After getting the first volume of The Chimera Brigade from Titan Comics, I got the second and third volumes. As with the first volume, these will soon be reprinted in comic-book form as the third through sixth issues. These two volumes reveals the Chimera Brigade, setting things down for what appears to be a coming war.
We are also introduced to several new characters, and I’m not always certain which are originals. First off, we meet the Brigade, four individuals who are released from Dr. Severac: the angelic Unknown Soldier; the mother goddess Matrikia; the intelligent bear Brown Baron; and the skeletal Doctor Serum.
Other characters introduced are: the mystic Palmyra, who operates in Paris; The Elastic Man, who had increase and decrease his size and was released in the last volume. Here, The Eye (the Nyctalope) and his C.I.D. capture him and send him against the Radium Institute. The evil hypnotist Cagliostro is defeated, but he doesn’t seem to have any connection with the Count Cagliostro. We also meet Odd John the Cosmic Man and his dog Sirius. These two characters were mutants created in novels of the same names by Olaf Stapledon in the 1930s. Here they are given powers more like Superman and Krypto.
At the end of the third volume, Paris is threatened by the alien virus Xenobia, and the only way to defeat it may allow vampires to overwhelm Paris. But the Brigade figures a way to release Xenobia to outer space and saves the day.
(Hopefully others can help me identify the ones I’m not familiar with.)
But we also see things slowing growing with threat of Dr. Missbrauch (Dr. Mabuse), who heads a Nazi Germany without Hitler. The Swastika is referred to as the “mark of Missbrauch.”
A fourth volume was promised by Titan, but never appeared. As these are translations of a French series, I’m not sure if such a volume was produced and Titan just didn’t translate it. Hopefully they will publish this starting with comic issue #7. I am enjoying this series, and look forward to new material.
