In 2013, writer Serge Lehman and cartoonist Gess revisited this classic of the scientific-marvel genre in a homonymous comic book, transposing the character created by Maurice Renard into a superheroic context.

Maurice Renard is a novelist of the scientific imagination who seeks to theorize a literary genre under the name of "scientific-marvel"[Note 1] novel to promote its emergence.

[2] Thus, Maurice Renard advocates the use of science, no longer as a setting like the scientific novels of Jules Verne, but as a disruptive element that generates a wonderful phenomenon.

Maurice Renard transposes this process to a vision of the electrical phenomena with which the main character is provided, who manages to see a tree-like image of the nervous tissue of individuals.

The First World War and the trauma induced by the devastation caused by technology reinforces in these novelists this mistrust of science,[9] especially with the proliferation of mad scientists in fictional stories.

Thus, J.-H. Rosny aîné, in his novel L'Énigme de Givreuse published in 1916, presents a wounded soldier returning from the front line after having been split into two completely identical copies.

[12] The following year, he published the novel L'Homme truqué which, like L'Énigme de Givreuse, deals with a soldier returning home after having undergone a physical transformation caused by scientists.

As Jean returned to his mother's house, Dr. Bare observed him through the window and witnessed an incredible scene that made him doubt the young man's real blindness: at the last stroke of noon, he looked at his watch and set it back on time.

A couple of weeks later, while the doctor is examining Jean for his worsening cough, he meets Madame Lebris' new tenant, a young girl named Fanny, and is immediately seduced.

The novelist Renée Dunan - also an author of scientific-marvel novels - admires Maurice Renard's ability to tell the story of a man who sees a world inaccessible to his fellow men.

The journalist and doctor Raymond Nogué qualifies the story as a scientific novel of quality which manages to captivate the reader on the exceptional faculties of the hero, in spite of a somewhat fanciful treatment.

In an article published on May 15, 1922, if he also classifies the novel in the line of the works of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells by the scientific content of the story, even if this one pours in the fantastic, he nevertheless deplores a "literary value [...] not appreciably exceeding the average".

This magazine, whose editor-in-chief is Abbot Bethlehem, a true promoter of Catholic censorship in France,[16] gives Maurice Renard credit for producing at least a captivating story that does not offend decency.

Thus, in an article in the Journal des débats politiques et littéraires of January 25, 1922, he deplores, in addition to a lack of originality with respect to H. G. Wells, that the dramatic power of the novel makes it fall into what he pejoratively qualifies as a soap opera.

In this respect, L'Homme truqué bears witness to this post-war period when an unprecedented need for reconstructive surgery appeared in France and which pushed the latter to solve complex cases and to progress.

[19] Promoter of the scientific-marvel genre, which aims to give a new point of view on the potentialities of science, Maurice Renard makes an analogy, in the plot of L'Homme truqué, between this new look and the superhuman vision of the character.

[20] Following his surgery, Jean Lebris gains an extraordinary vision, which allows him to discern things like people's nervous systems and heat sources, especially in the dark or through walls.

Through the genius doctor Prosope, Maurice Renard proposes a phantasmagorical explanation to justify the sixth sense acquired by Jean Lebris: the electroscopes make it possible to capture electricity, in the same way that ears grafted in place of the eyes would have made it possible to see sounds.

[21] Endowed with his extraordinary vision, Jean Lebris describes an environment bathed in an electric field, whose slightest anomaly, the smallest variation reflects a particular hue.

Indeed, his augmented vision even allows him to observe strange creatures made of electricity, living unbeknownst to the common man,[7] like the Sarvants, the invisible spiders that Maurice Renard portrays in his 1911 novel Le Péril bleu[Note 5][12].

[22] The concern generated by the transhumanist novelty is also expressed through the character of Dr. Bare, confidant and doctor of Jean Lebris, who is surprised during the auscultation, that the use of a fixed ocular apparatus does not cause strong inflammation.

Maurice Renard describes here a secret society living in a scientific counter-utopia on the fringe of the world, which aims, despite methods ranging from kidnapping to murder, at an improvement of the human race.

[28] This balance between the comic, fantastic, detective and marvelous-scientific aspects that the author seeks to establish, aims to make the speculative assumptions of the story acceptable to the reader.

[33] Thus, in March 1921, Alexandre Rzewuski, a worldly painter of the Roaring Twenties, illustrates the novel in the magazine Je sais tout while bringing a real artistic added value to the story.

Thus, while Alexander Rzewuski was inspired by the gas masks and goggles used by soldiers on the front line to give him an avant-garde look, the Milanese designer of the Italian version of 1924, Riccardo Salvadori, opted for glasses without arms that are fixed directly on his eyes.

In this particular case, the colored bubbles drawn by Louis Bailly would be similar to a phenomenon of subjective sensation of light, such as retinal persistence or the production of luminous images when the retina is hit.

This work is integrated into the universe of La Brigade chimérique, a comic book series published by both authors between 2009 and 2010, which explores the disappearance of supermen in the aftermath of World War II.

Thus, the story of this "doctored man" is revisited and made more optimistic than the original, as it is explained that Maurice Renard lied to protect the existence of the real Jean Lebris.

Transposed into a superheroic context, Lebris appears alongside his creator Maurice Renard - who is presented as his official biographer - and many other fictional heroes of early 20th century popular literature.

He tells how he took refuge in the United States on the eve of the Second World War and started a career as a superhero - one of his adventures was even illustrated by Jack Kirby -, before returning to France in 2021 to join the new Chimeric Brigade.