Bryan Talbot
It’s rare that a graphic novel actually realizes and achieves the intellectual and experimental possibilities that the medium suggests — too often, graphic novels are repositories for narrative stories. Though they can affect a level of surrealism or make use of a stream of conscious narrative, the structure of a graphic novel — panel after panel after panel — provides a physical road map that undercuts any ventures into disorientation. There is always a path, always a frame, whereas in literature words on a page are just abstract symbolism that requires the reader’s mind to disseminate any order that might be contained. In other words, it’s a hell of a lot easier to write a novel like “Finnegan’s Wake” than create a graphic novel with the same impact.
If I were to name the best graphic novel of 2007, it would be “Alice in Sunderland,” the work of British creator Bryan Talbot. Not only is it probably the most important graphic novel of last year, it’s one of the most important and transformative graphic novels ever.
Though subtitled “an entertainment,” Talbot’s magnum opus is anything but the trifle such an affectation implies. Instead, it is a sweeping chronicle of British history, mixed with local lore, biography, literary criticism, personal memoir, cartoon studies, and more. There are two focuses in the book from which all points explode in the big bang of Talbot’s mind — the industrial city of Sunderland and famed author Lewis Carroll. With those two as the vantage point to the book, Talbot’s tapestry includes the swirl of people and places from many eras. Talbot realizes this monumental tale through a mix of digital and traditional mediums, photography and cartooning and anything else you can think of. These styles come together seamlessly, you can’t pick them apart, and they create a world unto itself where there are no barriers separating past or present, nor what goes on in Talbot’s mind and what takes place in the so-called real world.
Bryan Talbot’s previous work includes “The Adventures of Luther Arkwright” and “The Tale of One Bad Rat.”
SB: This is not a straight biography or history — what was your process of devising what exactly you wanted to do with this book?
BT: I always think long and hard about every graphic novel I do, usually for years before I start. Once I do, it’s a big commitment — several years’ work — so I have to have everything straight in my mind before I begin. The starting point with this book was me moving here to Sunderland. I’d been thinking about doing something relating to Alice and Lewis Carroll for about twenty years, but it was only when I arrived here and discovered not only Carroll, but also Alice’s family, had many, many links with the city and the surrounding area that I saw a way of doing it. The next step was research - a hell of a lot of it! I realized pretty early on that, if I was going to tell the story of how the roots of Wonderland grew here, then I’d also have to tell the story of the city itself. The framework of the book — that of a performance at the Sunderland Empire — an Edwardian “palace of varieties” — was already something that I’d had in mind. About 20 years ago, I had the idea of doing a graphic novel using a theatrical piece as a setting and made a few notes and scribbled a few sketches. Shortly after moving here, I went to see “Return to the Forbidden Planet” at the Empire and I was amazed by the place. When I started to think seriously about doing a graphic novel about Alice based in Sunderland, the two ideas seemed to spontaneously collide.
SB: Was it something that grew with time, or did you have a big eureka moment where it came to you fully formed?
BT: It grew very gradually in fits and starts as I did the research and worked on the structure, which was of the utmost importance. I spent weeks working on the structure before I typed one word of the script.
Very seldom do I get an idea that would work well as a fully formed book. Funnily enough, the graphic novel I’m drawing now came to me in a flash. I’ve had a book of the early 19th century French illustrator Grandville for years. He did a lot of illustrations of anthropomorphic characters — animals, dressed in contemporary costume - and was a big influence on John Tenniel, the original illustrator of “Alice in Wonderland.” Looking at it again while researching Alice, it suddenly inspired me to come up with a retro-SF story (”steampunk” is the genre). Another 19th century French illustrator was Robida, who was probably the first science fiction artist. These two things came together in my excuse for a brain and sparked off what was a complete story within a day or two. After thinking about it a bit more over the next few weeks, in the back of my mind while working on Alice, I sat down and typed out the whole graphic novel in less than a week. It was like taking dictation. That’s the only time I’ve had one of those “Eureka moments.”
SB: What attracted you to Sunderland? What lead to such an intense interest in its history?
BT: Nothing attracted me here. I knew nothing about the place. I moved here because my wife (Dr Mary M. Talbot — check out her books!) took up a post at the University here and I can work anywhere I have studio space. The interest in its history was all down to “Alice in Sunderland.” The research had to be done for the book.
SB: The mix of medium and the use of — I assume — Photoshop was pretty amazing.
BT: Yes, it was mainly Photoshop that I used for the digitally manipulated parts.
SB: What was the decision-making process in conceptualizing that collage-style for a graphic novel?
BT: As you know, the book is fundamentally about storytelling and the storytelling process. In wanted to to tell every different story, including the central spines of Lewis Carroll and the history of the city, in a visual storytelling style that was appropriate to each one. So, for example, the sequence in Morocco is told in the style of Herge’s Tintin, the ghost story of “The Cauld Lad of Hylton” is told in a 1950s American horror comic style, “The Legend of the Lambton Worm” is done as if there had been an arts and crafts comics movement at the end of the 19th century and so on.
Because I was using a lot of historical documents, old illustrations, maps and so forth in the history sections, collage seemed the best way to present them.
SB: What was the actual work process for creating the images, processing them, organizing them, and getting them on the page? Given the girth of the book itself, it seems like it must have been time consuming and exhausting.
BT: It was. I just hope that I made it seem easy! All the drawn images were done, traditionally, on the drawing board, then scanned in. This is the first book that I’ve composed on computer, often melding drawn images with digitally manipulated photographs or found images. Some pages are entirely hand-drawn. Others are hybrid. Many of the completely computer-generated pages took much longer than the others. It’s a myth that computers save time, believe me. Some of the Photoshop montages had over a 120 separate layers, each one needing to be composed and integrated with the others.
SB: Did the story inform the visuals or vice-versa? Or somewhere in between? Did you ever change story points because of the visuals?
BT: Now and again a little re-wording went on but I stuck with the structure I worked long and hard with right at the beginning. With a construct like this — have you ever seen any comic like it? — it was crucial that I had a rock-solid structure to work from. There was SO much diverse material to interlock, so many connections to make, so many flights of fancy that had to come in at exactly the right moment, so much that had to be adequately foreshadowed that the apparent stream-of-consciousness surface had to be strictly underpinned by an unshakable structure.
SB: Any creative inspirations for format? Any role models?
BT: The framework was somewhat dictated by the idea I mentioned earlier — that of basing the book around a theatrical performance and the book itself resembles no other that I can think of. As a reader, you enter the theatre at the beginning, there’s an interval half way through when you go to the bar. It finishes with an encore and a grand finale and you leave the theatre at the end. Even the endpapers are safety curtains!
However, the idea of a book dealing with the psychogeograhy of a specific place has been around for quite a a while and I’ve read quite a few novels like this. The books of Ian Sinclair and Peter Ackroyd have been covering this ground with London for many years. Alan Moore’s “Voice of the Fire,” while totally different in structure — a chronological series of short stories — is about the history of Northampton, where he was born and has spent all his life. But these are prose novels, not comics. The conceit of having myself as a character talking to the reader comes straight from the Robert Crumb underground strips of the 60s. A few parts of the book are a bit like by Larry Gonick’s “Cartoon History of the Universe” and Scott McCloud’s “Understanding Comics.” Other bits are like Mad magazine from the 60’s or Boys Own Adventure comics. So— quite a few role models in all.
SB: Do you enjoy research? Are you the kind of person who is constantly reading, learning, taking in data?
BT: No, I hate doing research, It’s boring and time-consuming. I DO enjoy the stories that just spring up and hit you though. But, no, it’s something that I always saddle myself with, because of the nature of the stories that I want to tell. I’ve long had in mind a fantasy graphic novel — for about 15 years now — that would require NO BLOODY RESEARCH WHATSOEVER! It’s all plotted out. I’ll have to do it some day.
I do enjoy reading, though I tend to read stories, novels, rather than non-fiction. I do enough of that for research. My current book, “Grandville,” is set in fin-de-siecle Paris. Can you imagine how much research that takes? AAAARGH!
SB: What is your relationship with history - where did the interest begin and where do you find your inspiration to uncover it?
BT: I was awful at history in school. This is mainly because I had a crap history teacher who made everything seem boring. I loved the stories though, the narrative element. When I was a teenager I even got my parents to subscribe for me to a monumental weekly part-work magazine collection of Winston Churchill’s “History of the English-Speaking Peoples.” I studied Medieval British architecture to “A Level” and can still date a medieval English church or cathedral to within fifty years. Growing up in Wigan, Lancashire, it was hard to escape history. What became the town was originally a Celt village, BC. The Romans built a town there (”Cocium”). The last battle of the English civil War was fought there, etc., etc. I still love reading history books. They generate stories.
SB: The book is an encyclopedia of the connections between things. How does your mind work when building such connections? Is that the result of meticulous note taking or does it come naturally to you as brain work?
BT: I take notes, but making connections does come naturally.
SB: What do you think the nature of these connections are?
BT: Convenience? Destiny?
SB: What do you think the importance of such connections is?
BT: I think that these connections are there to be discovered. I think that they’re everywhere. I think that everybody could find them if they looked for them in the place where they lived. Their importance is entirely subjective — but isn’t that where the most important connections are made?
SB: Are there any other non-fiction comics projects that would interest you?
BT: Hah! I’m going to be moving to Nottingham this year. Mary has accepted a better post there. I’ve already started watching Robin Hood movies! Other than that, I’ve been chatting to Peter Ackroyd about perhaps doing something set in London and based around William Blake.
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