His breakthrough comic book was Adèle et la Bête, published in 1976, and his popular “Les Aventures Extraordinaires d’Adèle Blanc Sec” series grew to nine folio editions (Casterman, 1976-2007). A graduate of the École nationale des Beaux-Arts (Lyon) and the École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs (Paris), Tardi began his career drawing covers and writing original stories for the weekly Pilote, and soon after for other popular comics periodicals such as BD, À Suivre, and Charlie Hebdo. Tardi belongs to the post-WWII generation of illustrators who pushed the French comics genre, broadly referred to as bande dessinée or BD, in a more sophisticated, adult direction. And Tardi is a master of the comics medium. At their best, comics get to “have it both ways”: flexible duration and a mix of word-and-image that rests upon the reader’s ability to observe and dwell on detail, to interpret the juxtapositions of media, and to follow a narrative from panel-to-panel and page-to-page sequences. The first requires students to conjure up an ever-receding historical sensibility to feel the powerful emotions the authors aimed to convey the second lock audiences within the limited duration of the film. I would like to suggest that Tardi’s antiwar comics supersede the reading of classic antiwar novels and even the screening of canonical films about the Great War. Having taught both of these books over the past two academic years, it is my experience that the accuracy and visceral imagery of Tardi’s comics have the capacity to invoke a powerfully felt immediacy in today’s undergraduates about the post-traumatic stress of the poilu, the rank and file French foot soldier. It is fabulous news for history teachers and students alike that two of French illustrator Jacques Tardi’s World War One comics, C’était la guerre des tranchées and Putain de guerre!, have been published in English translation by Fantagraphics Books. Robin Walz University of Alaska Southeast
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