You Are There

Book excerpt: You Are There is an unexpected collaboration between the darkly cynical Jacques Tardi and the playful fantasist Jean-Claude Forest (of Barbarella fame). It is set on a small island off the coast of France, where unscrupulous landowners have succeeded in overtaking the land from the last heir of a previously wealthy family. His domain now reduced to the walls that border the patches of land he used to own, the half-mad fellow prowls the walls all day, eking out a living by collecting tolls at each gate. His seemingly hopeless struggle to recover his birthright becomes complicated as the government sees a way of using his plight for the sake of political expediency, and the romantic intervention of the daughter of one of the landowners (who has her own sordid history with the politician) engenders further difficulties. Set in Tardi's preferred early 20th century milieu, You Are There is drawn in his crisp 1980s neo-"clear line" style, gorgeously detailed, with impossibly deep slabs of black.