Review by Frank Plowright

In the world created by Serge Lehman and Fabrice Colin, the chemicals and gases people were exposed to during World War I created a small group of super powered individuals. Some have used that power to control nations, while others work for the betterment of humanity as a whole.

The Chimera Brigade Book Two opens by tying up a loose end from Book One and spotlighting The Eye, a Frenchman who seemingly follows his own muse. He’s regarded as a hero, but has very publicly fallen out with the Radium Institute, who were also seen in Book One, presented as heroic if compared with many others. They certainly are when compared with Cagliostro, a definite villain.

Artist Gess draws him as if some mad caperer from a children’s movie, perhaps the Child Catcher, gleefully decrepit and twisted into odd poses accentuating overly large hands and feet. It’s extremely effective. So is the remaining art, stylishly conceived in featuring distinctive characters who all carry a darkness about them. Ostensibly the day’s saviour when she manifests, Palmyra is an attractive middle-aged woman in a distinctive cloak, but her technique is pulling horrors from the underworld to do her bidding.

This volume we learn about the Chimera Brigade title, the name referring to a group of heroes seemingly gathered ten years prior to the story’s present day, but such has been the obfuscation no-one knows if they’re actually real or the creation of pulp fiction. Readers, though, are shown interludes of characters commenting on what they hear, but discussions in which they can’t participate.

Lehman and Colin write cleverly, setting an atmosphere, and dropping hints via the cast, who know more than readers, and more than they let on to others. The conversations form a backdrop to a story of revenge, primarily for an intrusion seen last time, but possibly also for other reasons. By the end a puzzle has been solved and a truth established, but the world still stands on the brink of war. It’s great. On to Book Three.