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.
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.