Fatale is a quite unfortunately unfinished work from Jean-Patrick Manchette and Tardi, based on Manchette’s novel. They got twenty-one pages done of sixty; the pages seem to end around at the start of the second act and it’s a real bummer because it’s a phenomenal start.

There’s a sublime, mysterious beginning, then maybe a little bit too much of the hard-boiled as the exposition establishes protagonist Aimée. She’s apparently some kind of criminal, having gotten her hands on a fortune in cash—only having to shotgun one partner for it—leading to an exceptionally bad scene involving eating sauerkraut naked and rolling around in the cash like Scrooge McDuck.

But somehow the comic recovers as Aimée starts grifting her way through a tranquil little town, getting involved with all the strange goings on, like a rich guy who everyone wants committed because he pees on walls but he’s kind of a gentleman. Tardi has a great time with the personalities and the quirks—you forget Aimée’s the protagonist during this big party scene, since it’s all about introducing the supporting cast and ground situation in the town.

The action gets back to the protagonist in the last couple pages, as things move into the second act, but then it just stops.

Again, real bummer it didn’t get finished. While Tardi and Manchette initially seem to have characterization issues with the lead, the almost immediate recovery bodes well for whatever they would’ve done with the rest of it.

Might even be worth looking into the source novel….

I’m not sure how much more you get out of West Coast Blues if you know all the music references—I know all the movie references and it doesn’t really add anything except being able to contextualize the story as a noir piece, which isn’t particularly necessary. Like, it comes across real easy, even if you don’t think about Blues being some kind of Sam Fuller or Anthony Mann movie. But maybe the music would provide a different kind of accompaniment, especially since the script’s constantly referencing not just the music the protagonist is playing but also the importance of it.

Tardi adapted a Jean-Patrick Manchette novel for the story and I feel comfortable assuming most of the exposition boxes came from the novel (Kim Thompson then translated from French to English so there’s a whole other layer); Blues is very talking in the exposition. There’s also this implication of narrator as character at one point and it never comes through again, which is a little disappointing because otherwise it’s just… a lot of exposition. Lists of things, lots of contextualizing but not really—the big questions involving the protagonist just get shrugged off. He’s just a man doing man things, like abandoning his family and so on.

The comic opens with a bookend—which is a little more implied than clear because of the tenses in the narration–protagonist George is driving home late one night after getting boozed up because he hates his job as a middle manager so what else is he going to do. A car crashes in front of him and he takes the driver to the hospital, thinking nothing of it. When he gets home to his wife, she thinks he should’ve stayed and at least given his name but why bother. The wife puts up with a lot of shit from George, who’s deserving of various sympathies throughout Blues but is such a dick extending said sympathies comes with some guilt over it. He’s a dick, but at least he’s not a murderous dick.

Though, the narration tells us, he’s going to kill two men. But first they’re going to try to kill him, giving the narration a countdown—and Blues a very easily delineated Freytag.

While on vacation with his family—wife, two kids, no pets—two bad guys try to kill George and he runs back to Paris (without telling his wife) and gets a gun from a pal to defend himself. Now, we never find out his plan because the action mostly centers on the pursuing hitmen. They’re a couple, though one of them still likes to rape women, which is going to be important in the just as easily delineated third act. Before then, however, George is going to end up lost in the wilderness and finding the almost blind woodsman. It’s a long term Frankenstein for the woodsman, but it eventually goes that route, albeit unpredictably, before George finally has to confront the main villain.

Tardi’s got a great pace, especially for seventy-some pages, though it often feels like he’s rushing through potentially better moments. George doesn’t much in the way of personality, especially when he’s alone, so the scenes with other people are a lot more interesting but there aren’t many of them. He’s always driving by himself—whether existentially moping or lambing it from the hitmen—or walking by himself or hanging around the blind woodsman who doesn’t want to talk and so on. Tardi is able to find some good comedic moments, but—again—it’s because George has someone to play off.

Why’s George such a limp protagonist—is it Manchette’s fault or Tardi’s—you’d probably have to read the source novel and… eh. West Coast Blues doesn’t inspire that interest. Particularly not since Tardi’s art, even realizing a mediocre story, is the obvious draw. Maybe if you’re going to try to unpack the toxic masculinity you’d want to be familiar with the source but there’s not really any sign it’d be worth going through those boxes. Despite its attempts to haunt, Blues most definitely does not. The denouement is particularly pat.

But, still, far from bad. Though not where you’d want to start with Tardi.

Griffu has all the trappings of hard-boiled detective fiction–a reluctant “hero,” in this case the titular Griffu, whose not a private investigator but a “legal advisor” (read, apparently, debt collector), a femme fatale (or three), and an intricate plot line involving corruption and class—only set in seventies Paris. And, of course, there’s the omnipresent narration.

The first panel’s exposition box sets the scene for the story, though without any fanfare—writer Jean-Patrick Manchette seems to fully understand what it means to be narrating in the past tense and gets the important stuff out of the way first, but without signaling the importance. Manchette and Tardi originally serialized Griffu, which means if you happened to miss the first installment, you’d entirely miss out on the long-term layering the creators had been doing.

The majority of Griffu’s narration is terse and pragmatic, with just enough personality for Tardi to find a good expression to accompany it with. Eventually Griffu will get talky—including the requisite “detective explains all” scene in the finish—but Manchette and Tardi are working hard at establishing Griffu, the character, as not too bright.

If he were bright, he might’ve listened to the nagging suspicion in his head and not gotten taken for a ride by the first cute girl customer he’d had in a while. She gets him to break into a real estate developer’s office to get some files, then abandons him there once she’s got them. After a quick recap of how Griffu found himself in the situation, goons show up to confront him on the breaking and entering. They give him a beating before he can escape.

They’re going to catch up with him later and hire him to find the girl—but only with the files. By that time, Griffu will have already met up with the girl’s roommate, fetching coed Evangeline, whose already had a run in with the same set of goons.

The story will take Griffu around Paris, from ritzy parties to immigrant hostels, from the offices of Charlie Hebdo to the strip clubs; Griffu’s always a bull in a china shop, bumping as many heads and noses as possible. When the comic finally does get to the shootouts, it’s incredible Tardi’s able to get so much mileage out of the violence’s intensity given Griffu’s usually bleeding from one nostril or the other. Tardi and Manchette spend most of the story establishing the hard, violent world only to then explore how much harder and how much more violent it can get.

Great art from Tardi, which gets slightly overshadowed when Manchette actually makes sure to plug all the plot holes he’d left leaking throughout. The finish is simultaneously exciting, harrowing, and depressing. Tardi will occasionally have these haunting punctuation panels, searing the image into both Griffu and the reader’s minds—Manchette even draws attention to one in the narration, with Griffu standing and staring—and the finish brings that quality to the lightning paced action sequence.

Griffu’s awesome. It’s Tardi; of course it’s awesome. But it’s also really nice Manchette wasn’t lazy with the loose threads.