Bryan Talbot is a British comics artist and writer, best known as the creator of The Adventures of Luther Arkwright and its sequel Heart of Empire, as well as the Grandville series of books. He collaborated with his wife, Mary M. Talbot to produce Dotter of Her Father's Eyes, which won the 2012 Costa biography award.
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. Talbot 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 into one volume by Dark Horse Comics. Along with When the Wind Blows it is one of the first British graphic novels. In the early to mid-eighties he provided art for some of 2000 ADs flagship serials, producing three series of Nemesis the Warlock, as well as occasional strips for Judge Dredd. His The Tale of One Bad Rat deals with a girl's recovery from childhood sexual abuse. Talbot moved to the U.S. market in the 1990s, principally for DC Comics, on titles such as Hellblazer, ', and Dead Boy Detectives. Talbot collaborated with Neil Gaiman on The Sandman and provided art for the "", "", and "" story arcs. He drew The Nazz limited series which was written 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 ' collectible card game. He has illustrated Bill Willingham's Fables, as well as returning to the Luther Arkwright universe with Heart of Empire. In 2006, he announced the graphic novelMetronome, an existential, textless erotically-charged visual poem, written under the pseudonym Véronique Tanaka'. He admitted that he was the author in 2009. Talbot turned down an offer to appear in character as Tanaka for an in-store signing of the work. In 2007 he released Alice in Sunderland, which documents the connections between Lewis Carroll, Alice Liddell, and the Sunderland and Wearside area. He 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.
