- - a most secret tale of Canadian daring and danger from the Great War.
Group of 7: A Most Secret Tale is a War Comic Book by Chris Sanagan and Jason Lapidus, and the first comic series released under Group of 7 Comics.
The Great War is on, and Europe is suffering through it. There's been a lot of death and destruction on both sides, and the war's going on much longer than everyone expected. Worse, the Germans have unleashed their newest weapon on the battlefield: a deadly gas.
However, the Allied Forces aren't going to just sit back and take this lying down.
Enter John McCrae
, a Canadian man known amongst the ranks as the Celebrity Soldier because of a poem he published. On April 3rd, 1917, he's brought before Commander Currie, who wants him to lead a recon operation to confirm intel gathered about Vimy Ridge. With no real choice in the matter, John agrees to it the next day at the Albany Club. From there, he's introduced to the team he'll be working with.
- Francis Pegahmegabow (Yes, that was his real name.), a crack shot with a sniper rifle.
- Lester Pearson, a nineteen-year-old who is assigned to logistics.
- Alexander Young Jackson, a first class cartographer.
- Norman Bethune, a soldier from the Royal Navy, and an expert in close-quarters combat.
- Frederick Banting, from the Med Corps.
- Constantine Falkland Cary Smythe, the hand-to-hand expert.
- Francis Pegahmegabow
The team assembled, these men set out to make history.
The comic was published in December of 2020.
Group of 7: A Most Secret Tale contains examples of:
- Action Girl: Milunka Savic, an acquaintance of Pearson's from Serbia. They fought in the Balkans together, and she can certainly hold her own in a fight.
- Deadly Gas: In the first issue, on April 22nd, 2015, the Germans release grenades containing chlorine gas in the Second Battle of Ypres.
- Deliberately Monochrome: The entire comic is drawn in black and white.
- Distressed Dude: Banting gets abducted by the Germans in Issue #3, and taken to an underground lab to help the Germans perfect their Super-Soldier formula.
- Flawed Prototype: The version of the Super Serum that the Germans have developed when they've captured Banting causes anyone injected with it to Hulk Out into a musclebound monster... that flies into an uncontrollable rage. Leaupanne thinks the problem is enzyme-based, and wants Banting to help him fix it.
- Hidden Weapons: When Bethune goes to kill some guards in front of an entrance to the lab underneath Vimy Ridge, he produces two blades from his sleeves.
- The Man Behind the Man: Leaupanne is revealed to be leading a group dedicated to destroying Europe and rebuilding it all as Swiss land. He and his people were the ones who made the Germans into the force they were in the war.
- Manly Facial Hair: Bethune and Smythe were mustachioed men who fought in World War I. But especially Smythe for challenging McCrae for leadership of the team, not liking the idea of being ordered around by a poet.
- Spiteful Spit: When a British prisoner of Leaupanne and his German allies refuses to cooperate in their experiments, he spits at them after telling them off.
- Very Loosely Based on a True Story: While the protagonists in the comic were very real people, it's doubtful any of them fought feral Super Soldiers in a top secret German lab under Vimy Ridge, or stopped a Swiss conspiracy to destroy all of Europe so they could rebuild it in their image.
