Bryan Talbot: an interview with the father of the British graphic novel

The author of the Grandville series and Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes talks about steampunk, Judge Dredd and Beatrix Potter

Choosing an animal sometimes takes a while, says graphic novelist Bryan Talbot, sitting in the crepuscular basement of his Sunderland home. Casting a badger as the steampunk detective in a world where Britain is a former colony of France was straightforward compared with other figures in his anthropomorphic Grandville series.

“I wanted a tenacious character who would battle against all odds, and badgers are tenacious. They also look cool – it’s to do with the black-and-white stripes,” he says of his hero, Archie LeBrock, a remarkably ripped detective inspector who dresses like Sherlock Holmes and fights like a Tarantino villain. But Talbot struggled to find the correct animal head for a “snooty French waiter” until his wife, Mary, an academic turned prizewinning graphic novelist, told him: “‘That’s obvious, a cod.’ Yeah! It’s ideal,” laughs Talbot.

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