Jacques Tardi (1946 - )
Illustration par Jacques Tardi tirée de Voyage au bout de la nuit, le texte de Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Profile
Jacques Tardi is a French comic strip artist born in 1946. Often credited solely as Tardi.
A highly versatile artist, Tardi successfully adapted novels by controversial writer Louis-Ferdinand Céline or crime novelist Léo Malet. He also created French comic-strips' most famous heroine Adèle Blanc-Sec. This serie recreates with great style the Paris of the early 20th century where the moody heroine encounters supernatural events, state plots, cults and cryogenics.
His obsession with the First World War and the pitfalls of patriotism have spawned many albums (Adieu Brindavoine, C'était la Guerre des Tranchées,Le Trou d'Obus...) and was brought on by his inability to believe that his grandfather could have been involved in the day-to-day horrors of trench warfare. He also began a serie on Paris Commune, Le cri du peuple.
His style can at times seem to be similar to Hergé's ligne claire style (clear line), paired with meticulous research and an asexual hero (Adèle Blanc-Sec is quite a misandrist at times) but Tardi's work endlessly satirises the concept of the flawless hero by using a series of inept, naive or anti-heroic main characters and his readership seems to mainly be a literary, French-speaking adult public. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Tardi [Mar 2004]
Louis-Ferdinand Céline Adaptations [...]
- Voyage au Bout de la Nuit (1988)
- Casse-Pipe (1989)
- Mort à crédit (1991)
Books
- Roach Killer - by Tardi-Legrand [Amazon US]
French cartoonist Tardi ( Fog over Tolbiac Bridge) returns with a peculiar protagonist in a very peculiar story. Making a call in lower Manhattan, Walter, who works as a roach exterminator, notices that unlike most buildings in New York City this one has a 13th floor. He decides to take a look around only to overhear, to his dismay, plans for a series of murders. At this point Legrand's storytelling takes a turn for the bizarre as Walter, terrified that these unidentified conspirators are after him, is joined by a lowlife coworker named Luis who may or may not be--it's never clear--involved with Walter's pursuers. Eventually Luis's albino sister (she's some sort of mystic) is kidnapped and everyone is murdered in a calamitous shoot-out, leaving Walter on the verge of insanity, unknowingly drafted into a murky conspiracy. Tardi's talent for creating a brooding, blighted urban setting is exceptional and his gritty portraits of the city carry the narrative, but Legrand's plot is utterly mystifying, managing to be both plodding and pointless at once. --amazon.com
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