Broken Frontier

Toss the following keywords into the air in Europe ‘Paris’, ‘Comics’, ‘WW II’ and ‘rain’ and the success rate for the following answer ‘Jacques Tardi’ would be 95%. Like a Sniper Lining up his Shot is Jacques Tardi’s graphic novelisation of the novel by crime writer Jean-Patrick Manchette. The book itself is a style exercise in ultra-tight plotting coupled with unpardonable protagonists, French noir drenched in rain, retro seventies and violence. 

After an absence of ten years, Martin Terrier returns as an ex-mercenary and hitman to his home town to collect upon a promise made between teen sweethearts. His then lover though is remarried and has turned to alcohol as a refuge while Martin himself is hounded by his ex-employers who refuse to accept his resignation. Both their lives become violently entangled while they grow ever more distant from each other and the world.

After Manchette’s death, Tardi decided to transform the novel into a graphic novel. Having collaborated before on West Coast Blues - another late seventies era crime outing - Tardi has a good grip on Manchette’s particular brand of atmosphere. And in Like a Sniper … they pull out all the stops. People and animals get mowed down left and right as the body count rises while Terrier stoically tries to escape his karma. 

Manchette & Tardi collaborate as the Ultimate Observer, refusing to draw conclusions, condemning no behavior. The story happens, the characters act. All is left for the reader to decipher and decide.

Manchette very purposefully tries to recreate Robert Aldrich’s crime classic Kiss me Deadly though I can also see a big influence of the rhythm and beats of Richard Starks’ prose in The Hunter and the staccato of John Boorman’s subsequent movie entitled Point Blank. Add a sniff of Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing and a big handful of Dan Marlowe’s hardcore anti-hero Earl Drake (but even less talkie) and you get a good idea of Manchette’s approach to his characters. 

Tardi’s European drawing style, his static characters and delineated panels combined with his shaky line-work create the perfect unsettling atmosphere for Manchette’s bleak French noir stories.  His black and white instincts make him an absolute master of desolate pine woods (already heavily showcased in West Coast Blues) and dreary cityscapes drenched in rain and soot. Seldom has a Parisian evening in the rain looked so hopeless and cosmically isolated as by Tardi’s pen transforming the buildings and night sky into a metaphor for the human condition : we are born alone and will die alone.

The characters and respective visualisations mirror the tight plotting and staccato rythm. Their mouths almost always locked with the corners down, never able to break the fate their lives have written for them. Medium body shots crowd the book to extremes and keep the camera close, the players locked in neatly stacked panels. A visual rythm that is only broken when necessary.

In Like a Sniper Lining up his Shot Jean-Patrick Manchette and Jacques Tardi present an unrelenting and unforgiving French noir graphic novel by two masters of the genre. As straight as a barrel’s shotgun and as tight as a bullet, the story bulldozers over people and ethics to an ending that is as merciless as the protagonists themselves. Highly recommended.  

This review of Like a Sniper Lining up his Shot by Jean-Patrick Manchette and Jacques Tardi was based upon the Dutch edition, published by Oog & Blik I Bezige Bij. The English language edition is published by Fantagraphics as a  104 pages hardcover retailing for $18.99.