Buz Sawyer - Roy Crane
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- Sultry's Tiger - In this volume, which starts 10/5/45, WWII has just ended. There is a two-strip moment of suspense when we fear Buz's plane home has gone down, but the family is disabused of this notion immediately, and we are off to the drama of exotic locales and femmes fatales. Pilots are a dime a dozen, but Buz's old pal Chili gets him a job as a jack-of-all-trades pilot adventurer, first with International Airways and then with Frontier Oil. A wily ex-guerilla maharani he knew in the Pacific tries to win his heart, but is jealous of his old flame Tot, which leads to trouble for them both. Buz is sent to Greenland to stop a mad German from shooting at planes. He is kidnapped, along with a plastic surgeon, and taken to Africa. He goes to south America to rescue a vanished pilot and comes upon some unsavory characters who control the whole area through fear. It's all planes and bare knuckles and curvaceous beauties, pulp adventure in glorious 1940s black and white. The story telling is quite brisk, with very little of the dragging out of side plots, lingering on one scene, or repetition of previous material, so reads extremely well in this format. [4.5]
- Typhoons and Honeymoons - This volume starts 7/24/47. Buz is still working for Frontier Oil as an adventurer-of-all-quests. The first story is mostly light humor, in which he meets up with his friend Thirsty, who pulls a bait and switch on Buz and leaves him with his fiancee, whom Thirsty is ashamed to face. But then a typhoon blows in Thirsty must step up. Next a long arc starts in which Buz plays cat and mouse with what will become a long-term foe: Harry Sparrow, a cruel but hapless blend of Lex Luthor and the Deacon from Pogo, who is running guns. He's a terrific character, a rich crime lord with a delicate stomach who detests violence. His dumb muscle Gool is similarly a delight. But it's not all fun and games; Buz is marooned on an island, left on a burning ship, even drugged and reduced to an amnesiac hobo in the care of a frightful old bag lady. The last third details an excursion to drill oil in Africa. It's all masterfully drawn and plotted. Easily some of the best adventure strips in the medium, I'd say. [5]
