The Arctic Marauder

In its ongoing quest to showcase the wide range of Jacques Tardi’s bibliography,Fantagraphics reaches all the way back to one of his earliest, and most distinctivegraphic novels: A satirical, Jules Vernes-esque “retro-sci-fi” yarn executedon scratchboard in a stunningly detailed faux-woodcut style perfectly chosen torender the Edwardian-era mechanical marvels on display. Created in 1972, TheArctic Marauder is a downright prescient example of proto-“steampunk” sciencefiction — or perhaps more accurately, and to coin a spinoff genre, “icepunk.”

In 1899, “L’Anjou,” a ship navigating the Arctic Ocean from Murmansk,Russia, to Le Havre, France comes across a stunning sight: A ghostly, abandonedvessel perched high atop an iceberg. But exploring this strange apparition is thelast thing the sailors will ever do, as their own ship is soon dispatched to DavyJones’ locker via a mysterious explosion.

Enter Jerome Plumier, whose search for his missing uncle, the inventor Louis-Ferdinand Chapoutier, brings him intocontact with the sinister, frigid forces behind this — and soon he too is headed towards the North Pole, where he willcontent with mad scientists, monsters of the deep, and futuristic submarines and flying machines.Told with brio in hilarious slabs of vintage purple prose, The Arctic Marauder works both as ripping good adventurestory and parody of same, and, predating as it does the later and not dissimilar Adele Blanc-Sec series, is a keystone inTardi’s oeuvre in his fantastical mode.