You Are There

The second new translation of renowned French comics artist Tardi’s work could hardly be more different than its predecessor, noirish crime-thriller West Coast Blues (2009). It’s an absurdist farce whose protagonist, loony Arthur There, prowls atop the walls surrounding the estate his family once owned, surviving off the tolls he collects from the sneering residents. Political machinations ensue when the government seeks to exploit the land’s unique legal status, and Arthur’s shaky emotional equilibrium is further disturbed by the seductive, equally unbalanced daughter of one of his adversaries. The work’s crackpot sensibility comes from Forest, best-known for creating the similarly droll sf heroine Barbarella, but it’s Tardi’s art, with its keen compositions, carefully placed areas of black and white, and sensuous line work, that ties the untidy story together. When this cynical, surreal satire appeared in France in the late 1970s, it was seen as a landmark in the development of the bande dessinée; three decades later, it stands to play a similarly valuable role by introducing American readers to one of Europe’s greatest cartoonists.