West Coast Blues

by Jacques Tardi, adapting a novel by Jean-Patrick Manchette

I am always up for a Jacques Tardi graphic novel, and got a lot of enjoyment out of reading West Coast Blues, the translation of his book adapting the novel Le Petit Bleu de la Côte Ouest, which was originally released in 1976.

The story is about George Gerfaut, a salesman who one night, while driving around Paris aimlessly and a little drunkenly, sees two cars speed past him, as if they are chasing one another.  He follows, and soon finds one of the cars wrapped around a tree.  The driver is injured, so Gerfaut takes him to the hospital, and then leaves him there.

Later, when Gerfaut and his family go to the coast for a holiday, two men try to kill Gerfaut in the water.  He manages to escape them, but his nerves are shot, and he begins to believe that someone is looking to kill him because he helped that injured driver.

It's not paranoia, though, when you're right.  Gerfaut leaves his family and returns to Paris, trying to decide what to do.  The two men, Carlo and Bastien are hired killers, employed by Emerich.  They begin following Gerfaut, who becomes more and more desperate to escape them, even going so far as to get a gun for protection.

An encounter between the men at a gas station on a lonely stretch of road leads to some killing, and Gerfaut's being completely lost in the wilderness.  He decides to abandon his former life and begin living as a hermit, but it's not all that long before he's back in Paris seeking his own personal freedom from Emerich's attention.

This is a well-written noir story, and Tardi does a great job of pacing it, and showing difficult things in beautiful settings.  I like the way Tardi (or Manchette) constantly let us know what music the protagonist is listening to, providing a bit of a soundtrack to the book throughout.

The pacing of this story is very different from what one would find in an American thriller, but that's a big part of what makes it work, since it's harder to predict.  In all, another very solid (and well-designed) Tardi comic from Fantagraphics.

Like A Sniper Lining Up His Shot

by Jacques Tardi, from a story by Jean-Patrick Manchette

Jacques Tardi's comic adaptation of a novel by French crime writer Jean-Patrick Manchette is very capably done, but it's a strange little story.  In a lot of ways, Like a Sniper Lining Up His Shot reminds me a great deal of Matz and Jacamon's The Killer.  Both books involve a hitman looking to retire from the business and settle down with a nice woman, and in both cases, the killer is forced back into the life he's trying to leave behind.

In this book, Martin Terrier hopes to walk away from ten years spent as a soldier of fortune and a gun for hire, and to reconnect with the girl he left back home, from whom he'd exacted a promise to wait for him.  Terrier's a strange character.  He doesn't show any remorse for his victims, or for the people in his life who get drawn into his mess, when the family of a victim come after him.  Yet, when he sees something that shocks him late in the book, he loses his voice and the ability to speak for some time.  That rang false for me, and kind of impacted my enjoyment of the book.

The strength of this novel is Tardi's wonderful artwork.  His figures are great, but I most enjoyed his portrayal of France in the 70s, especially the cars.  So far as crime comics go, this is a pretty solid one, and I got into it pretty quickly.