THE ARCTIC MARAUDER by Jacques Tardi (Some Garbled Thoughts) (Patreon)

THE ARCTIC MARAUDER by Jacques Tardi

Published by Fantagraphics in 2011, originally published in 1974.

64-page black & white 9" x 11.75" hardcover  
ISBN: 978-1-60699-435-1

I knew nothing about this volume when I found it recently at my local library, but I assumed I'd enjoy it owing to my being a fan of Tardi's work (his Adele Blanc-Sec and war comics, in particular), steampunk (to a degree) and stories that take place in arctic or cold climes (I don't know why I gravitate towards this setting, but it's one that really works for me). So this seemed like a no-brainer. 

Unfortunately, The Arctic Marauder turns out to be an early book by Tardi, which works on a couple of levels but overall isn't anything exciting enough for anyone but Tardi completists to add to their home shelves. 

Tardi's art is impressive but you can see he's overindulging in pen and ink details in the way that many fantasy artists, cartoonists and RPG artists used to do in the 70's. Ruler-straight lines in strict order delineate skies and textures throughout the book in a sort of woodcut style, the linework dense enough to put Paul Kirchner in a coma. It becomes overwhelming, sailing vessels, snowstorms, Edwardian-era steampunk machines and devices, iceberg vistas and explosions all compete for the eye's attention. It's striking, but between the density and flatness -- and occasionally some fanciful panel layouts that don't easily lead the eye -- it's also overwhelming. It's fortunate that the the book is oversized (I'm assuming it was originally published in a magazine and/or album format), because many of the more complicated pages would reduce to static in a smaller size. 

Let me take a step back: In looking up the book while writing this I learned that it's apparently all drawn on scratchboard, which explains the  style, use of line, etc (and reveals my artistic ignorance). Again, yeah, that's super impressive, but the effect on the page remains the same. It's got the hallmarks of early work, with the artist engaged primarily in the act of drawing and out to impress readers. It's generally great to look at, but often just too much as far as detail and texturing go, you have to wade through elements to find the main point of focus in many of the dense panels. I say this as a detail wonk, but The Arctic Marauder has a limited number of settings, generally taking place on ships amidst the ice wastes, the icy wastes themselves, within an elaborate icebound secret lair, and beneath the arctic sea. This makes a lot of the pages feel similarly throughout the book. The exceptions are the pages where there are large chunks of character dialog. 

Which brings up the main problem with the book, and that's the story. There's barely a story here. There's a plot, there's incident, villains sink ships and there's a lot of cackling and yammering about evil plots and revenge on mankind, but it only serves as an excuse for Tardi's scenery and machinery. It's all about the cool stuff Tardi wants to draw. And that's a valid and tried-and-true motivation to making all sorts of comics. But like the average "I just want to draw cool robots" or "I just want to draw dinosaurs" comics, there's really nothing here to hook the reader beyond the eye candy. Tardi adopts a blithe approach to his Jules Verne-like adventure, it's lighter than lightweight, unconcerned with real cause and effect and character, with events and character insights glossed over by an omniscient, winking narrator. If it's meant as a parody of scientific romances and dime novels it's an extremely flat one. 

Above: Tardi's take on the cutaway panel, showing off his magnificent machinery in a way that's reminiscent of an early D&D fanzine.

The same goes for the dialog, which largely consists of clipped reactions from what passes for our main character (he's barely a presence) and lengthy monologues from the two cackling villains, one of which just outright bursts into cackling to eat up space. 

It's all supposed to be ridiculous and winking, but as a reading experience it's just a barely-inhabited slog of a book. The machinery is more important than the machinations, to the point where the comic practically invites us not to care much about what happens. Important events, actions and confrontations are dramatically blunted if not outright explained in captions. It's like a beautifully-designed RPG scenario that forgets to give the player a reason to actually play it. There's no reason to care about the narrative aspects if Tardi doesn't care enough to draw us into the story. What he cares about it the actual drawing itself, and it shows. And that might be enough for many readers. 

Whether or not you'll enjoy The Arctic Marauder will likely come down to how much of a Tardi fan or completist you are. This isn't a book I personally feel I need to own, or re-read. It's more of a curio, an art portfolio and a snapshot of an earlier time in the career of a world-class cartooning talent. It's early work, for gosh sake, so, why even bother piling on? Compared to the steaming comic book embarrassments most of us turned out early in our careers (or even later), this is, visually and stylistically, an achievement. And it's also a stepping stone to far more interesting and accomplished major works. 

Tardi is one of the most revered international heavy hitters, if you haven't read his work, I recommend checking out his war comics (It Was The War of the Trenches, Goddamn This War!), the crime/noir collaborative stuff (Like a Sniper Lining Up His Shot, Run Like Crazy Run Like Hell) and the whimsical Adele Blanc-Sec volumes. All of them are available in English editions published by Fantagraphics, and if you have a decent library system in your town, you should be able to check them out for free. And if you like anything, you can buy it. Happy comics! 

Please let me know if this was of any interest, and also, if you'd care to see me review some other comics here from time to time. I used to review comics on my LiveJournal and found that it helped me get my thoughts together about, well, comics. Making them and reading them. 

I'll also try to make the reviews shorter and not sound too dumb. No guarantees on either point, though.