By Tardi with Jean-Pierre Verney, translated by Kim Thompson & Helga Dascher (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-353-8 (HB Trenches) & 978-1-60699-582-2 (HB Goddam)
For years I’ve been declaring that Charley’s War the best comics story about The Great War ever created, but, while I’m still convinced of that fact, there’s a strong contender for the title in the astonishing award-winning conception C’était la guerre des tranchées by cartoonist Jacques Tardi. It began publication in France in 1993 and was released as an English edition by Fantagraphics in 2010. Three years later it was supplemented by an even more impressive and heart-rending sequel.
Credited with creating a new style of expressionistic illustration dubbed “the New Realism”, Tardi is one of the greatest comics creators in the world, blessed with a singular vision and adamantine ideals, even apparently refusing his country’s greatest honour through his wish to be completely free to say and create what he wants.
He was born in the Commune of Valence, Dróme in August 1946 and subsequently studied at École Nationale des Beaux-Arts de Lyon and the prestigious Parisian École Nationale Supérieure des arts Décoratifs before launching his career in comics in 1969 at the home of modern French comics: Pilote.
From illustrating stories by Jean Giraud, Serge de Beketch and Pierre Christian, he moved on to Westerns, crime tales and satirical works in magazines like Record, Libération, Charlie Mensuel and L’Écho des Savanes whilst also graduating into adapting prose novels by Louis-Ferdinand Céline and Léo Malet.
The latter’s detective hero Nestor Burma became the subject of all-new albums written and drawn by Tardi once the established literary canon was exhausted leading, in 1976. to the creation of Polonius in Métal Hurlant and a legendary, super-successful star turn. Les Aventures Extraordinaires d’Adéle Blanc-Sec is an epic period fantasy series which initially ran in the daily Sud-Ouest. The series numbers ten volumes thus far and is still being added to.
The passionate auteur has also crafted many unforgettable anti-war stories – Adieu Brindavoine, Le Fleur au Fusil, Le trou d’obus and more – examining the plight of the common soldier, and has written novels, created radio series, worked in movies, and co-created (with writer Jean Vautrin) Le Cri du Peuple – a quartet of albums about the Parisienne revolt of the Communards.
Whilst his WWI creations are loosely inspired by the experiences of his grandfather, his 2012 graphic novel Moi René Tardi, prisonnier de guerre au Stalag IIB revealed the experiences of his father, a POW in the second conflict to ravage France in a century.
Far too few of this master’s creations are available in English (barely 20 out of more than 50) but, thanks to NBM, iBooks and Fantagraphics, we’re quickly catching up…
An unquestionable masterpiece and international multi-award winner, It Was the War of the Trenches begins with Tardi’s forthright Foreword detailing his process and motivations, plus a copious and chilling Special Thanks page, before a cartoon catalogue of humanity’s greatest folly unfolds.
These interlinked and cross-fertilising vignettes are about people not causes or battles or the fate of nations, with each tale linking to others: comprised of epigrammatic, anecdotal observations of the war as experienced by ordinary soldiers. The saga first saw print in A Suivre before being stitched together as a patchwork quilt of endurance, complaint, venality, misfortune, bravery, cupidity and stupidity, all informed primarily by family stories, but always verified and augmented by focussed research.
As the pages proceed, a litany of injustice and abiding horror unfolds as scared, weary, hopeless, betrayed and crazy men of every type suffer constant pressure, relentless ennui, physical abuse and imminent death…
Seeking and succeeding in bring those appalling experiences to life, Tardi forensically displays the constant shelling, awful weather, death in the skies and in the mud plus every possible variation in between them as an ever-changing roster of reluctant warriors wait for the end. They think of past lives and wasted chances and what turn of fate brought them to this muddy hole in the ground…
Especially poignant are those twists of luck that so often place supposed enemies together against the War itself, but always brief friendships end abruptly and badly, with the only winners being death and guilt and shame…
This is a book no one could read and sustain any vainglorious illusion of combat and honour as noble inspirations. This is a story that begs us all to stop war forever…
In 2013, after more than a decade of meticulous research and diligent crafting, It Was the War of the Trenches was finally supplemented by a sequel…
Translated as a potent and powerful hardback edition in full colour and moody, evocative tonal sequences, this pictorial polemic was originally released as six newspaper-format pamphlets entitled Putain de Guerre! From there it was collected in two albums and came to us as Goddamn This War!, tracing the course of the conflict through the experiences of an anonymous French “grunt”.
At once lucky, devious and cynically suspicious enough to survive, he is a tool used to relate the horrific, boring, scary, disgusting and just plain stupid course of an industrialised war managed by privileged, inbred idiots who think they’re playing games: restaging Napoleon’s cavalry campaigns, but this time as seen from the perspective of the poor sods actually being gassed and bombed and shot at…
Divided into five chapter-years running from ‘1914’ to ‘1919’ (as the global killing didn’t stop just because the Germans signed an Armistice in 1918 – just ask the Turks, Armenians, Russians and other Balkan nations forgotten when hostilities officially ended), the narration is stuffed with the kind of facts and trivia you won’t find in most history books. as our frustrated and disillusioned protagonist staggers from campaign to furlough to what his bosses call victory, noting no credible differences between himself and the “Boche” on the other side of the wire, but huge gulfs between the men with rifles and the toffs in brass on both sides…
This staggeringly emotional testament is backed up and supplemented by a reproduction of ‘The Song of Craonne’ – a ditty so seditious that French soldiers were executed for singing it – and a capacious, revelatory year-by-year photo-essay by historian, photographer and collector Jean-Pierre Verney. His World War I: an Illustrated Chronology chillingly shows the true faces and forces of war and is alone worth the price of admission…
It Was the War of the Trenches (C’était la guerre des tranchées) © 1993 Editions Casterman. This edition © 2010 Fantagraphics Books.
Goddamn This War! (Putain de Guerre!) © 2013 Editions Casterman. This edition © 2013 Fantagraphics Books.