Last night, we were honored to receive the 2011 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards for "Best Reality-Based Work" and "Best U.S. Edition of International Material" for It Was the War of the Trenches by Jacques Tardi!  It's a privilege to be able to bring Tardi's work to U.S. readers.

Congratulations to all the winners and nominees!

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "...[L]ike the best coming-of-age stories — comics or otherwise — Wandering Son is meticulously accurate in its details, but universal in its emotions. Gay or not, readers shouldn’t find it too difficult to identify with kids who feel like their bodies and their friends are equally culpable in the worst kind of betrayal, preventing them from realizing the potential they see in themselves." – Noel Murray, The A.V. Club

• Review: "The tone of each book is very different, with the Gil Jordan collection favoring clever mysteries, narrow escapes, and broad comic relief, while the Sibyl-Anne book is subtler, dissecting the way miniature societies work, together and in opposition. Both are excellent, though, showing off the strengths of the Eurocomics tradition, with its sprawling narratives spread across small panels, mixing cartoony characters and elaborate backgrounds." – Noel Murray, The A.V. Club

• Review: "Reminiscent of the classic Michael Winner-helmed and Charles Bronson-starred The Mechanic, Tardi's follow up to his acclaimed adaptation of a Manchette crime novel West Coast Blues, Like a Sniper Lining Up His Shot... delivers a superior sequential thriller. Violent, sexy, and littered with enough shocks to excite the most hardened crime fiction fan, Tardi once again produces one of the finest examples of the genre." – Rick Klaw, The SF Site: Nexus Graphica

• Review: "McKean has long been established as a master of multimedia imagery and Celluloid represents possibly his finest work. The clarity and seamlessness with which he combines photography with drawings and paintings makes every scene entirely convincing. It’s this hyper-reality that encourages us to submit to the dream-logic of the story." – Gavin Lees, Graphic Eye

• Review: "[Celluloid] is a story of sexual growth and empowerment. ...McKean's artwork gains greater dimensionality as his central character grows more assertive.... The pace of the story is left up to the reader, but McKean has created such lush visuals that many will want to linger and examine the intricacies of the imagery presented....Many of the pages are so well crafted in their surrealistic imagery that they could easily hang beside Picasso. McKean has boldly stepped away from the confines of mainstream comic books with this endeavor, and the result is a masterpiece of eroticism that relies heavily on intellect and emotion, rather than just mere arousal or titillation." – Michael Hicks, Graphic Novel Reporter

• Review: "If Siamese Dream-era Smashing Pumpkins exploded inside a Victorian tea shop, it would look something like [Meat Cake]... The humour is perverse, like an alt-universe Kate Bush who grew up reading penny dreadfuls instead of Brontë, the drawings are obsessively crammed with fever-dream detail, and the author has the advantage of being able to make publicity appearances dressed as her own characters, which is not something most cartoonists should attempt." – Grant Buist, The Name of This Cartoon is Brunswick

• Profile: Rosalie Higson of The Australian talks to Robert Crumb in anticipation of his visit to Sydney next month for the GRAPHIC festival: "There's a unique timing and way of telling a story with comic panels, different to writing novels or a film script. And there are seasons in the life of any artist. Crumb has dropped all his ongoing characters. 'I'm sick of them all. I'm very critical of my own work, when I look back on it I'm not especially proud, I wasn't really serious enough about it. I'm not sure what it all means for posterity, I have no idea. You can be the world's most favourite artist, and be totally forgotten a few years later,' he says."

• Interview: At Print magazine's Imprint blog, Michael Dooley chats with Trina Robbins. Dooley: "Trina's 2009 The Brinkley Girls: The Best of Nell Brinkley's Cartoons from 1913-1940 is a stunning collection as well as a detailed pictorial chronicle of the evolution of fashion and style, from Nouveau to Deco." Robbins: "I love clothes. I love lipstick. I love glamor. And obviously, so have many other women, if you look at the large readership of artists like Nell Brinkley and Brenda Starr's Dale Messick. And in the case of younger readers, at all the girls who loved Katy Keene. There probably are still some women who might want to see me, if not guillotined, then at least sent off to a gulag for promoting such work."

• Plug: "I was planning to attend [Comic-Con] dressed as Prince Valiant in honor of the lavish reprints of Hal Foster's classic, which I'm collecting, but was told I wouldn't be allowed to bring my 'singing sword' on the plane, so there went that idea. So I guess I'll just go as 'me,' letting others provide the color and dash." – James Wolcott, Vanity Fair

Fantagraphics is puttin' the "comics" back in Comic-Con as we head to San Diego this week with a slew of scintillating signings, almost two-dozen dynamite debuts, and a collection of comics sure to please any comics fan... and fill those enormous free tote bags they give away at the door.

First up, DEBUTS!

• Love & Rockets New Stories 4 by Los Bros Hernandez
• Mark Twain’s Autobiography by Michael Kupperman
• Prison Pit Vol. 3 by Johnny Ryan
• Mome 22, edited by Eric Reynolds
• The Raven by Lou Reed and Lorenzo Mattotti
•  The Art of Joe Kubert, edited by Bill Schelly
• Setting the Standard: Alex Toth, edited by Greg Sadowski
• Esperanza by Jaime Hernanadez
• Like A Sniper Lining Up His Shot by Jacques Tardi
• Gil Jordan, Private Detective: Murder by High Tide by M. Tillieux
• The Pin-Up Art of Humorama, edited by Alex Chun
• Drawing Power, edited by Rick Marschall and Warren Bernard
• Sibyl-Anne vs. Ratticus by R. Macherot
• Willie & Joe: Back Home hardcover and Willie & Joe: The WWII Years softcover by Bill Mauldin
• The Armed Garden by David B.
• Complete Peanuts 1981-1982 (Vol. 16) by Charles Schultz
• Even More Jewish Comedians by Drew Friedman
• The Hidden by Richard Sala
• The Man Who Grew His Beard by Olivier Schrauwen
• Nuts by Gahan Wilson

Next up, SIGNINGS!

Thursday, July 21st:
1:00 - 2:00 PM    Joyce Farmer / Esther Pearl Watson
2:00 - 3:00 PM    Bill Schelly / Robert Goodin
3:00 - 5:00 PM    Gilbert Hernandez / Jaime Hernandez / Mario Hernandez
5:00 - 6:00 PM    Frank Stack / Paul Hornschemeier

Friday, July 22nd:
11:00 - 12:00 PM    Joyce Farmer / Bill Schelly / Tim Hensley
12:00 - 1:00 PM    Floyd Norman / Wilfred Santiago / Frank Stack
1:00 - 3:00 PM    Gilbert Hernandez / Jaime Hernandez / Mario Hernandez
3:00 - 4:00 PM    Paul Hornschemeier / Anders Nilsen / Esther Pearl Watson
4:00 - 5:00 PM    Mark Kalesniko / John Pham / Malachi Ward
5:00 - 7:00 PM    Johnny Ryan
5:00 - 6:00 PM    Jon Vermilyea
6:00 - 7:00 PM    Robert Goodin

Sunday, July 24th:
11:00 - 12:00 PM   Joyce Farmer / Jon Vermilyea / Esther Pearl Watson
12:00 - 1:00 PM    Mark Kalesniko / Frank Stack
1:00 - 3:00 PM    Gilbert Hernandez / Jaime Hernandez / Mario Hernandez

All the action awaits you at our usual spot, Booth #1718!

And don't miss our amazing PANELS!  I won't get into all the details, because Mike did so earlier here on the FLOG, so click on the date to see our previously posted full rundown on each panel!

Thursday, July 21st:
• 12:30-1:30     Spotlight on Bill Schelly [Room 8]
• 1:00-2:00     CBLDF Master Session 2: Shannon Wheeler [Room 30CDE]
• 2:00-3:00     Love and Rockets — Gilbert, Jaime, and Mario Hernandez [Room 9]
• 2:30-3:30     Joyce Farmer: Special Exits, A Memoir [Room 4]
• 3:30-4:30     Spotlight on Frank Stack  [Room 4]
• 6:00-7:00     Comics for Social Justice: The Making of Oil and Water [Room 9]

Friday, July 22nd:
• 10:30-11:30     Comics Arts Conference Session #5: Critical Approaches to Comics: An Introduction to Theories and Methods— Matthew J. Smith and Randy Duncan with panelist, Andrei Molotiu. [Room 26AB]
• 1:00-2:00     Comics Arts Conference Session #6: Wordless Comics with Andrei Molotiu. [Room 26AB]
• 12:00-1:00     CBLDF Master Session 3: Jaime Hernandez [Room 30CDE]
• 1:00-2:00     Publishing Queer: Producing LGBT Comics and Graphic Novels with moderator Justin Hall  [Room 9]
• 1:00-2:30     The Golden Age of the Fanzine moderated by Bill Schelly. [Room 24ABC]
• 10:30-11:30     Cartoon Network Comedy: Regular Show/The Problem Solverz and More! The Problem Solverz talent includes Ben Jones, John Pham, and Jon Vermilyea. [Room 6A]

Saturday, July 23rd:
• 10:00-11:30     50 Years of Comic Fandom: The Founders with Bill Schelly [Room 24ABC]
• 11:30-12:30     Bill Blackbeard: The Man Who Saved Comics with Trina Robbins [Room 24ABC]
• 12:30-1:30     Fantagraphics 35th Anniversary  [Room 24ABC]
• 1:00-2:00     Spotlight on Anders Nilsen [Room 4]
• 2:30-3:30     The Art of the Graphic Novel with Joyce Farmer (Special Exits, A Memoir) [Room 24ABC]   

Sunday, July 24th:
• Nothing. Come shop with us!

PHEW! And, can you believe it? This is only the beginning! Stay tuned to the Fantagraphics FLOG, Twitter and Facebook for important (we mean it!) Comic-Con announcements all week long! 

The French are, not unreasonably, excited by the strong showing of French cartoonists and graphic novels in the Eisners this year -- nine nominations for eight titles, four of 'em for Fantagraphics:
http://www.actuabd.com/Neuf-nominations-pour-la-BD

We think it's sort of charming that the item was posted on Bastille Day. Hence our Marseillaise quote above, for those of you who missed it.

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "...[F]eisty art-comics publisher Fantagraphics, for its new multivolume hardcover series devoted to Gottfredson’s rarely seen comic-strip work [Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse ], has gone back to the beginning, lavishing upon the cartoonist’s marvelously fluid, thrillingly kinetic serial adventures the same loving attention the company has brought to its benchmark Complete Peanuts library. Given that Fantagraphics is an adult-oriented press, production and restoration values are superlative, as are the more than 60 pages of historical essays and archival features that accompany these peerless black-and-white strips.... Anyone who ventures into this gorgeous 288-page tome will come away with a fresh appreciation for just what made Mickey an all-American comic-strip hero." – Steve Smith, Time Out New York

• Review: "Fantagraphics fucking whip ass at knowing what a beautiful book is.... The Mickey Mouse in this collection is a dynamic teenager with a whole lot of strong feelings, and it's both awesome and foreign to see him get mad or feel suicidal.... Fantagraphics are masters at collecting and presenting old comics.... This volume not only presents comics that you probably haven't seen before, but it places them in the proper context with about eight[y] pages of supplementary writing, images, and in-depth explanations that could merit their own little volume." – Nick Gazin, Vice

• Interview: Gazin follows up his Vice review of Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Vol. 1 with a brief chat with series co-editor David Gerstein: "Floyd's greatest achievement... was his portrayal of Mickey himself. Instead of seeing the Mouse as a kind of dull, smiley-faced everyman — the way a lot of people seem to envision him — Floyd portrayed Mickey as what he called 'a mouse against the world.' He was a stubbornly optimistic, imperfect but determined youth trying to prove himself in a competitive, scary, adventurous place. Floyd gave Mickey length and depth."

• Review: "It’s often argued that the key element to any successful manga is a relatable protagonist. Shimura has crafted hers so meticulously and is revealing their natures so carefully that it’s virtually impossible not to be deeply invested in them. In part, it’s the actual portrayal in this volume [of Wandering Son], but it’s also the tremendous potential they have. I want to see them age and mature, struggle and succeed, and find their ways to lives that give them happiness and peace. I don’t think there’s any more a reasonable person could ask of a story like this." – David Welsh, The Manga Curmudgeon

• Review: "...[Wandering Son] is an elegantly-crafted, character-driven story that lets us into its characters’ private worlds with both candor and delicacy. We are brought into their lives completely, and though we’re privy to their some of their most private thoughts and fears, there is never a sense that we’re observing them as 'subjects' or invading their privacy—something I often feel when experiencing 'issue'-focused fiction." – Melinda Beasi, Manga Bookshelf

• Review: "[Mattotti's] enigmatic, brooding scenes [in The Raven] harness the terror and beauty of the texts which span three centuries. They're uncompromising — and that's a quality that has always been applicable to the force that is Lou Reed." – Dean Mayo Davies, AnOther

• Review: "Drawing Power: A Compendium of Cartoon Advertising... is 124 pages of some of the best advertisements from the 1870s to the 1940s. Starring both cartoonists and cartoon characters, the book surveys an immense collection of cartoon advertising, focusing on the commercial roots of the comic strip and the fantastic artwork that came from cartoonists' freelance work in advertising. There are surprising and also familiar examples of products, ad campaigns, widely known catch-phrases, and cartoon figures.... Lovers of vintage advertisements and classic cartoons, you're in for a walk down memory lane..." – Nicole Torres, Print

• Review: "Love from the Shadows is somewhat inappropriately titled, as it sounds like a romance, but is really a sci-fi sex mash-up, with a big dash of David Lynch-ian 'what the fuck just happened here?' It’s definitely no chick flick, despite its strong female lead." – Rod Lott, Bookgasm

• Review: "Congress of the Animals... [is] Woodring’s second book-length Frank story. Not so overtly horrific as last year’s Weathercraft, but somehow more unsettling to me. Perhaps I’m just traumatized by the destruction of Frank’s house. Fantastic wordless storytelling, as always." – M. Ace, Irregular Orbit

• Plug: "You may think of Flannery O’Connor as a writer of the sorts of books that are all words, but in her younger days she yearned to be a cartoonist—and she wasn’t half bad. Fantagraphics will publish Flannery O’Connor: The Cartoons in December..." – Brigid Alverson, Robot 6

• Survey: At The Guardian, Emine Saner asks a handful of prominent cartoonists to name their favorite graphic novelist, gathering comments from Peter Kuper on Robert Crumb, Bryan Talbot and Martin Rowson on Joe Sacco, Posy Simmonds on Jacques Tardi (pictured), Ariel Schrag on Gabrielle Bell, and Lynda Barry on Chris Ware

(final cover may vary)

Ten words I got to use in my translation of the upcoming second Adèle Blanc-Sec book (trying valiantly for an SPX premiere!): bollix, bolster (as a noun), deucedly, dingus, harridan, insensate, pied-à-terre, pithecanthropus, plinth, and thoroughfare.

The nominees for the 2011 Harvey Awards are announced and we are pleased to report that we picked up a handful of nominations for a couple of titles, and to celebrate we're offering them at 25% off for the rest of the week!

It Was the War of the Trenches by Jacques Tardi

• Best American Edition of Foreign Material

Love and Rockets: New Stories #3 by Gilbert & Jaime Hernandez

• Best Continuing or Limited Series
• Best Cartoonist — Jaime Hernandez
• Best Single Issue or Story

We're happy to share the ballot with illustrious pals and colleagues such as Roger Langridge, Shannon Wheeler, Dan Nadel, Monte Beauchamp, Todd Hignite (for The Art of Jaime Hernandez), James Sturm, Dan Clowes, Charles Burns and others.

Winners will be announced at a ceremony on August 20, 2011 at the Baltimore Comic-Con, as per tradition. Browse and order all of our 2011 nominated titles here, and see here for links to past years' award honorees. Congratulations to all the nominees!

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "Gender-bending is nothing new in manga, but it's rare to see the transgender sexual identity issues depicted in a realistic way, rather just as a plot gimmick. With her spare, elegant art and slice-of-life storytelling, Shimura resists the urge to use sensationalism, to tell her sweet and sensitive, albeit unusual, coming-of-age tale.... Just as Shimura treats her two tween characters with respect, so does Fantagraphics' hardcover edition of this story. By presenting Shimura's simple, yet elegant artwork in a larger page format and reproducing her lovely color pages on thick, creamy paper, Fantagraphics has showcased this story in a very special way. The translation is also worth noting, for finding a happy medium between conversational English and maintaining the Japanese setting of this story. Wandering Son is a refreshing example of a graphic novel that gives readers a glimpse of a life rarely seen and a story rarely told. Worth a read, and worth sharing." – Deb Aoki, About.com — Manga

• Review: "In Like a Sniper Lining Up His Shot Jean-Patrick Manchette and Jacques Tardi present an unrelenting and unforgiving French noir graphic novel by two masters of the genre. As straight as a shotgun’s barrel and as tight as a bullet, the story bulldozes over people and ethics to an ending that is as merciless as the protagonists themselves. Highly recommended." – Bart Croonenborghs, Broken Frontier

• Review: "If you’re not familiar with Trondheim’s cartooning (and hoo-boy, you should be), he blends funny-animal body-types with breezily convincing cityscapes to create an imminently readable and visually gorgeous narrative. Trondheim is one of the easiest cartoonists to read, and one of the most satisfying to experience. Approximate Continuum Comics wanders far and wide among topics and settings, but the whole book also tells one long tale about a period in its creator’s life, and by the time you’re done with it you feel you’ve spent some very worthwhile time with a great storyteller. Because you have." – Alan David Doane, Trouble with Comics

• Review: "In their graphic novel Stigmata, Lorenzo Mattotti and Claudio Piersanti have created an exceptional example of a successful collaboration of art and text. Stigmata, which tells the story of a man suddenly afflicted with the eponymous phenomenon, is rendered entirely in astonishingly frenetic, swirling line work. Mattotti has hidden a world of grotesqueries under a smokescreen of pen and ink, and through his perfectly restrained, gritty parable, Piersanti shapes that world into a contemplative and captivating read." – Jeff Alford, About.com

• Review: "For a reader who knows little or nothing about religious tradition outside the caricatures created through self-promoters of the strident and extreme, by those who abuse their faith and others under the cloak of religion, or by the media this story [Stigmata] may very well intrigue, horrify, and maybe even move. It is not a doctrinaire work; it is a human one." – Grant Barber, Three Percent (University of Rochester)

• Interview: At The Comics Journal, Nicole Rudick talks to Jim Woodring: "I had the story before I knew I was going to do it as a hundred-page comic, and those Frank stories kind of write themselves. I set out to gather material for them and when I have enough of it, and it’s the right kind of stuff that fits together in such a way, it makes a whole that works. So I didn’t really set out to write Congress of the Animals as a personal story, but once I had the story in hand and I realized that it was that personal — I had that in mind all the time I was drawing it and that influenced some of the visuals, the factory, for example, and the faceless men."

• Commentary: This week's guest contributor to Robot 6's "What Are You Reading?" feature is Oil & Water artist Shannon Wheeler

• Plug (Video): Harvard Book Store's Ryan Mita recommends The Arctic Marauder by Jacques Tardi

[In this installment of our series of Editors Notes, Kim Thompson interviews himself (in a format he's dubbed "AutoChat") about Like a Sniper Lining Up His Shot by Jacques Tardi and Jean-Patrick Manchette, now available to pre-order from us and coming soon to a comics shop near you. – Ed.]

Okay, if I already have West Coast Blues, why should I buy Like a Sniper Lining Up His Shot?

My promotional tagline for Sniper is, “For those who thought West Coast Blues wasn’t violent enough.”

Seriously? West Coast Blues was pretty brutal.

Sniper mops the floor with it. It was the last novel Jean-Patrick Manchette completed before he died in 1995, and to some degree it’s an exercise in technique. He himself said this, and he also said he wanted it to feel like the Aldrich movie version of Kiss Me Deadly, I assume in terms of velocity, brutality, and the sheer amount of virtuoso set pieces. That’s a high standard (Kiss Me Deadly is one of my top five favorite movies ever), which I think he hits. It also ends with an apocalypse, albeit just inside the protagonist’s brain.


It’s also probably the most extreme example of what Manchette called his “hyperbehaviorist” style, which is a complete refusal to go inside any of the characters’ heads: It’s all purely observational. “He does this. He does that. Then this happens.” It sounds alienating, but your own conjectures as to what’s going on in every character’s head become far more interesting than anything Manchette could have written. The blankness of Tardi’s character faces adds immeasurably to it, by the way, which is one reason they’re such a good team.

What does the title mean? Why is the protagonist “like” a sniper lining up his shot, isn’t he a sniper and doesn’t he line up his shots? Isn’t that that like calling a boxing movie “like a guy about to punch another guy in the face”?

It’s the very last sentence of the novel, and the last sentence of the graphic novel. Trust me, it makes sense.

This is Tardi’s most recent book, right?

Yeah. At this point in his career Tardi is a zen master. Every panel is designed with such confidence, every line laid down with almost arrogant unfussiness… I can’t praise it enough. I know there are people who pine for the more anal, detailed, “clean” look of some of his earlier books, and it’s not an unreasonable aesthetic preference to have. But to me this is just pure cartooning. And it adds another level of dark wit to what is already a blackly funny book.


There’s a four-page scene where the protagonist, Martin Terrier, catches up with some poor patsy who’s shadowing him, tortures the information out of him, and kills him, and the sheer nonchalant professional viciousness of Terrier (as rendered in one of those inexpressive mask-like Tardi faces I just mentioned) and squirm-inducing nature of the scene topples over into funny… as I’m absolutely sure Manchette intended. If you’re reading a noir interrogation scene set in a car and the sentence “he pushed in the cigarette lighter” comes up, your “Oh, NO…!” reaction is supposed to be overlaid with a nervous giggle.

Sounds like the infamous “fingers” interrogation scene in Man on Fire.

I would not be at all surprised to learn that Brian Helgeland, who wrote Man on Fire — one of the more satisfyingly uncompromising revenge thrillers of the past 20 years — had read the original novel, which is available in English (under the title The Prone Gunman). Am I the only one who found that scene in Man on Fire funny too?

Blecchh. Maybe you and Quentin Tarantino. I hope to God so, or I despair for humanity. Let’s end with a double-barreled “what’s next?” question, namely what’s the next Tardi book you’re doing and will there be any more Manchette/Tardi books?

The next Tardi book we’re committed to is the second Adèle Blanc-Sec book (collecting the third and fourth French volume), and while my current plan is to follow that with the “expanded” Roach Killer (i.e. with three or four short stories also set in New York added to it, including “Manhattan” from RAW Vol. 1, titled New York Mon Amour), this may change. As for Manchette/Tardi, there is of course Griffu which we serialized in Pictopia and could throw out there as a graphic novel some season when I’m feeling lazy and not up to adding a translation to my schedule, but I think we'll be able to make another Manchette/Tardi-related announcement soon.

One more thing: Those who would like to read an actual Manchette novel should be advised that New York Review Books just recently released an English-language edition of Manchette’s Fatale, which is a nifty hitwoman thriller. (Tardi started an adaptation of it back in the 1970s and abandoned it.) Go here to order it on Amazon.com.


I would also add that Manchette’s prose is the most fun to translate. I’m not saying it’s the best (nor am I saying it’s NOT the best) in terms of quality, I’m saying it’s just a blast. When I’m working on a Manchette book I can barely wait to finish dinner to run down and knock out a few more Manchette pages. Translation is sort of like literary karaoke and “singing” in Manchette’s voice is pure joy, even when the protagonist is ripping someone’s ear off for no good reason. Maybe especially when the protagonist is ripping someone’s ear off for no good reason. In fact I’m sad I’m done with this one.


One more thing, if you love cats… uh, never mind. There are a lot of cat lovers out there and I’ll just let them have their own little surprise.

Like a Sniper Lining Up His Shot
by Jacques Tardi; based on the novel by Jean-Patrick Manchette

104-page black & white 7.5" x 10.75" hardcover • $18.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-448-1

Ships in: July 2011 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now

Martin Terrier, ice-cold mercenary-turned-contract-killer, has his future all mapped out: He has just executed what he intends to be his final job and is ready to move on to the next phase of his life, which involves discreet retirement accompanied by a long-lost girlfriend. But Terrier’s employers are emphatically not pleased with his decision, old enemies begin to re-emerge, and soon Terrier is forced to once again ply his brutal trade.

Five years after West Coast Blues, his acclaimed adaptation of Jean-Patrick Manchette’s Le Petit bleu de la côte ouest (a.k.a. Three to Kill), Jacques Tardi returns to the world of guns, crime, betrayal and bloodshed with this stunning, grisly, and remarkably faithful interpretation of Manchette’s last completed crime thriller. Manchette himself claimed to have written the novel in an attempt to emulate the ultraviolent, hellbent-for-leather, pitch-black ambiance of Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly, and Tardi matches him bullet for bullet and blow for blow. As The Village Voice noted of the original novel (La Position du tireur couché, released in English under the title The Prone Gunman by City Lights in 2001), “Thirty pages before the finale, it’s hard not to wonder how the book could possibly end... But the book does end, in circumstances far worse than you might easily imagine, on a note of extraordinary bleakness.”

Download and read a 10-page PDF excerpt (<1 MB).

Video & Photo Slideshow Preview (view in new window):

Exclusive Savings: Order Like a Sniper Lining Up His Shot together with West Coast Blues and save 20% off both!