April 6, 2007
Alice in Sunderland
Alice in Sunderland is Bryan Talbot's latest graphic novel, published in the U.S. by Dark Horse and in the U.K. by Jonathan Cape. It may be the best comic I have ever read.
Talbot is perhaps best known for his Adventures of Luther Arkwright, and his work influenced most of the British authors who gained prominence in the 1980s, including Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, and others. A few years ago, Talbot moved to Sunderland, a port city in Northeastern England.
His latest work is inspired by this city and its rich heritage. In Alice in Sunderland, Talbot uses a combination of original artwork, photographs, existing drawings, maps, paintings, and just about everything else to examine the history of the area, in particular its cultural history, and especially its connection to Lewis Carroll.
The book is a stream of consciousness ride through art, literature, culture, and history that seamlessly jumps from the Jabberwocky to the Bayeaux Tapestry to British comedian Sid James to the Roman Empire to Coleridge to the Venerable Bede to coal miners and back to Lewis Carroll -- always back to Lewis Carroll.
The book is absolutley fascinating. Each page is deep, and you could spend hours just immersing yourself in the illustrations. But the narrative moves along so compellingly that you don't (at least, not on a first read-through) because you are too anxious to see where Talbot will take you next on your journey through his mind. The book is gorgeous, lush, compelling.
Ultimately, Sunderland is the story of humanity and human creativity. It is filtered through one particular city, but the tale Talbot tells is bigger than the city of Sunderland and it is bigger than Alice in Wonderland. It is about the way we think, the way we create, the way we live. It is a meditation on art and life.
Go out and buy this book now.
Posted by Jason Fliegel at April 6, 2007 12:43 AM
I love Bryan Talbot's works. I'll definitely buy this one. A shame he doesn't receive as much recognition as he should.
I really can't say enough good things about this book. Talbot's got some sample interior pages here. I hesitate to say they are representative, because Talbot uses so many different techniques throughout the book that you really can't boil everything down to a few representative pages.
He's also apparently going to be at a few comic shops on the U.S. east coast next week (Big Planet in the DC area, Cards Comics & Collectibles, Inc near Baltimore, and Jim Hanley's Universe in NYC). Details are on the site I link to above.
I loved it too, though it definitely suffers if not read in one sitting. I read it, piecemeal, over a few days and there were points where I had to search through earlier in the book so I could reference what Talbot was talking about. :-) It's like beautiful, organized chaos, very much stream-of-consciousness as Jason says. Which is both a strength and a flaw, I think...I found it a bit hard to follow at a few points (again, possibly because I wasn't reading the whole thing at once), but it's always wonderful to look at. The important thing to remember is the book is not "about" one thing: it's about Alice and it's about Sunderland and it's about British history in general andit's a bit autobiographical. And the sum of the, er, plot, is brilliant; it comes together wonderfully. (I recall one or two medieval Brit history facts Talbot cites that I took a bit of an issue with, but you have to just kind of go with it. Like you have to go with his insistance on putting everything in present tense, no matter what period it takes place. A bit confusing, but you get used to it!) And the art/light boxing/photoshopping/everything is freaking gorgoeous too.
So yeah, Jason, I really loved it too! It is, as the cover says, "An Entertainment." :-)
(And yes, I've been bubbling to babble about it for days now!)
As part of my ongoing effort to get each and every one of you to check out this book, I link to Steve Flanagan's review of the book. Steve's review is absolutely brilliant in both form and content, and well worth checking out in its own right.