British Comics

British graphic novelist Bryan Talbot is set to be inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Awards Hall of Fame, the highest accolade for comic writers and artists from across the world. The BBC spent an afternoon with him in his studio.

...

Born in 1950s Wigan to a coal miner and hairdresser, Bryan's love of comics began before he could even read.

The word-free visuals of nursery tales gave way to Rupert The Bear and Giles cartoons strips, before he fell deeply for the Beano and Dandy, first bought for him as he lay in a hospital bed after having his tonsils removed.

"They were just so anarchic", he says of Dennis the Menace and the Bash Street Kids.

"Before that, comics were very respectful and genteel. Suddenly teachers, park keepers and even parents were the enemy."

He started drawing his own comics aged about five and excelled in English and art at school.

He was supported in his ambitions by his mother, who would sketch out hairstyles for her customers, and his father who enjoyed water colouring.

Bryan was the first in his family to attend higher education, studying fine art and graphic design before finding work in the underground comics industry burgeoning in the 1960s and 70s.

It was a world of counter-culture, anti-establishment comics from the "hippy generation", full of "sex, drugs, rock and roll" as well as "whimsy and surrealism", Bryan recalls with obvious fondness.

"The important thing these writers did was reclaim comics as an adult medium," he says.

But he always harboured a fantasy for something much more ambitious - a full novel told in comic form.

He tried to create a Lord of the Rings spin-off graphic novel when he was 17, but now says he lacked the skill to pull it off then.

He certainly had the talent and experience by 1981 when The Adventures of Luther Arkwright, his science-fiction tale of trans-dimensional wars and alterative histories, was published to wide acclaim.

The nine-part story was released as a single volume at around the same time as Raymond Briggs' When The Wind Blows and Posy Simmonds' True Love.

"The three of them are the first British graphic novels," Bryan says with a humble pride.

As an artist he has collaborated with numerous writers, including Neil Gaiman on the Sandman series, Pat Mills on 2000 AD's Nemesis The Warlock and Alan Moore.