Book Review

West Coast Blues (2009)

Jean-Patrick Manchette, Jacques Tardi

Reviewed by Ken Tucker | Nov 24, 2009

Ken Tucker

Ken Tucker is critic-at-large for EW

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EW's GRADE

A-

Details Release Date: Oct 20, 2009; Writers: Jean-Patrick Manchette, Jacques Tardi; Genres: Comic Books/Graphic Novels, Fiction; Publisher: Fantagraphics Books

West Coast Blues by Jean-Patrick Manchette and Jacques Tardi

Jacques Tardi is one of France’s greatest cartoonists, a master of black-and-white doom and gloom, with beautiful shadings of emotion. In West Coast Blues, he adapts a thriller by Jean-Patrick Manchette, and the result is as though Quentin Tarantino had directed one of Richard Stark’s Parker novels. In Manchette’s premise, an ordinary citizen, George Gerfaut, is brought together with a ruthless murderer after witnessing a killing. Gerfaut, dissolute and mean to his family (Tardi draws him with pinprick eyes and a perpetual hangover), gets drawn into violent scenarios that awaken him to a world that seemed dead to him. Existential? Yes. Pretentious? Au contraire. A-

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Originally posted Nov 23, 2009 Published in issue #1078 Dec 04, 2009 Order article reprints

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