Bryan Talbot - Career

Career

Talbot began his comics work in the underground comix scene of the late 1960s. In 1969 his first work appeared as illustrations in Mallorn, the British Tolkien Society magazine, followed in 1972 by a weekly strip in his college newspaper.

He continued in the scene after leaving college, producing Brainstorm Comix, the first three of which formed The Chester P. Hackenbush Trilogy (a character reworked by Alan Moore as Chester Williams for Swamp Thing).

He started The Adventures of Luther Arkwright in 1978. It was originally published in Near Myths and continued on over the years in other publications. It was eventually collected together into one volume by Dark Horse. Along with When the Wind Blows it is one of the first British graphic novels.

In the early to mid-eighties he provide art for some of 2000 AD's flagship serials, producing 3 series of Nemesis the Warlock, as well as occasional strips for Judge Dredd.

The Tale of One Bad Rat deals with recovery from childhood sexual abuse.

Talbot moved to the American market in the 1990s, principally for DC, on titles like Hellblazer, Sandman and Batman. He also produced the art for The Nazz by Tom Veitch and worked with Tom's brother Rick Veitch on Teknophage, one of a number of mini-series he drew for Tekno Comix.

Talbot has illustrated cards for the Magic: The Gathering collectible card game.

He has also illustrated Bill Willingham's Fables, as well as returning to the Luther Arkwright universe with Heart of Empire. He has also worked on The Dead Boy Detectives.

In 2006, he announced the graphic novel Metronome, an existential, textless erotically-charged visual poem, written under the pseudonym Véronique Tanaka. He admitted that he was the author in 2009.

In 2007 he released Alice in Sunderland, which documents the connections between Lewis Carroll, Alice Liddell, and the Sunderland and Wearside area. He also wrote and drew the layouts for Cherubs!, which he describes as "an irreverent fast-paced supernatural comedy-adventure."

His upcoming work includes a sequel to 2009's Grandville, which Talbot says is "a detective steampunk thriller" and Paul Gravett calls it "an inspired reimagining of some of the first French anthropomorphic caricatures". It is planned as the first in a series of four or five graphic novels.