West Coast Blues - Hardcover

Tardi, Jacques; Manchette, Jean-Patrick

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1606992953 ISBN 13: 9781606992951

Publisher: Fantagraphics Books, 2009

Synopsis

George Gerfaut, aimless young executive and desultory family man, witnesses a murder and finds himself sucked into a spiral of violence involving an exiled war criminal and two hired assassins. Adapting to the exigencies of his new life on the run with shocking ease, Gerfaut abandons his comfortable middle-class life for several months, until, joined with a new ally, he finally returns to settle all accounts... with brutal, bloody interest. Released in 2005, West Coast Blues (Le Petit bleu de la côte ouest) is Tardi's adaptation of a popular 1976 novel by the French crime writer Jean-Patrick Manchette. (The novel had been previously adapted to film under the more literal title Trois hommes à abattre, and was released in English by the San Francisco-based publisher City Lights under the English version of the same title, 3 to Kill.) Tardi's late-period, looser style infuses Manchette's dark story with a seething, malevolent energy; he doesn't shy away from the frequently grisly goings-on, while maintaining (particularly in the old-married-couple-style bickering of the two killers who are tracking Gerfaut) the mordant wit that characterizes his best work. This is the kind of graphic
novel that Quentin Tarantino would love, and a double shot of Scotch for any fan of unrelenting, uncompromising crime fiction

About this title

Review:

One of the most influential cartoonists of the last 30 years...revered wherever great graphic literature is read... -- Heidi MacDonald

Tardi is one of the great cartoonists...He continues to produce work to this day at a pace that puts his contemporaries to shame. -- Tom Spurgeon

Maybe it s because blood and brain matter look somewhat more disturbing in the chunky, primitive black and white favored by famed French cartoonist Tardi, but there s something particularly creepy about his adaptation of the late Manchette s crime novel West Coast Blues that wouldn t have been well served by color. ... Manchette s plot is pure pulp, with a driving engine for a plot and a Lee Marvin-like inclination toward swift and unreflective action. Tardi s art delivers the action with admirable punch and attitude to spare.

Overall, I liked West Coast Blues quite a bit, enough so that it makes me want to search out Manchette's novels that have been translated into English. If you enjoy hardboiled crime graphic novels, you should certainly give this one a try. --James Reasoner

West Coast Blues is Fantagraphics' first offering in what one hopes will be am ambitious Tardi reprint project... It's an elegant, somewhat unorthodox set-up, at least with Tardi's narration, and indeed Tardi makes a number of creative, idiosyncratic choices in adapting the novel. ... The '70s milieu shouldn't put anyone off, and in fact that's one of the book's charms, with Tardi's clean line depicting classic old Mercedes and Citroens, and plenty of legwork and driving rather than digital assistance. Tardi has a really appealing style, clear and photorealistic in the details and yet messy with life. ... Tardi doesn't shy away from the violence of the story, but he doesn't revel in it, either, his pages all varying grids, many with tall, narrow panels that keep the pace brisk. --Christopher Allen

As slim, smooth, and hard as its attractive, Adam Grano-designed album-style hardcover format, West Coast Blues is as strong a crime comic as you're likely to see this year... Tardi's art [is] a master class in spotted blacks and lines like garrote wire... This sucker's good. --Sean T. Collins

Maybe it 's because blood and brain matter look somewhat more disturbing in the chunky, primitive black and white favored by famed French cartoonist Tardi, but there 's something particularly creepy about his adaptation of the late Manchette 's crime novel West Coast Blues that wouldn t have been well served by color. ... Manchette 's plot is pure pulp, with a driving engine for a plot and a Lee Marvin-like inclination toward swift and unreflective action. Tardi 's art delivers the action with admirable punch and attitude to spare.

It 's the first quotidian crime story that I ve ever read, and Tardi 's commitment to the depiction of the everyday and the way nightmares crashed into daily life are what made this book work so well. --Rob Clough

[G]ets under your skin and remains impossible to resist from start to finish... Darkly amusing and undeniably entertaining, West Coast Blues keeps the mystery and interest alive by carefully doling out pieces of the story and introducing intriguing characters with loads of personality... Tardi does an excellent job of adapting what must be a massively entertaining book into a graphic novel form for all who seek a slightly different but no less thrilling mystery/adventure story to enjoy. --Avril Brown

West Coast Blues is a tight, economical and forceful thriller shorn of the self-consciousness that frequently comes when American comics mosey into the same territory... It's a wicked little book. --Tom Spurgeon

About the Author:

The Marseilles-born Jean-Patrick Manchette (1942-1995) authored ten short, tough-minded, highly acclaimed crime novels, as well as a multitude of other books, screen- and teleplays, magazine columns, and translations of American crime and science fiction novels. A lifelong comics fan, he also wrote the hardboiled graphic novel Griffu for Jacques Tardi in 1978, and in the late 1980s, was selected to translate the French edition of Watchmen.

About this edition

• Publisher: Fantagraphics Books
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1606992953
• ISBN 13: 9781606992951
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 80