It Was The War of the Trenches

[ericthornton]

This may not be of interest to many out there as it relates to a graphic novel but I was so impressed with the content I thought it worth posting. I regularly trawl through Amazon looking for illustrative material and was pleasantly surprised to come across this book written and illustrated by the French artist Jaques Tardi and recently translated to English. In Tardi's forward he describes his work as ' a non chronological sequence of situations, lived through by men who have been jerked around and dragged through the mud, clearly unhappy to find themselves in this place, whose only wish is to stay alive for one more hour' . The series of episodes reflect the French solidier at war. (based upon Tardi's Grandfathers memories) Tardi puts lots of detail in the scene but leaves the faces less described which somehow works perfectly to relect the content perfectly. His visions of front line hell are the best I've seen. The grim reality of eviscerated men and animals, haphazardly strewn corpses and stinking shell hole pools convincing portray a world of indiscriminate mechanised butchery.

I would recommend anyone interested in the illustration of ww1 battle and men at war to have a look at this book as Idefinately found it artisically inspiring. I've noticed Tardi has manay other ww1 related books in print. Unfortunately they havn't yet been translated to English ......something for me to look forward to.

cheers, ET

[Black]

Eric,

I may have missed something along the way... but... what is the name of Tardi's book to which you refer???

Regards,

Black

[ericthornton]

Apologies Black

I put the title in the main heading but should have re-iterated it in the description. The actual book title is 'It was the War of the Trenches'

cheers, ET