pencil: William Vance

story: Jean Van Hamme

Full story.
Book of 48 pages, in color, second episode of a series.
The journey of XIII continues in search of his past.
In tracking down the woman in the photograph, he reaches a military base, where the dead husband of the woman should have served.
He discovers that he is her husband, who has been trained by the government to be an elite soldier and that he was believed to have died in a helicopter crash during the war two years earlier (tattoo XIII was done to him after his alleged death).
XIII rejects his general's proposal to return to service and instead joins his family: his father, paralyzed after a car accident in which his mother died, his new wife (formerly younger and beautiful nurse), his uncle and his family, wife and teenage son.
The family is rich, but the environment is not the best, so much so that it is framed for the murder of his father and uncle by the nurse.
Luckily he manages to track down the woman in the photograph, his wife, but she turns out to be part of the plot: she has the XVII tattoo and disappears after revealing that she is not the real Steve Rowland.
XIII is arrested and sentenced to life in prison for the murder of his 'father'.
The second volume of the series is excessively convoluted, so much so that I have given up on continuing the series.