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I was going to ask Bryan Talbot for an interview at
UnCommon Con over Thanksgiving break. When that convention
fell through, I asked him to do the interview via
e-mail with me. To my releif, he said yes.
When I last interviewed Bryan Talbot, he was hoping to
start work on a new comic idea he had. It would be a
personal work which he would write and illustrate.
Its going to be called Cherubs. In this interview he
says how far he has or rather hasnt gotten in it. I
also asked him some questions about the fabulous CD ROM
of Heart of Empire which was put out recently. I
think youll find what he has to say quite
interesting. Once again some insight into the
brilliant man who gave the world The Adventures of
Luther Arkwright and Heart of Empire.
Sidra:
When did you come up with the idea of doing a
CD ROM on the creation of Heart of Empire? Was it an
intention from the start of Heart of Empire?
Bryan Talbot:
Not at all. I think that it was towards
the end of, or just after I'd finished, HEART OF
EMPIRE that the idea came up in a conversation with
James Robertson who runs my website. I don't remember
precisely but think that James may have suggested it.
He'd done such a good job on the site that it seemed a
great idea. It took me a great deal of time - there
are over 65,000 words of annotations on there - but it
was worth it to be able to document the entire
production of a graphic novel, from beginning to end.
Illustrator John Coulthart said it was like looking
over my shoulder as I created it. James did a
brilliant piece of work. It's so user-friendly. You
can zip about all over the place with real ease.
Sidra:
You say that youre a control freak: how
difficult was it for you to let go and have someone
else color Heart of Empire?
Bryan Talbot:
I'm only a control freak when it comes
to my work. I left the colours to Angus for reasons of
time. The book took me three years as it was. If I'd
have coloured it, it would have taken at least another
year. Still, I kept a firm hand on the colours,
supplying Angus with full colour guides for each panel
and he was terrific. We've worked together before and
he knows what I want. After colouring each section,
he'd email me jpegs of the pages and we'd adjust them
over the phone. Sometimes I'd drive over to his studio
and we'd go through them on screen to fine tune them.
Some of the colour guides are on the CD-Rom. Angus was
nominated for an Eisner Award for those colours.
Sidra:
In the CD ROM you describe not really having an
idea for a plot originally, but filing away little
notes, ideas, and reference sketches. Is that the way
you always come up with comic book concepts?
Bryan Talbot:
Not exactly, but the fully structured
plot is usually the final stage before scripting.
Stories usually start as general atmospheres or
intentions to produce a story about something specific
or even individual scenes that suggest a bigger whole.
After that I usually do spend a long while developing
them, which does usually involve scribbling plot,
script or visual ideas down when and where I think of
them. I then file them away until I reach the point
when I think there's enough of a critical mass to form
the basis for a story. The overall structure of a
graphic novel is very important and I always spend a
lot of time making sure that it's both solid and
refined.
Sidra:
Has there ever been anything where you just sat
down and it practically wrote itself, if so what?
Bryan Talbot:
The two instances where that definitely
happened are with my spoof biography in Heart of
Empire and with the pastiche of the Famous Artists'
School "We're Looking For People Who Like to Draw" ad.
As soon as I had the ideas for these pieces, I wrote
them straight out with very little need for later fine
tuning.
Sidra:
What was your favorite part of creating Heart
of Empire and/or the Heart of Empire CD-ROM?
Bryan Talbot:
Dreaming it up. That's always the fun
part, the 10% inspiration before the 90% perspiration.
The enjoyable thing about the CD-Rom was being able to
document all of the thinking behind the strip -
something that I never usually get to do.
Sidra:
I know when I write there's always something in
my work that I'm inordinately proud of. What in the
art or writing of Heart of Empire are you
exceptionally proud of?
Bryan Talbot:
The achievement of writing and drawing
the book as a whole. It took about three years. Also
it's a lovely production job - a nice, hefty artifact
in itself (even more so with the Limited Edition
Hardback, with the gold embossing, fancy slipcase,
endpapers and everything).
Sidra:
What are working on at the moment?
Bryan Talbot:
I've recently finished MEMENTO, a 12
page full painted colour "silent" strip for the
British SF weekly 2000AD (home of Judge Dredd) Xmas
Special. We're running it on the website in a
panel-by-panel format at: www.bryan-talbot.com/memento
I've also just done a black and white 2 pager for the
9/11 benefit book.
Sidra:
And have you had times to work on Cherubs?
Bryan Talbot:
No, not at all. I've had it on hold. I
keep thinking that I really must get back to getting
it published but have been a little busy.
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