It Was The War Of The Trenches

Tardis World War I masterpiece finally in English! World War I that awful gaping wound in the history of Europe has long been an obsession of Jacques Tardis. (His very firstrejectedcomics story dealt with the subject as does his most recent work the two-volume Putain de Guerre.) But It Was the War of the Trenches is Tardis defining masterful statement on the subject a graphic novel that can stand shoulder to shoulder with Erich Maria Remarques All Quiet on the Western Front and Ernest Hemingways A Farewell to Arms. Tardi is not interested in the national politics the strategies or the battles. Like Remarque he focuses on the day to day of the grunts in the trenches and with icy controlled fury and disgust with sardonic yet deeply sympathetic narration he brings that existence alive as no one has before or since. Yet he also delves deeply into the underlying causes of the war the madness the cynical political exploitation of patriotism. And in a final heartbreaking coda Tardi grimly itemizes the ghastly human cost of the war and lays out the future 20th century conflicts all of which seem to spring from this global burst of insanity. Trenches features some of Tardis most stunning artwork. Rendered in an inhabitually lush illustrative style inspired both by abundant photographic documentation and classic American war comics augmented by a sophisticated gorgeous use of Craftint tones trenches is somehow simultaneously atypical and a perfect encapsulation of Tardis mature style. It is the indisputable centerpiece of Tardis oeuvre. It Was the War of the Trenches has been an object of fascination for North American publishers: RAW published a chapter in the early 1980s and Drawn and Quarterly magazine serialized a few more in the 1990s. But only a small fraction of Trenches has ever been made available to the English speaking public (in now out of print publications); the Fantagraphics edition the third in an ongoing collection of the works of this great master finally remedies this situation. 120 pages of black-and-white comics