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Bryan Talbot is a creative genius, whose work has been immeasurably
influential in the comic industry. His underground character Chester P.
Hackenbush is still a prevalent visage in the comic scene. His work in
comic books has spanned twenty five years and has included such
things as Tale of One Bad Rat , which is a poignant book about a
girl coming to terms with sexual molestation, The Omega Report,
Nemesis the Warlock, Judge Dredd, Sandman, The Nazz, Legends of the
Dark Knight and many many more titles. Bryan Talbots The
Adventures of Luther Arkwright was the first graphic novel printed in
Britain. The Adventures of Luther Arkwright has been listed as
an influence by such people as Alan Moore, Garth Ennis, Neil Gaiman,
and Steve Bissette. I personally think that if you havent read The
Adventures of Luther Arkwright, you should march directly to your
comic shop and pick up the trade paperback that Dark Horse has put out.
Talbot has just finished working on Heart of Empire , which is the
sequel to Luther Arkwright and is currently penciling The Dead Boy
Detectives and the Secret of Immortality, written by Ed Brubaker,
for Vertigo.
Sidra:
When did you first become interested in comic books?
Bryan Talbot:
I cant remember. Before I went to school I was reading
nursery comics. Comics called Jack and Jill in Britain and Harold Her
stuff like that. I just carried on reading them. In Britain theres a strong
tradition of comics for children and there still is a lot of childrens comics
such as the Beano or the Dandy. Things like childrens comics go back
to Victorian times.
Sidra:
What did you study in school and where did you study?
Bryan Talbot:
I went to an all boys grammar school, not a very nice
place to go. My art education was a complete mess, a total cock up. The
art teacher there, who I had all the way through school, used to come in
in the morning , hand out sheets of paper, and tell us to draw something
while he read the paper. Hed collect the pages at the end. That was
about the long and short of it. After that I went to Wiggin School of Art
for a year and that was another total disaster. I was being taught there
by three exhibiting abstract artists. They wouldnt let you do anything
figurative at all. So I didnt learn anything there, I thought, " Well
Im not going to make very much headway in fine arts, because Im not
really too much into abstract. " So I studied graphic design four
three years. All this time I never thought I could actually make a living
drawing comic books. It never occurred to me. Id always been reading
them and drawing them for my own pleasure since I was eight. You
know, just making them up, stapling the paper together , and making up
stories. It was only after this design course, when I was unemployed
that I started doing comics. Id met a guy in London who said " If
you ever do a comic, Ill publish it. " He liked the illustrations that
hed seen. So I thought Im unemployed I might as well do a comic, and
that became the first Brainstorm comics. I worked with them
doing comics for about five years.
Sidra:
Your Chester P. Hackenbush character, you say he keeps
reappearing. How do you feel about the fact that he just keeps coming
back?
Bryan Talbot:
I feel very good about it. Hes sort of become like an icon
of the British underground, the British counter culture. In the same way
that the Freak brothers are over here. So thats nice. Hes appeared
quite a few places. When I was talking yesterday, I realized I couldnt
remember half of the places. Hes always cropping up . Theres a
magazine in Britian called Bush Telegraph . I think its the British
equivalent of High Times . Recently there was a cover in which
he was on the cover. Nothing to do with what was in the magazine, but
big on the cover.
Sidra:
What were your goals for Chester P. Hackenbush when you were
writing him?
Bryan Talbot:
When I did the very first comic, I had no idea what I was
doing really. Its messy, but people liked it. They liked the story. I
never thought it would go on after that.
Sidra:
Whats your favorite art style? You already said you dislike
abstract art, but what styles do you like?
Bryan Talbot:
I like quite a few other art styles. I quite like the clear line
technique. I like lots of things. I like turn-of-the-century book illustrations,
Ralph Steadman, who did the scratchy line and spotter technique, line
and wash stuff. I likw lots of stuff.
Sidra:
Thats also something one notices when looking through your
work. Not one art style in your books is exactly alike. Its very, very
unique and quite beautiful.
Bryan Talbot:
Well, I always try and let the story dictate the style. Every
time I come up with a story, I think about what style would be
appropriate to tell the story in, because the style is part of the story
telling. Its a bit like prose style in text fiction. You know its a direct
part of the story telling, the style you chose.
Sidra:
You say that with your Luther Arkwright book you used a lot of
experimental techniques. What would be an example of that?
Bryan Talbot:
Well, first theres the assassination sequence, I split I
think its six seconds over seventy two panels and intercut them. At that
point in the story Arkwright is affecting the Puritan cabinet's perception of time
by psychic means. Thats why I slowed it right down like that.
The biggest experimentation that Alan Moore always sites is the cutting
technique. Because at the time comics were very telegraphed, very
simplistic and very linear and everything was signposted for the reader.
Meanwhile with Arkwright, I would just jump form one scene to another,
from different time periods, and just leave it to the reader to put it
together in their own mind. I sort of designed it in a way that the first part
of the story is like a mental jigsaw puzzle that the readers were just given
this information and the further they got on in the story, the more the
pieces fell into place. By about the middle of the story, it then goes
linear. Which sort of drags you screaming to the climax, that was the
theory anyway. But this was very much influenced with the British
director, Nick Roegs early films like Performance , Man Who
Fell to Earth, Dont Look Now, and Bad Timing.
Hed have these jump cuts and just leave it to the viewer to follow the story,
put the pieces together themselves. Especially something like Bad
Timing, which is jumping all over the place and I really enjoyed that.
I thought, well nobodys doing this in comics. So, I put it into comics
and Alan Moore in an article at the time said I was doing what Eisner
was doing in the 40s and the 50s by taking Orson Welles and
Hitchcock techniques and putting them in comics. I was just taking a
contemporary director at the time and putting his techniques into comics.
So that was one of the experimental things, but another one was
juxtaposing different images and leaving it up to the reader to make the
connections. Also theres the transformation sequence, when the artwork bleeds
off the page and theres a collage of images all over the place with big
sections of text that you suddenly go into. I put things like the reporter
Hiram Kowolskys news reports, I just put them as blocks of text
amongst the comic story. And Id also do things like put print outs of
the computer reports in between the panels. I cant remember half the
things I did now, but looking back at it I was self-consciously
experimental. But I did want to do something that was very different
from the comics of the time.
Sidra:
What was it about the comics of the time that really irked you?
Bryan Talbot:
They were all so bland. They were just completely bland.
In superhero comics, mainstream comics of the time, nobody swore,
nobody belched, the nearest thing you got to an erotic scene was girls
wearing bikinis, stuff like that. It was very shocking at the time in
1971 when you saw Conan getting up from a prostitute's bed. At the time
that was really daring, you know. They wouldnt think twice about it
these days. But yeah, they were just so bland and boring and linear,
predictable. Hes a superhero, hes a supervillian, they have a fight, and
that was the end of it. I wanted to do something that was as good and as
full and as rich as a text novel.
Sidra:
What changes have you perceived in the comic book industry
since then?
Bryan Talbot:
Well, now a lot of the things I didnt like about comics
have completely changed. There are now a lot of comics for mature
readers and people who want to read about more than adolescent power
fantasies. There are comics for all sorts of tastes, comics for women, all
sorts of comics. The funny thing is comics are being produced better
today than in any time in comics history at the same time the market is
the worst its ever been. Its strange.
Sidra:
How does it feel to be listed as having inspired so many people?
Bryan Talbot:
It feels nice. I mean, itd be nice to have the money to go
with it. No, its nice. At these conventions I get all these people coming
up to me and saying really nice things about the comics. Michael Zulli
the first time I met him came up to me and he said, " I am drawing
comics because of you, " which is nice. He read Luther
Arkwright, and it blew him away, and he said " I want to do things
like this. " Steve Bissette said the same thing. Rick Veitch, he was
already doing comics when I met him. Hed just started , but he reckons
that Luther Arkwright was a big influence. Ive heard that quite a few
times from people. Its nice to hear.
Sidra:
What is the difference between the American comic book industry
and the European comic book industry?
Bryan Talbot:
Well the British comic industry is dead on its feet. Its in a
lot worse state than the American comic industry. Theres one or two
comics worth picking up, 2000 AD and Judge Dredd Magazine. There
are a couple of independent ones that are quite good, such as Strange
Haven and Paul Grists Kane, but on the whole the market in Britain is
just terrible.
In other parts of Europe, France especially, adults read
comics. There are comic stores in central Paris that arent some little,
sleazy, locker room type things with a fan boy holding court to the
customers. Theyre big, swish stores with beautiful, hardbound comic
albums and they are bought by the general public. There are lots of
conventions, a big one in Angouleme. A quarter of a million people
show, and thats the general public. The general public there reads
comics and the whole town takes part in it. There are comic exhibitions
in the Cathedral and all over in the town. Theres the National Center of
Comic Art there.
The sales in general in Europe, however, have actually
gone down, because less people are reading I suppose, but the sales are
huge compared to the American market. In Italy comics like Dylan Dog
sell two hundred thousand a month. In most countries in Europe, the
markets a lot healthier, and a lot wider in a field. Theres not just comic
fans and such; its ordinary people who read comics. After one
Angouleme, I was in Paris for a few days and this waiter at the bar was
serving and I told him Id just come back from Angouleme amd asked him if
he read comics. And he said "No, no I dont read comics generally.
I read Tin Tin. I read Spiro..." As it turns out he read a dozen
or so of these albums a month, but he didnt really consider himself a
comic book reader. Its just something that people in France do.
Sidra:
What is the hardest part of creating comic books for you?
Bryan Talbot:
Actually sitting down and drawing it. All the creative bit,
thats the fun bit. You know, making up the stories, imagining the story;
thats the wonderful bit where you live in a world of your own and just
invent all this stuff. Thats the five percent inspiration bit, and drawing
is the ninety-five perspiration bit, the real hard work.
Sidra:
How much research in general do you put into your books?
Bryan Talbot:
It depends on the story alot. If its a halfway serious
story, I put a lot of research in. Like for A Tale of One Bad Rat
the theme was Beatrix Potter. I read a dozen books on Beatrix Potter. I
visited the place where she was born and the place in the Lake District
connected to her. I read about a dozen books on child abuse; I talked to
people who had been abused. I read transcripts of vicitims of child
abuse talking. I read four books on rats, admittedly two of those were
just about keeping a pet rat. I read about four books on the Lake District;
I knew the Lake district quite well anyway. I also researched the
wildflowers, birds and stuff like that.
So I did actually do quite a bit of research. For Heart of Empire
I was thinking about it for quite a few years before I actually did it. I did
research for it in Rome, the Metropolitian in New York, the Louvre in Paris,
British Museum, Windsor Castle, the York Museum in Yorkshire which is very good
museum, and lots of other places in Italy. You know visiting museums
doing sketches, photographs of things which are then put in the story.
Sidra:
You say you have personal work and commercial work. Whats
the difference? Where do you draw the line between the two?
Bryan Talbot:
Usually I think of commercial work as when Im working
for a big company, drawing someone elses story and someone else is
inking it... things like that. Personal stories are when Ive come up with
it, created it. Its saying Im making a statement. Theres self expression
in there and Im doing the whole thing drawing it, penciling it, inking it,
the works. I think thats quite a big distinction, cause Ive got more
control. Its more a part of me when Im doing the whole thing. Its more
like art. Its more like self-expression. Whereas if youre working for a
big company, youre just penciling. Im not saying I do a worse job. I
always try to do the best I can, but I feel a bit detached from that. Its
just commercial work and I just do it. I probably, with personal work,
keep going back and changing, polishing and everything. Probably in
commercial work I just kind of pencil it and BANG thats out.
Sidra:
What do you want to work on next?
Bryan Talbot:
Well I have this project, that Ive been developing,
called Cherubs , which I would like to do next. Although I may
end up doing a job for DC first, that Ive been offered. I dont know.
Cherubs is a very different story. I was about to say it would require
no research, but part of is Ive actually got two leather bound copies of
John Miltons Paradise Lostand Dante's Divine Comedy .
So I sat down and kind of plowed through all the Gustave Dore illustrations, just for
inspiration. That'll be about all the research I do, because its a light,
silly, cartoony, supernatural comedy adventure story. Its about the
adventures of a gang of cherubs. Ive also reworked it as a proposal for
an animated cartoon series.
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