The Cabbie: Book One - Hardcover

Martí

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1606994506 ISBN 13: 9781606994504

Publisher: Fantagraphics, 2011

Synopsis

• Spanish cartoonist Marti's The Cabbie spins off Martin Scorsese’s sordid urban-justice drama, Taxi Driver, with a graphic style that unapologetically appropriates and even refines the brutal slabs of black, squashed perspectives, and grotesque approach to human physiognomy (and its ability to withstand punishment) that define Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy daily comic strip. And as Art Spiegelman (who was the first to publish Marti's work in English, in RAW magazine) notes in his introduction, while “Gould’s graphic black and white precision and his diagrammatic clarity live on in Marti's work” — “more interestingly, perhaps, so does Gould’s depravity.” Indeed, if anything, The Cabbie is even more savage than the legendarily brutal Dick Tracy, with its pimps, whores, petty thieves, corrupt businessmen, all swirling around the ingenuously violent “Cabbie” whose self-administered “upstanding citizen” status entitles him — in his view — to even more shocking acts of violence — especially on his quest for the stolen coffin of his father, which he’s told includes his entire inheritance!

About this title

About the Author:

Born in 1955, Martí has been published in the anthologies RAW, Drawn and Quarterly, and Pictopia; an issue of his solo comic Calvario Hills, which appeared under the “Ignatz” imprint from Fantagraphics in 2007, revived the Cabbie for a new adventure. 

Art Spiegelman is the Pulitzer-Prize-winning creator of Maus. He's also a groundbreaking editor, whose recent projects include the Toon books line of graphic novels for school libraries, as well as the 1980s seminal comics anthology Raw, which introduced cartoonists like Charles Burns and helped kickstart the alternative comics movement. He's long been associated with the New Yorker.

Review:

“An intriguing throwback to the days of heroes with worldviews defined in terms as rigidly black and white as the panels they battled their way through, this visual and thematic love letter to (and simultaneous critique of) [Chester] Gould’s tropes is highly recommended for grownups with a taste for refreshingly lurid pulp fiction.”
- Publishers Weekly

“Initially published in the ’80s, it mimics the basic comic strip format... but is supremely screwed up.... It is a really uncomfortable experience from cover to cover, and I am stoked it exists.”
- Sam Hockley-Smith, The Fader

“The Cabbie is one of the few crime comics where you can say it is great and attach no signifiers. Most of the time, liking comics is about liking one or two aspects about a strip. Rare is the long form comic that is just plain great.”
- Sammy Harkham (Kramer's Ergot, Crickets)

“Pure evil genius cartooning: and fun to boot.”
- Brad Mackay

“The page. . . where the cabbie brings his father’s sewage covered remains home andp uts them in what’s left of the coffin and then puts the coffin on top of his mother’s recently deceased body tells you everything you need to know. . . . Impregnable would be the best word, EXCELLENT! will have to do.”
- Tucker Stone, The Savage Critics

“This is a harsh and uncompromising tale of escalating crime and uncaring punishments: blackly cynical, existentially scary and populated with a cast of battered, desolate characters of increasingly degenerate desperation. Even the monsters are victims. But for all that The Cabbie is an incredibly compelling drama with strong allegorical overtones and brutally mesmerizing visuals.”
- Win Wiacek, Now Read This!

About this edition

• Publisher: Fantagraphics
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1606994506
• ISBN 13: 9781606994504
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 64