West Coast Blues

Art by Jacques Tardi, Based on a novel by Jean-Patrick Manchette; Fantagraphics.

What else could you expect? I mean honestly, when you combine one of the finest living comic book artists with one of the greatest writers of hardboiled crime fiction. Really. Don’t even bother reading the rest of this review. Just buy the book. Is there anything I can do but state the obvious?

Let me just give you a bit of backstory:

Jean-Patrick Manchette had been reading the books of Dashiell Hammett and David Goodis from a young age, under the tutelage of his Scottish grandmother. He became a prolific translator of American hardboiled fiction into the French language, whose abilities could give a mediocre novel a shove into classic status. So when he turned into writing his own work, he was very much aware of the conventions and the history of the genre, and he effortlessly rose to the challenge: Manchette’s best work stands shoulder to shoulder with Elmore Leonard and Charles Willeford. Jim Thompson and Chester Himes. Donald Westlake and Jean-Patrick Manchette.

So what about Jacques Tardi? Winner of most awards available to artists in the field. A superb craftsman with a distinctive but varied style.

Noted for adapting many masterworks of literature into the comics field.

Mostly under-represented and under-appreciated in the English speaking world, though some of his work has slipped through. He was published in Raw and Cheval Noir, and NBM printed a couple of his books in the 1990s, to strong critical response and middling sales figures.

Manchette and Tardi took a liking to one another sometime in the ’70s, perhaps when the former was writing film criticism for a French comic book magazine. They collaborated on a one-shot hardboiled graphic novel, Griffu, in 1977. Manchette wrote a few more books, including West Coast Blues which was quickly turned into a reportedly good movie starring Alain Delon. He further worked in film and television before he died in 1995, barely in his 50s. Turning into the 21st century, Manchette’s work started appearing in English language editions, and now Tardi has begun breathing new life into his friend’s finest work.

Which brings us full circle to this Fantagraphics release of West Coast Blues. Tardi follows the novel faithfully. His illustrations are both detailed and loose, giving the characters and their surroundings a well worn texture. Tardi’s style, as he grows older, has become chunkier and more expressive. His thick line accents the darkly humorous situations with a surprisingly subtle precision. He easily shifts gears from domestic malaise into shocking brutality, and moves forward with the kind of effortless brilliance I haven’t seen since Tango-era Hugo Pratt.

The plotting is decidedly offbeat, constantly avoiding the expected, yet true to the psychologically complex characters. I’ll skip the actual details to allow you to enjoy the turns with fresh eyes. None of the cast is particularly likable – many, in fact, are spectacularly nasty – but they are all vividly real and consistently interesting.

The book works on multiple levels. It can be read in a single sitting as a muscular action adventure to great satisfaction. But when you pick it up for the second time, it allows for a far more subtle and detailed read. You can read it as a treatise on the existential crisis of the modern white collar chump. It has tragic elements mixed with comic. It works as an introduction to the West Coast school of jazz music. It reworks old noir fiction cliches into something modern and exciting.

So to recap what has been obvious from the beginning, West Coast Blues is one of the finest crime comics around, drawn by a modern legend, based on a brilliant novel. Translated with a far less angular style than the novel and published as a gorgeous hardcover, this is a book which improves each time I pick it up. If you like Darwyn Cooke’s adaptations of Donald Westlake’s Parker books, or have enjoyed IDW’s recent releases of Enrique Sánchez Abulí and Jordi Bernet’s Torpedo, there are things far worse you could be doing instead of reading West Coast Blues (including reading this review) and very few that are better.