Abstract This article aims to compare the narrative techniques employed through the combination of text and image in Tardi's adaptations of Le Der des ders and Voyage au bout de la nuit. Le Der des ders is a classic format bande dessinee, and Voyage is a cross-media work where Tardi's uncaptioned illustrations are juxtaposed with Celine's text. We argue that both Le Der des ders and Voyage constitute successful adaptations in their use of the specificity of the media, respectively comic book and illustration. We will look at the narrative use of text and image in Le Der des ders in terms of complementarity, and in terms of fragmentation with regard to Voyage. In Le Der des ders, text and image form one narrative; in Voyage, on the other hand, there is a binary narrative: the text, and, juxtaposed with it, confronting it, its visual version. This article aims to compare the narrative techniques employed through the combination of text and image in two adaptations by Jacques Tardi: his 1988 illustration of Louis-Ferdinand Celine's 1932 Voyage au bout de la nuit ['Journey to the End of the Night']1 and his 1997 bande dessinee adaptation of Didier Daeninckx's 1985 Le Der des ders ['The Last of the Last'].2 Le Der des ders is a classic large format album comic book of 80 black and white pages; Voyage is a large format album in black and white with 600 illustrations by Tardi and the complete original text by Celine. Tardi's illustrations are totally silent, with no speech bubbles, and uncaptioned in Voyage. Celine's and Daeninckx's texts are linked by their evocation of the trauma of the First World War, a theme central to Tardi's work, culminating in 1993 with his album C'etait la guerre des tranchees ['The War of the Trenches']. We shall propose that both Le Der des ders and Voyage constitute successful adaptations of the original texts, in the sense that they are both personal and interpretive works in which Tardi uses the specificity of the chosen media, namely comic book and illustration. Wewill analyse the combinatory use of text and image in terms of complementarity in relation to Le Der des ders, and fragmentation with regard to Voyage. We shall first define the term 'adaptation' in relation to these two works, and the criteria used to judge their 'success' as adaptations. Adaptation We characterise both Le Der des ders and Voyage as adaptations. The fact that Voyage, an illustrated text, is an adaptation can seem paradoxical - the term 'illustration' being deemed reductive, for instance, by artistic director Etienne Robial: Pour Voyage au bout de la nuit, ce que je trouvais fascinant, c'etait de montrer aux lecteurs, la vision qu'en avait Tardi. De faire la meme demarche qu'un realisateur qui s'accapare un texte pour le livrer sous forme de film... On est loin de la notion d'illustration... [For Voyage au bout de la nuit, what I found fascinating was to show Tardi's vision to readers. To do the same thing as a director who appropriates a text to render it as a film... This is a long way from the notion of illustration....].3 This is echoed by film critic Michel Boujut, who asserts that 'ce n'est pas en illustrateur qu'il [Tardi] s'est approprie le livre de Celine, mais en cineaste' ['it is not as an illustrator that Tardi appropriated Celine's book, but as a filmmaker'].4 The comparison between Tardi's work on Voyage and that of a film director emphasises its adaptive aspect and deems the qualification of illustration to be simplistic, implying that it is not as creative a process as adaptation. The adaptation of Voyage by Tardi does not lie solely in the pictorial representation, the illustration itself, but in its juxtaposition with the pre-existing text. In Entretiens avec Numa Sadoul ['Interviews with Numa Sadoul'], Tardi explains that illustrating did not only involve drawing, but also being in charge of the organisation of text and image on the page: La maquette, la repartition des images, tout a ete fait par moi. …