Bryan Talbot: Grand Books, Mon Amour

Bryan Talbot wrote the impeccable Alice in Sunderland. He has been at the forefront of British graphic fiction for years.

Now, Jonathan Cape are releasing his beautifully gritty and grimey series of books about a badger detective in a steampunk world... where the French won the Napoleonic wars? And everyone's an animal? And the humans are 'doughface' slaves?

Only Bryan Talbot.

We interviewed him about it all.

> Hello, Bryan. Hope you're well. Firstly, what book would you most like for Christmas this year and what book will you be recommending at all the Christmas parties you'll be attending?

Nice to 'meet' you! The book I'd like for Christmas is the hardcover edition of The Oxford Companion to Crime and Mystery Writing. The one I'd like to recommend is Logicomix by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos H Papadimitriou. It's a meaty graphic novel about philosophy and the life of Bertrand Russell and it's an excellent read.

> Set up the world of Grandville and its themes for those who don't know.

The stories are set in a steampunk fantasy version of Belle Epoch Paris, a parallel world populated by anthropomorphic animals in which Britain lost the Napoleonic war. There are some humans though - an oppressed underclass that the French refer to as ‘doughfaces’. The stories themselves are fast-moving detective thrillers in which the protagonist tenaciously deduces and battles his way to the truth.

> Grandville and its sequel feature some of the most gritty anthropomorphic detectives this side of Gun with Occasional Music - what was your inspiration for creating the universe?

I'd long had a desire to write a detective story, being a great Holmes fan. The concept, though, came to me almost fully formed while I was looking through a book I'd had for years about the early nineteenth century French artist Jean Ignace Isadore Gerard. He did many illustrations featuring anthropomorphic animals in contemporary dress and used the pen name ‘J J Grandville’. It suddenly occurred to me that Grandville could be another name for Paris in an alternative reality where it was the biggest city in the world, the centre of a globe-spanning French Empire.

> Did you on purpose set about giving parallels with the war on terror and political spin-doctoring when putting together the plots?

Absolutely. I always try to make my stories multi-layered. The new book, Grandville, Mon Amour has a theme concerning the morality and human effects of terrorism.

> Who would D I LeBrock's human counterpart be? In my head, his voice is like Ray Winstone.

Good choice! Perhaps John Thaw or Philip Glenister. LeBrock does call people ‘sunshine’ sometimes, which I think was used a lot in The Sweeney.

> Do you plan the Grandville series to be as interconnected as the first two books, or are you planning more stand-alone adventures for the two?

I've plotted out a further three volumes and, while each will be completely stand-alone, there will be an ongoing story arc connecting them. All the stories after the first book take place a month after the previous one.

> What is your favourite graphic novel of all time?

That's a tough question as I have so many favourites. Just picking one at random, I'd plump for From Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell.

> How did you perfect your illustrating craft?

Apart from the comics I made for my own amusement while growing up, after doing graphic design at college, I did my apprenticeship in the medium in underground and alternative comics for about five years. As for balancing text and pictures, basically anything goes from wordy to ‘silent’, as long as it's done well. Posy Simmons is a good example of a graphic novelist who uses large blocks of text that fit seamlessly with her images

> Do you still read mainstream comics on DC and Marvel?

Nope. I used to like Steve Ditko's Doctor Strange and Spider-man and most anything by Jack Kirby.

> What are you working on at the moment?

I've nearly finished the script for Grandville: Bete Noir, the third in the series, though I'm probably going to be collaborating with a writer on a non-fiction graphic novel first.