We wanted Andraski’s first guinea pig to look like one of the Eastern European bodybuilders of the mid-70s, who looked like they were doped up on horse hormones. Cordo isn’t wrong when he criticizes the prototype’s lack of subtlety.

In this story, Black Orchestra recruits are made to carry very heavy backpacks over several kilometers. This idea was taken from Mike Ryan’s book, The Operators (Collins, 2005), which includes descriptions of training techniques used by special forces in different countries.

We imagined Desmond as a stout man of African origin. We wanted his appearance to be a little more caricatured, hence, the bald head, which is frequently associated with villains. To emphasize this aspect, we drew inspiration from Commander Hydro, as he appears in episode 48 of the series Goldorak, where one of his eyes is replaced by a diamond.

We saw a documentary on the Cold War, in which people suspected that certain suicides were actually a cover-up for murders. One of the ways these murders were supposed to have been done was by knocking the victim out on the edge of a window and then throwing them out of it. We also recalled the suicide in the summer of 2010 of a patient in a Montreal hospital, who jumped from a ninth-floor window. We put these two unrelated anecdotes together to write our story.

The character of Edwin in “Gunrunner” was directly inspired by a death notice found in the September 2012 issue of The Economist. It described one Edwin P. Wilson, a shady, little-known member of US counterespionage, who had been nicknamed Gunrunner. We liked the profile so much it made its way into a story.

In this story, the duel between Jason and Tucker on the beach at sunset is directly inspired by the fight between Gina Carano and Ewan McGreggor in Steven Soderbergh’s film Haywire.

“The Nightmare” mentions a terrorist group called CLODO (Committee Liquidating or Diverting Computers). This group actually existed. A few computer terrorism actions were attributed to them in the early 80s. At that time, the attacks were on the physical installations of computer manufacturers, not on data.

The French title comes from a song recorded by Axel Bauer in the mid-80s. This story wasn’t anticipated. It came to us when we saw photos of the shipwreck of the Rena off New Zealand in 2011. Week by week, the boat sank progressively more. Some of the photos had such dramatic intensity that “Night Cargo” simply took shape on its own. It also provided an opportunity to introduce Deathblow to the Black Orchestra team.

In this story, we see two mechanical birds fly near Benson’s plane. This comes from an article we came across by accident, on just such an invention. We liked it and adapted it to our story.

In this adventure, Leonard goes on a long tirade to explain that he isn’t welcome in the middle-class neighbourhood into which he has moved. Once, a friend who was selling his house in this type of neighbourhood told us that his neighbours had been mortified to learn that the potential buyer was a person of colour. This story came back to us while writing the story.