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Page 3 of 3
About the Artist
Jacques Tardi, who has just entered his fifth decade as one of the defining cartoonists of
his generation, was born in Valence, France in 1946. Tardi broke into Pilote magazine with
a series of short stories beginning in 1969, soon graduating to graphic novels. In 1976, he
launched (for Editions Casterman) his turn-of-the-century serial Adèle Blanc-Sec, of which
nine volumes have appeared, most recently (after a decade-long hiatus) Le Labyrinthe
Infernal in 2007. The unsmiling heroine is being adapted into a trilogy of movies (“Indiana
Jones meets Amélie”) by director/producer Luc Besson, with the first installment slated for
release in 2010.
Tardi’s more than 30 graphic
novels to date include a number of
books about World
War I (most recently the two-volume
Putain de Guerre)
and a
long
run
of detective
and
crime thrillers, of
which five star
Léo
Malet’s Paris-based private eye Nestor Burma. Tardi
was the Grand Prize winner of the 1985 Angoulême comics convention.
Tardi
continues
to produce
graphic
novels at
a pace
that would
be
daunting
to cartoonists
half his age. His next release, after the just-completed concluding volume of Putain
de Guerre, will be his third book based on a story by Jean-Patrick Manchette (after the collaboration Griffu and the adaptation West Coast Blues), La Position du tireur couché (The
Prone Gunman.)
About This Book
It Was the War of the Trenches
Price:
$24.99
As
Jacques
Tardi
notes
in
his
introduction,
The
Great
War
—
that
gaping
wound in Europe’s history from which has sprung seemingly every horror that
has
afflicted
us since
— was on
his
mind from the
beginning. As a
child,
he
was haunted by his grandfather’s war stories; the War was the subject of the
first “real” book he read;
and
when he tried, at the tender age of
22, to sell
his first professional comics story to Pilote magazine, that was the subject he
chose. (It was rejected.)
While Tardi’s work has ranged through many genres and many periods,
from
the
1812
war
through
modern-day
France
to
a
faux-Roman
postapocalyptic
future,
he
returns
to
that
conflict
again
and
again,
sometimes
glancingly (as in the Adele Blanc-Sec series, whose heroine sleeps through
it, although she wakes up to witness its ghastly residue), sometimes head-on
— as he does here (and his most recent work, Putain de guerre!).
It
Was
the
War
of
the
Trenches
endured
the
longest
gestation
period
of
any
Tardi
book:
Launched in
1982
in
the
pages
of
the legendary
French
comics
anthology
(A
SUI
VRE)
and
then
continued
two years
later
in
the
hardcover
Le
trou
d’obus
(pp.
9-28
of
the
present
edition),
it
was
abandoned
for
close
to
a
decade
and
finally
completed,
once
again
in
(A SUIVRE), in 1993.
But if French readers suffered a patience-straining 12-year wait between
publication of the first and
final
episodes,
Trenches’ long
march to
English-language
publication
doubled
that:
RAW
Magazine
published
an
early
chapter in 19
83 (pp. 31-38); then Drawn and Quarterly
cherry-picked
three
of the latter chapters for its flagship anthology over a decade later. It appears
here complete in English for the first time, and newly translated, too — except
for the RAW segment whose translator, Kim Thompson, vowed 26 years ago
that he would some day complete the job. And so he has.
Books by Jacques Tardi (click covers for complete product details)
West Coast Blues
Price:
$18.99
|
You Are There
Price:
$26.99
|
It Was the War of the Trenches
Price:
$24.99
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