The Black Order Brigade

The Black Order Brigade
Les Phalanges de l'Ordre Noir
Series	The Chaos Effect
Publisher	Les Humanoïdes Associés
Creative team
Writers	Pierre Christin
Artists	Enki Bilal
Original publication
Date of publication	1979
ISBN
Translation
Publisher	Humanoids Publishing
Translator	Frank Wynne

The Black Order Brigade (1979; also published as The Ranks of the Black Order; original French title Les Phalanges de l'Ordre Noir) is a political thriller graphic novel written by Pierre Christin and illustrated by Enki Bilal.

A fascist organization with roots in the Spanish Civil War, The Black Order Brigade, commits an act of terror in a small Basque village. All villagers are executed. The English journalist Pritchard, who once fought against the fascists during the civil war, decides to take revenge. He succeeds in assembling nine of his former comrades from the 15th International Brigade. One of them is now working for the Mossad in Tel-Aviv, another one is a rich screenwriter in Hollywood. There's an Italian judge, a famous Polish writer, a Philosophy teacher in Germany and a priest in Spain, among others. They all meet again after so many years; they are old, sick and weak, but full of passions and memories of the past.

The chase starts in Spain, where the local contact is killed in a bomb attack (attributed to the infamous Brigade). The group then travels around Europe trying to locate the fascist paramilitary old-timer gang. A small group of elderly people hunts another group of people at the same age, and it unravels a showdown with the past and the present.