You Are There

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One of the earliest full-length, standalone graphic novels to be publishedin Europe, and certainly one of the best and most original, Ici Même wasserialized in the adult French comics monthly (A suivre) in the early 1980s andthen released in book form. A quarter of a century later, this dark, funny,consistently surprising masterpiece has finally been translated into English. Anunexpected yet smoothly confident collaboration between the darkly cynicalJacques Tardi and the playful fantasist Jean-Claude Forest (of Barbarellafame), You Are There is set on a small island off the coast ofFrance, where unscrupulous landowners have succeeded in overtaking the land fromthe last heir of a previously wealthy family. That heir, whose domain, in aBeckettian twist, is now reduced to the walls that border these patches of landhe used to own, prowls the walls all day, eking out a living by collecting tollsat each gate. His seemingly hopeless struggle to recover his birthright becomescomplicated as the government sees a way of using his plight for the sake ofpolitical expediency, and the romantic intervention of the daughter of one ofthe landowners (who has her own sordid history with the politician) engendersfurther difficulties, culminating in an apocalyptic, hallucinatoryfinale.