A review by rosseroo
It Was the War of the Trenches by Kim Thompson, Jacques Tardi

4.0

In case you missed the memo, World War I was a nightmare of pointless suffering for millions upon millions of people. This beautifully produced (and translated) reprint of a 1993 French graphic collection takes you there via a loose collection of personal stories from the French trenches. There's no protagonist, no plot, no narrative, just, as the author writes in his foreword: "Nothing but a gigantic, anonymous scream of agony." Each of these "screams of agony" is the story of a French soldier and the madness he encounters at the front lines. There are about 8-10 stories, ranging from 2-15 pages each, and they march across the mind with relentless horror. Tardi drew heavily upon archival photos and research in drafting these stories, and it certainly shows both in the detail and emotional truth of the images. In another part of the preface the author wrote, "The only thing that interests me is man and his suffering, and it fills me with rage." and that rage comes across very directly. This is not a book to be read for fun, but to be studied in conjunction with other seminal works on World War I such as Goodbye to All That, Paths of Glory, and many many more books and films (which are listed in the excellent bibliography in the rear of the book). The book occupies the uneasy but vital space between pure documentary footage, memoir, and fiction, and could be an excellent teaching tool for the classroom.