As I see it, Bryan Talbot is one of the three biggest, living British talents in comics, along with Pat Mills and Alan Moore... oof, with Neil Gaiman pretty-much nuking his reputation, recently. :S
Talbot's The Tale of One Bad Rat moved me a lot, winning multiple awards as it were, and I'd say his five, hard-hitting Grandville books are just about the pinnacle of conventional anthropomorphic adventure-dramas in BD's, alongside the sensational Cité 14 / "District 14" series.
Now, I've had this panel queued up -forever- to post, but have been equally torn since forever whether I wanted to actually post it. For example, as someone fascinated by sea life, such as mollusks & crustaceans, the fact that we keep lobsters in tanks like this, with their pincers tied, only to meet a boiling end when they get 'lucky,' doesn't sit very well with me.
Bah. OTOH, in art there is truth, and one thing Talbot does a lot of in Grandville is demonstrate the vagaries of human cruelty.
In any case, it's a great BD art piece IMO.
I met Talbot at a comic festival in Lancaster some time back. Spent an awfully long time chatting to him. Fascinating and kind human.
Wow, that's awesome.
And truly, I could not imagine him otherwise given his "Rat" story.
Really, I kind of dropped the ball here not covering his Grandville stuff sooner. For example, I've no problem with people loving Blacksad, much of that I presume due to the excellent art and enjoyable noir genre, but Grandville is just levels above IMO.
The number of hilarious (and even sadly nuanced) guest appearances doesn't hurt either, such as the fading Snowy's cameo (from Tintin).
Shit, I'm sorry for kinda talking over you as I did at the time.
My bad, mate. :S
Oof, but I'm curious... anything you wanted to add about how it went with Talbot at the convention? Any opinions on what work of his we might best-share here, such as what you best admire about his work..?
(apologies on this laaaate reply, and apologies for my rudeness)
First thing, no apologies needed friend... You really didn't speak over me, and replies take as long as they take.
Second thing... I wish I had read more of his work when I met him. Instead we just chatted about the world. He has such a broad intelligence and he was very kind with it.
If you were ever setting up a pub quiz team, I'd highly recommend. * *
He's a fellow northerner, and there's something about his work that really speaks of that. There's such a strange creative history up here that gets attention, but also seems to get subsumed. We chatted about that.
And for me, Alice in Sunderland is the one I give to other people, but Luther Arkwright is the one I'll happily return to.