I wanted to take a look at two panel sequences that really made me step back from the first Adele Blanc-Sec story--two sequences which I thought were very unique to Tardi. The first is on pages 8 and 9, when the pterodactyl is terrorizing Paris and the newspapers are reporting its destruction. The first striking thing about these newspaper panels is the length of detail Tardi goes into in each description of each attack. He could have easily just shown the headline, however instead he writes actual stories to accompany each panel. We talked in class today about how Tardi was really tied to Paris, and worked hard to reproduce it in the background of his work. I see his dedication to including stories here as part of that dedication, as he wanted to relay the feeling of opening a Parisian newspaper in the city and reading a real story. From an artistic standpoint, these panels stand out from the rest of the story. Having different stories one day after another, the reader gets the impression of how widespread and sudden these attacks are. Beyond that, the paperboys (and men) add their own commentary on top of the stories they hawk, representing the growing fear of the common folk in the city in their increasingly incendiary statements (from "another attack by the pterodactyl" to "the police are impotent! Lepine Resigns!"). I love this sequence, as it presents an out-of-the-box way of telling a story, one that bring so much more thought along with it rather than simply showing the events happening.
Another sequence I found interesting happens on the very next page, when there is a phone tree playing out starting with the President down to Caponi, and then in an ingenious move, the calls going all the way back up to the President. This feels like social commentary from Tardi, with the main point of how far down a serious problem gets passed in the French government, with no singular official taking charge until it gets to the bottom wrung (in this case, Caponi). It also shows the levels to which each person in power feels they must appease the President, and how far down his power goes. I could be wrong, though, and this could just be an interesting way Tardi wanted to show the unfurling of events that landed Caponi on the case. I would actually rather this second option, as I appreciate the art far more for what it is on the surface rather than adding political undertones to it.
Gabe, your point about the phone tree is spot on. But out of the two scenarios you outlined, I’d like to think Tardi was poking fun at slow-moving French bureaucracy. Tardi easily could have designed this strip to go straight from the top to the bottom. Yet he deliberately creates a needlessly long chain of commands. Each character is essentially saying the same thing to the next. This illustrates their laziness — or wit, depending on how you look at it — and satires the way the government is run. These political undertones actually made me chuckle. We see this subtle, slightly dark humor show up later in the comic too, when numerous characters are hidden in the bushes, waiting to ambush the pterodactyl (pg 31). The frames “zoom out” in a similar manner, and the voice over is comical, stating, “close by in a bush,” then, “slightly less close by, in another bush,” then, “even further away, in a third bush,” then finally, “outside…”
ReplyDelete