are never brought up. If anything, Danny is more offended by the fact that he's gone rogue and is trying to recover the gold for himself: "it's not your gold, it's your country's. They trusted you with it."

* BreakOutTheMuseumPiece: In "Patrouille à l'Aube", Buck, Tumbler and Sonny use a UsefulNotes/WW2-vintage Avenger plane found in a scrapyard in order to locate the wreck of a submarine.

** Neither Buck Danny nor Tumbler has a romantic life. Sonny does, but his tastes in women are hopelessly self-defeating.
** Tumbler is shown to have a girlfriend though (he keeps a picture of her to prank Sonny).

* PolarBearsAndPenguins: (see ''Everything is better with Penguins'' above) While the characters are assigned to a secret base in Alaska, Sonny spots what he thinks is a group of trespassers. When soldiers are sent to arrest them, they turn out to be penguins... in Alaska

* RippedFromTheHeadlines: particularly common in the early stories (where the adventures were set during World War Two, Arab oil conflicts, the Korean War) and in later ones (the Yugoslav wars, Central American drug wars, the war in Afghanistan). In between the two, the authors took a long hiatus from real-life conflicts, including the Cold War itself, to avoid being censored. On a less political note, however, the stories always followed the evolution of real life aerospace technology very closely, such as the development of jet technology, the early space program, the SR-71, stealth technology, etc.

* SomethingCompletelyDifferent: Most of Buck Danny's adventures involve him being on a mission for the U.S. Navy or Air Force. The exception is the "oil gangsters" story arc, where he, Tumb, and Sonny, demobilized at the end of World War Two, accept a job as cargo pilots in the Middle East and find themselves involved in a crime/conspiracy story involving arms dealing, drug trafficking, oil politics, and palace plots. (The next story arc returns them to military service).

''Buck Danny'' is a French-Belgian comic book series created by [[Creator/JeanMichelCharlier Jean-Michel Charlier]] and Victor Hubinon (both also the creators of ''ComicBook/BarbeRouge'', and Charlier the creator of Comicbook/{{Blueberry}}). The title character is a pilot in the US Air Force (when he isn't assigned to the US Navy); he has two sidekicks, Jerry Tumbler and Sonny Tuckson.

Together they first get to fight the Japanese in UsefulNotes/WW2, first as regular fighter pilots, and then as part of General Chennault's Flying Tigers in China. They go their separate ways after the end of the war but quickly reunite and become civilian pilots for a shady Middle Eastern company. They decide to re-enlist in the Air Force, become test pilots for the new generations of jet aircraft, and in 1950 are sent on the Korean front.

After UsefulNotes/TheKoreanWar, they have various adventures from Alaska to Malaysia, and earn a recurring ArchEnemy, the spy-for-hire Lady X. In the 1960s and early 1970s, rather than being deployed in UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar, they fly on the Blue Angels acrobatic team and fight a drug cartel in South-East Asia.

The series is notable for its realistic depiction of aircraft, even as the stories themselves are pure fiction.

* ActionGirl: Susan Holmes from the World War Two story arcs is every inch as resourceful, intrepid and capable of ruining the bad guys' plans as any of the main trio.

* BananaRepublic: "Alerte Atomique" and "L'escadrille de la mort" take place in a fictional Latin American country where insurgents and government forces are fighting it out. And in "Alerte à Cap Kennedy", the villains are from the fictional Caribbean country of Managua.

* ChromosomeCasting: Female characters are very rare in the series, at least in the books written by Charlier. The first books do feature an intrepid female nurse and a MI-6 female agent, but soon the only women are either wives (or widows...) of pilots, Sonny's various doomed attempts at finding a fiancée, or enemy spies. And of course [[ArchEnemy Lady X]].

* CorruptCorporateExecutive: one of the more common types of villains. Oil barons trying to take over the postwar Arab oil market, aircraft constructors trying to cheat the government or eliminate their competition, shady business cartels propping up third world dictators, arms dealers playing both sides of a war.

** Also Dan Cooper, the main character of a similar series that ran in the rival newspaper "Tintin."

* FictionalCountry: one of the most common settings in the comic. After two volumes set in the Korean War, the authors were warned that their series would be banned in France (not their country, but still their biggest market) if it didn't stop referencing contemporary "political" issues. As a result, inventing entire countries to get around this restriction became commonplace. As of now, we've had three [[BananaRepublic Banana Republics]] (Mantegua, Inagua, and Managua), one {{Qurac}} (the Oulai sheikdom), and two [[{{Wutai}} Wutais]] (Vien Tan and North Sarawak).

* HeterosexualLifePartners: the three main characters. Originally, they serve together in the Pacific, then are de-mobilized at the end of the war and go their separate ways. However, faced with the same problems (lack of civilian skills and unfriendly job market) while living in the same city, they eventually move back together and never leave each other again, first accepting a job with a new airline company and eventually going back to the Air Force together.

* LivingLegend: Buck. There are many examples, but probably the best one comes towards the beginning of "Tonnerre Sur La Cordillère." Buck is fleeing for his life on a stolen F-18, with enemy fighters in hot pursuit. He has no way of positively identifying himself for his aircraft carrier, and the officers on the bridge are hesitant to intervene in a fight between foreign fighters without confirmation that one of their own is involved. This lasts until Buck is seen evading the first enemy volley, at which point the admiral comments "do you know a lot of pilots who can evade two Sidewinder missiles, one after another? ''That's Buck!''" and orders his fighters into combat.

* TheMole: A recurring trope. Every third adventure features an infiltrated spy whom the heroes must root out.

* NoOneCouldSurviveThat: Lady X should have died several times over but she always manages to come back in a later adventure.

* AnAesop: In "Le Pilote au masque de cuir". Racism is bad, mmkay?

* CelibateHero: Neither Buck Danny nor Tumbler has a romantic life. Sonny does, but his tastes in women are hopelessly self-defeating.

* CrossOver: In one episode, the characters meet Tanguy and Laverdure, who are themselves the leading characters of a different series, also written by J-M. Charlier (and where Buck Danny also appears in an episode - the characters reference this).

* OverlyLongName: The (supposedly Portuguese) Jacinto Gomez y Sereno y Bolivar y Talacayud. [[ButtMonkey Naturally]], [[{{Eaglelane}} Sonny]] can't remember any of them.

* OverlyLongSpanishName: The (supposedly Portuguese) Jacinto Gomez y Sereno y Bolivar y Talacayud. [[ButtMonkey Naturally]], [[{{Eaglelane}} Sonny]] can't remember any of them.

* ActionGirl: Female characters may be rare in the series, but Susan Holmes from the World War Two story arcs is every inch as resourceful, intrepid and capable of ruining the bad guys' plans as any of the main trio.

* DodgeByBraking: A Soviet pilot in a Mig-29 pulls the stunt against both Buck Danny and Sonny Tuckson--twice--in "Les Agresseurs".

* HeroesFightBarehanded: an aerial version of this in "Zone Interdite." Buck, with Tumb and Sonny onboard, is escaping an enemy airbase in a Cessna with no weapons, while pursued by a fully armed MiG-23. Buck manages to draw it in by flying close to the ground in a mountainous region, avoiding both of its missiles and then its cannon, until, while trying to line up the much slower Cessna, the MiG pilot falls below the minimum required airspeed and crashes into a canyon wall.

* LanternJawOfJustice: Buck has one. Tumbler's is less pronounced, but still here.

* EjectionSeat: [[http://adproject.free.fr/wordpress/?p=343/ This blog]] calculates that, by the 51th installment, Buck and Tumbler have ejected ten times each, and Sonny eight times. [[ComingInHot Including the times they didn't eject]], they scrapped a total of 51 planes worth about 480 million dollars.

* BedouinRescueService

* ButtMonkey: Sonny.

* CorruptCorporateExecutive: one of the more common types of villains. Oil barons trying to take over the postwar Arab oil market, aircraft constructors trying to cheat the government or eliminate their competition, shady business cartels propping up third world dictators, arms dealers.

* FictionalCountry: one of the most common settings in the comic. After two volumes set in the Korean War, the authors were warned that their series would be banned in France (not their country, but still their biggest market) if it didn't stop referencing contemporary "political" issues. As a result, inventing entire countries to get around this restriction became commonplace. As of now, we've had three [[BananaRepublic Banana Republics]] (Mantegua, Inagua, and Managua), one {{Qurac}} (the Oulai sheikdom), and two [[{{Wutai}} Wutais]] (Vien Tan and North Sarawak). Note that many of these are based on real locations - Great Inagua and Little Inagua are actual islands in the Caribbean (albeit part of the Bahamas), Sarawak is an actual region in Borneo (albeit part of Malaysia), and Managua is a real city in Central America (the capital of Nicaragua). Finally, "Vien Tan" was a blatant near-anagram for Vietnam (in a story similarly featuring an American-friendly regime undermined by a revolution).

* GratuitousEnglish: as is common in Belgian comics. Amusingly, the expressions used are often British rather than American (i.e. any expression including the word "bloody"), as British English is what most people on the continent have had the most exposure to.
* HeroesFightBarehanded: an aerial version of this in "Zone Interdite." Buck, with Tumb and Sonny onboard, is escaping an enemy airbase in a Cessna with no weapons, while pursued by a fully armed MiG-23. Buck manages to draw it in by flying close to the ground in a mountainous region, avoiding both of its missiles and then its cannon, until, while trying to line up the much slower Cessna, the MiG pilot loses the necessary airspeed and crashes into a canyon wall.

* HiredGuns: very common villains, especially mooks. Lady X is the most memorable version, a spy and pilot who will work for anybody if the price is right. Even without her, however, the villains' air forces are usually manned by mercenaries. The PrivateMilitaryContractors type is the most common, but FormerRegimePersonnel will also appear from time to time, including several Imperial Japanese veterans and two pilots from the Shah of Iran's air force.

* LivingLegend: Buck. There are many examples, but probably the best one comes towards the beginning of "Tonnerre Sur La Cordillère." Buck is fleeing for his life on a stolen F-18, with enemy fighters in hot pursuit. He has no way of positively identifying himself for his aircraft carrier, and the officers on the bridge are hesitant to intervene in a fight between foreign fighters without confirmation that one of their own is involved. This lasts until Buck is seen evading the first enemy volley, at which point the admiral comments "do you know a lot of pilots who can evade two Sidewinder missiles, one after another? ''It's Buck!''" and orders his fighters into combat.

** ... ''most'' of the time. However, there were a couple of times when he was shot down, presumed dead, and instead managed to not only hold his own but obtain information about the enemy that turns out to be crucial to defeating them. Sonny may be accident-prone and socially awkward in civilian life, but in a war zone, he's still someone you want at your side. (Mostly).

* RippedFromTheHeadlines: particularly common in the early stories (where the adventures were set during World War Two, Arab oil conflicts, the Korean War) and in later ones (the Yugoslav wars, Central American drug wars, the war in Afghanistan). In between the two, the authors took a long hiatus from real-life conflicts, including the Cold War itself, to avoid irritating French censors. On a less political note, however, the stories always followed the evolution of real life aerospace technology very closely, such as the development of jet technology, the early space program, the SR-71, stealth technology, etc.