Name: Goddamn this War!
ISBN: 9781606995822

Jean-Pierre Verney

Jacques Tardi

Follows an unnamed French soldier through the horrors of World War I and also includes an illustrated chronology of the war.

Goddamn this War!

Bryan Maniotakis

I preferred the structure of this compared to Tardi's other book in the series "It was the war of the trenches". Rather than focus on multiple characters, this story follows a single french soldier which makes the story more cohesive. 

The last chapter of the book is the most powerful, depicting singular stories from regular soldiers and civilians in the last year of the war. So much can be said in one pane.

Bryan Alexander

A superb and nightmarish graphic novel about World War One's western front, Goddamn This War!* continues Tardi's multimedia historical work in ways that are accessible, horrifying, and challenging.

GTW! consists of two sections - well, really three. The first is a first-person narrative of one soldier's experience from the onset of war in 1914 through 1919 and peace. It's actually two pieces, as the second part (74-91) shifts to a second-person narrative, or set of narratives, composed of single images and text, each from a different perspective: a French priest in the trenches, a German soldier, a Canadian entering a new city, a fighter pilot in the air, a child laborer in Germany, and so on. 

The first-person section (1-74, plus the final panel on 91) is a growing howl of outrage as the unnamed narrator begins in disorientation and grows through relentless horror into a state of stated but unacted rebellion. His patriotism disappears with First Marne, if it ever was really there, and the next four+ years are spent in a hellish dystopia. Panel after panel shows suffering, futility, incompetence, and above all pointless, vast killing. Here Tardi reminds me of other anti-WWI classics, such as, of course, All Quiet on the Western Front.

The art is superb and horrifying. Tardi's long panels (each one the full width of a page) sprawl across landscapes, often meticulously detailed. Colors are dark, muted, usually gray, black, and brown. They are occasionally splashed with red to indicate weakness (the French army's stupid red pants) or explosions or, rarely, blood. People appears as cruelly soft and rounded, either drowning in mud or confronted by industrial straight lines in a hellish world. 

The last part of the book (95-134) is nonfiction, a history of the western front from 1914 through the collapse of Germany written by Jean-Pierre Verney. It's illustrated not by Tardi's drawings but by historical photographs. This is very informative and densely packed.
Unfortunately, it lacks maps and the illustrations are too small. I dislike its focus on the western front, but am willing to accept that given the Tardi section's nature. It's definitely a useful companion to the book's first half.

Overall, a solid contribution to the WWI literature. 

Strongly recommended for any comics/graphic novels reader and people interested in WWI.

*Fucking War or Fuck the War are more accurate translations.

Goddamn this War!

Reviews

Highlights