the third (and looks like final) jacques tardi book from fantagraphics - to my short-lived delight, they were intending to translate and publish “the entire oeuvre of one of comics’ grandmasters” (over thirty graphic novels!) - that was IF they found favour with the fickle american public - well, it appears america adamantly wishes to remain unenlightened re the exceptional talent of tardi (previous publishers have also tried and failed) and has shamefully (but quite predictably) given the final death sentence to these cultured french masterpieces - there’s now no sign of any more volumes being published? - go back to your stupid batman comics america - thank you for trying, fantagraphics : /
NBM still translate French comics. They publish it in reduced format and full of typos though. But thanks to NBM I finally read Manu Larcenet’s “Ordinary Victories”. I had the French album for years and almost started learning the language to read it. Also, the last Nicolas De Crecy book is all silent or to be more pretentious, written in the international language of art.
what a pity, all these good stuff (from Pilote till now, near 40 years of good french comics ) and nothing for the united states !
Protectionism or ignorence ?
perhaps if tardi drew some men in spandex and rubber underpants he’d have more luck being accepted by america?
: (
LOL! … never understood the USA fetish for superheroes who wear underpants over tights and then jump off tall buildings. Makes the average Japanese hentai manga seem almost normal …
ps. got Keiichi Ohta’s Amnesia the other day. Tasty!
A rather sweeping generalization from a native of the land of The Beano and Judge Dredd, Trevor.
As the official spokesman for American comics consumers, allow me to clarify…we don’t like Tardi for the same reason we don’t like Hergé : boring French faggotry.
but boring american faggotry (spandex/rubber underpants/oversized pecs…) is okay i take it?
Protectionism and ignorence !
We know and appreciates americans comics in Europe and not only marketed super heros, but our visual openness is greater !
Fantagraphics, Last gasp, etc . . . are independants and their strength against super heros editors is reduced, but the quality is different (and personally, I think better )
for us Hergé is super marketed comics, Tardi not (yet!)
Please…Los Bros Hernandez, Alan Moore, Garth Ennis, Neil Gaiman and Warren Ellis. Any of their weakest efforts blow away the best the French can offer. Admittedly, there’s a few Englishmen in there, but they produce American comics.
A nation’s comic books are one of the clearest pictures of it’s psyche…French comics are tedious faggotry, Italian comics are sexually obsessed sadism, English comics are literate and witty and American comics rule the western world.
In short, stick with American and Japanese comics and you too, will be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, piss through concrete and be irresistible to anything in a seifuku.
for me interesting americans are Burns, Zap artists, Peter Badge, Tim Vigil,Verotika artists,Kim Deitch,Art Spiegelman RAW, etc . . .(& not forget the first marvel zombies)
french : Blanquet, frères Guedins (in comics too), H.Valium (sorry french canadian),Liberatore, F.Masse, many of the Métal Hurlant artists(from Druillet to P.Doury), Peter Pontiac, Willem,etc. . .
japan: from Maruo to Shintaro Kago , many many .
not only “American comics rule the western world”
open eyes on the comics of the world (or world of comics)
I’ve not make reference to illustrations. . .it’s an other discussion.
Best regards
i must admit, in regard to the above tardi bd, i question fantagraphics thinking behind trying to sell a book re the inane futility of war to AMERICA! - tantamount to a death wish!?
they should have said tardi was japanese and this was “manga” - americans would then lap it up : /
-
francis masse! - another great artist with pitifully nothing much available in english
“heavy metal” magazine, before it turned to crap (a couple of decades ago), was my introduction to many french faggot delights
I feel that anyone who dismisses the “superhero” genre hasn’t read enough to form that opinion. The market is so huge, its very easy to say “spandex supermen are boring.” There are many great story lines that have gotten lost in the shuffle.
I like all types of comics. As long as the story is good, I can tolerate crappy art and vice versa.
Heavy Metal was okay, but some of the best stuff in it was American, such as Matt Howarth’s Post Brothers, etc.
I agree that Tardi’s stereotypically French attitude towards war probably limited it’s appeal to Americans. We don’t necessarily consider all war to inane and futile..which is why the Union Jack and the Tricolor are flying in place of a Swastika these days.
Bill : Hergé is not a french faggot but a Belgian pedo. Stop reading comics and try to learn a little bit the geography of enemies before bashing them.
Napalm : only the americans invented this concept called “comics” (like they invented this one called “USA”) others nations did mangas, “bande dessinées”, strips, ukiyo-E, cave paintings etc …
And, some interesting yankees from Nueva York (who hopefully think that most of “spandex supermen are boring”) already published in the 80’s some Tardi stuff in their superb oversized magazine.
Shitman, thank you for this small correction of my omitted, I just used “comics” common denominator .
I personally prefer to Hergé, Franquin which is graphically much richer .
Well belgian you are. But like many belgian I thought you were more on stuff like Joubert :
http://www.actuabd.com/IMG/jpg/_joubert2_la_bonne.jpg
all this bickering now redundant! - fantagraphics ARE continuing their publication of tardi books, i’ve now discovered! - happy!!! - due in september is “The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-sec: Pterror over Paris / the Eiffel Tower Demon (Vol. 1)” - i think this was published before in ‘heavy “metal” (or somewhere)? - but i’m especially happy about that “(Vol. 1)” which implies more volumes to follow - yay! : )
spandex superheroes still suck!
fuck u Trevor, Batman will never suck!
there you go, evidence that batman rots your wit, intellect and literacy - read tardi kids!
and for those annoying read, there is a movie version ( urgh! ), but it may help some illiterate :http://www.adeleblancsec-lefilm.com/
“read tardi kids!”
I WILL!
(line taken from this movie at 1:00)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZItnhlZwIVQ
I’ve never heard of tardi until today, but quite excited.
I’ll admit the few french comics I’ve read were Moebius related and so don’t have too much faggotry really. They actually felt a bit american at times, especially the Jodorowsky ones in the things they contained: rape, men going ‘I AM THE ULTIMATE WARRIOR’ (sounds a little japanese now that I think about), and lots of spaceships and swords. fun!
It all depends what people want: art or empty entertainment. Want entertainment, read X men and Batman. Besides, Americans still think of themselves as cowboys: gunslingers fighting against “hostile” forces. No wonder America always NEEDS an enemy and when it doesnt have one it manufactures them as it did with “Ali Queda” and “Bin Alladin”. Yet the last time America
actually won a real war was when they fought the Mexicans. USA didnt really win WWII, it was the Russians with USA support who did..
Thus said, Tardi’s work looks much better than actually is. The Adele stories are pretty goofy. I read them in translation in Cheval Noir. The Exterminator’s ending was a big disappointment. Calling moebius’ and Druillet’s and Caza’s, Bilal’s and so on work faggoty just shows the level of real intelligence.
Of course American underground comix are great and there are a few really good artists such as Paul Pope, Phoebe Gloeckner, Renee French who I recommend. Especially Phoebe Gloeckner whose Child’s Life is amazing work.
There’s some really awesome generalizations going on here.
American’s are stupid cowboys, the French are faggots…
Marvel and DC pump out massive amounts of superhero garbage but they have also published the work of underground, european, and japanese artists. And on the other side of the fence there’s plenty of 500-page-”I broke up with my girlfriend”- hipster bullshit printed by the indy publishers.
It sounds kinda dumb to say you love Paul Pope but think Batman sucks… just saying.
the peter bagge book, in the following post, published by dc!
Yeah, DC in particular has been really good in recent years about putting out unusual, high quality non-superhero work. Dark Horse and Image, too for that matter. Marvel is really the only big publisher that puts out pure shit, in my opinion…
Great recommendations by the way. I find out about a lot of good stuff through your posts. I just ordered A Sex Pervert’s Diary after seeing it here, looks very Ryu Murakami’esque…