A Buck Danny Adventure Book 3: Ghost Squadron

A Buck Danny Adventure Book 3: Ghost Squadron

Cinebook the 9th Art Publisher 1996

Written & Illustrated by Francis Bergèse

Coloured by Frédéric Bergèse

Translated by Jerome Saincantin

Lettered by Imadjinn sarl

Bosnia, 1995. Serb forces are encircling Sarajevo and defying UN peacekeeping troops, even shooting at patrolling US Navy fighters. International politics keep American hands tied. After Tuckson disobeys orders and attacks a Serb position, he is disciplined by being sent to a secret base, where other pilots from the US military—including Buck—are training for a mysterious mission in unmarked planes. But this Ghost Squadron is not the only unofficial fighting force in the area…

This is one of those amazing series that you wouldn’t think of off the bat but once you read it you realise just how special it truly is. It has this whole Dan Dare and Buck Rogers feel to it in that it’s action packed and has the kind of cast of characters that you can empathise with and find one in particular you can connect with. Sonny for example has a fiery temper to match his fiery ginger hair and he’s not afraid to say what’s on his mind or to justify his actions. It’s easy to see why he’s a member of the team and won’t be in the leadership role anytime soon.

I absolutely adore the way that this is being told. The story & plot development that we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is presented exceptionally well. You have to pay attention to because if you don’t you’ll miss key bits of information that make the story complete. The character development that we see is utterly amazing and how the dialogue alongside the way they act and react to the situations and circumstances they encounter really do keep them feeling fresh, changing and evolving while always staying true to who they are at their core. The pacing is superb and as it takes us through the pages revealing the twists & turns along the way it feels less like a traditional war book and more like episodic television.

How we see this being structured is fantastic and how the layers thin the story find a way to play out throughout the book, some continuing from previous issues and others freshly emerging all conspire to add that little something extra to the story. The way that everything works together to create the story’s ebb & flow is sensational and it really helps to ensure everything moves ever forward.

The interiors here are spectacular to see. The linework is clean, crisp and through the varying weights and techniques we see some of the nicest detail work around. This kind of book relies heavily on the backgrounds to really set the stage and enhance the moments while providing us with great depth perception, a sense of scale and the overall sense of size and scope to the story. How everything works within the composition of the panels really showcases some brilliant work. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show a masterful eye for storytelling. The colour work is brilliant, seriously brilliant. How we see the various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work is stupendous. That it also makes it look like a Sunday Newspaper strip should be commended.

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This is one of my favourite series of stories and admittedly I have come to find them rather late in their long and healthy run I still look forward to sitting down and reading these. They are timeless and showcase not only what men and women with a sense of duty are capable of but it also shows us the bonds of friendship and brotherhood. You don’t realise just how important the men and women who protect us really are nor what they go through in order to do what they love. So seeing this even if it’s meant as a cartoon strip it goes so much beyond that and will touch your life in some very unexpected ways.