La Brigade Chimérique (The Chimerical Brigade) - Omnibus Edition

La Brigade chimérique renders homage to L’Homme chimérique (Louis Querelle editions), an overlooked science fiction saga by George Spad published in France between the two wars. It is a serious work bearing witness to the traumatism that was inflicted upon the European imagination by the Great War. This saga, started in 1919, was beginning to take on a fascinating turn when it was inexplicably interrupted in 1934. Seventy-three years later, La Brigade takes up and develops this new direction – for enjoyment of course, but also because behind it may lie the solution to one of the great enigmas of the history of the twentieth century: why are there no longer any super heroes in Europe?

Serge Lehman and Fabrice Colin’s scenario follows the tradition of serialisation popular between the two wars. It is enhanced by the work of Gess, a magnificently inspired art director and a creator of a graphic universe in the tradition of the Bauhaus and German expressionism, based on vast research into costumes, décor, objects, etc.

La Brigade chimérique is more than mere fiction. It is an archaeological leap into the heart of the mutilated imagination of Europe. An attempt to reconstruct what happened to us 70 years ago – to understand how we lost the Homeric power of expressing our values in the mythological form. With, perhaps, the hope that this confrontation may help to restore that broken link.