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Bryan Talbot Jumps The (Anthropomorphic, Steampunk) Shark
Bryan Talbot's Alice in Sunderland was one of the most impressive comics achievements of recent years. Unusually, it was an actual 'graphic novel' in format terms - but not in content (being part memoir, part psychogeographical carnival, and all wonderful). It was the sort of thing a non-comics reader could appreciate, and many did - broadsheet reviews, massive bookshop sales, all that. So I was somewhat puzzled when I heard that he'd be following it with an anthropomorphic animal story. This is an area of comics I've never really got - and given it's the area which shades all too easily into the fearful land of the furries, I'm OK with that. I don't mind if a story features a funny animal character for a reason, you understand - just handwave 'genetic engineering' and I'm happy. And obviously something cartoony is fine. But if I'm meant to take a story seriously and it's been cast from Sylvanian Families, I just have a disconnect. This is not to judge the form, because I know other people get the same problem with, say, science fiction - and so long as they don't start making canon judgments based on that, leave it as a personal preference, that's fine (nobody's complaining if you only fancy blondes, so long as you don't then start muttering about Aryan supremacy).
But, even knowing Grandville was unlikely to be my favourite thing Talbot had ever done, I still wanted to read it at some point, and fortunately I found one in Tottenham library (to which I took a small detour on my way back from yesterday's walk, of which more anon). After all, it's a steampunk murder mystery and, with the astonishing Luther Arkwright, Talbot was one of the progenitors of steampunk. He draws good valve.
The problem with this, though, is that steampunk settings often don't make much sense. Certainly not this one, where Napoleon conquered Britain; two centuries later, France grudgingly granted Britain independence after ongoing terrorist campaigns. Well, maybe. But while what we see of British country life is an idealised version of British country life, this free Britain is now supposedly a Socialist Republic. The hero's sidekick talks like Bertie Wooster, but apparently he's doing so in French, the English language now being strictly a parochial and rural argot. I don't feel like these elements match up at all. And, of course, this whole society is populated with talking animals. OK, there are a few humans - 'doughfaces' - but uniquely among all the various species, they don't have citizenship. Why? There's no other evidence of a caste system. And in this land where pigs and dogs are people, we also hear mention of bacon, see a man (or rather, crocodile in top hat) walking his pet dog. I can accept that Mickey Mouse is friends with Goody but owns Pluto - but that was a whimsical world, not the setting for a thriller (and besides, I always preferred Warner Brothers cartoons).
The real icing on this cake, though, is that the crime our heroic badger cop is investigating is a thinly-veiled stand-in for a 9/11 conspiracy theory. A version whose transposition to this nonsensical world handily includes a few changes which make it less of a self-evident farrago of paranoid, puerile idiocies (it comes before an election rather than soon after, for one).
So: a world which makes no sense either on a (pseudo)scientific or narrative level, depicted in a form which makes no sense, apparently promoting a conspiracy theory which makes no sense. Scattered around the background are versions of several famous paintings reimagined for this animal world, and well-done as they are, they're reminiscent of nothing so much as those dogs playing snooker. Which is a sadly accurate summary of the feel of this whole thing. What a waste.
But, even knowing Grandville was unlikely to be my favourite thing Talbot had ever done, I still wanted to read it at some point, and fortunately I found one in Tottenham library (to which I took a small detour on my way back from yesterday's walk, of which more anon). After all, it's a steampunk murder mystery and, with the astonishing Luther Arkwright, Talbot was one of the progenitors of steampunk. He draws good valve.
The problem with this, though, is that steampunk settings often don't make much sense. Certainly not this one, where Napoleon conquered Britain; two centuries later, France grudgingly granted Britain independence after ongoing terrorist campaigns. Well, maybe. But while what we see of British country life is an idealised version of British country life, this free Britain is now supposedly a Socialist Republic. The hero's sidekick talks like Bertie Wooster, but apparently he's doing so in French, the English language now being strictly a parochial and rural argot. I don't feel like these elements match up at all. And, of course, this whole society is populated with talking animals. OK, there are a few humans - 'doughfaces' - but uniquely among all the various species, they don't have citizenship. Why? There's no other evidence of a caste system. And in this land where pigs and dogs are people, we also hear mention of bacon, see a man (or rather, crocodile in top hat) walking his pet dog. I can accept that Mickey Mouse is friends with Goody but owns Pluto - but that was a whimsical world, not the setting for a thriller (and besides, I always preferred Warner Brothers cartoons).
The real icing on this cake, though, is that the crime our heroic badger cop is investigating is a thinly-veiled stand-in for a 9/11 conspiracy theory. A version whose transposition to this nonsensical world handily includes a few changes which make it less of a self-evident farrago of paranoid, puerile idiocies (it comes before an election rather than soon after, for one).
So: a world which makes no sense either on a (pseudo)scientific or narrative level, depicted in a form which makes no sense, apparently promoting a conspiracy theory which makes no sense. Scattered around the background are versions of several famous paintings reimagined for this animal world, and well-done as they are, they're reminiscent of nothing so much as those dogs playing snooker. Which is a sadly accurate summary of the feel of this whole thing. What a waste.
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Now I want to go dig out my Sylvanian families and write a kitchen-sink drama to go with a photo-comic...you have been warned...
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I really can't picture Bryan Talbot in goggles - tall, distinguished-looking guy with longish white hair? But yes, I can't imagine it will be going back to the library that soon given I have some other Haringey stuff to get through too.
Steampunk's problem is that it pretty much started out as good as it was going to get from a literary standpoint: before it's even named you've got Michael Moorcock's Oswald Bastable novels, and Talbot himself with Luther Arkwright. Then Gibson and Sterling write The Difference Engine and, as a cyberpunk offshoot, suddenly it has a name. A slightly silly one at that, when 'cybersteam' would have made more sense. Or 'steamcyber' doubly so, but that just doesn't sound right.
Since when...well, Grant Morrison's Sebastian O was beautiful, as well as having a plot which anticipated The Matrix. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen had major steampunk elements, but wisely used them as window-dressing rather than the core of the premise. Too often, though, people are just reusing combinations of the same elements which came before, in part because there are only so many elements which fit. I think it's maybe for the best that it has now metastasised into a style/subculture phenomenon instead, just because that feels so much more vital and varied than what the books calcified into.
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Talbot has form on the anthropomorphism though - have you read One Bat Rat? It's supposed to be good.
I do like my copy of Alice In Sunderland though - got it for my birthday last year. Along with Lost Girls... :-)
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Any modern Dan Dare story is already an exercise in retro-futurism; taking it into outright steampunk would be a twist so minor as to be fairly unnecessary. For a simply *punk* version, there was Grant Morrison's brief Dare, or (with the serial numbers filed off and the characters barely renamed) Warren Ellis' recent Ignition City. But the best revival was undoubtedly Garth Ennis' version, which managed to draw an almost-plausible line from our present to Dare's future as it was traditionally presented - and then on past that to an older Dare, disillusioned with the country he once served yet still compelled to save it when the Mekon returns.
Sky Captain had something of the same aesthetic - but again, that was more...what would you call it, 'decopunk', maybe? I've already seen the use of 'clockpunk' for things which apply the same principle even earlier, like Pat Mills' Defoe.
Tale of One Bad Rat isn't one of my favourite Talbots, simply because it felt a little worthy, but I can't deny that it fundamentally makes sense and justifies its artistic choices, which, alas, is just not something I feel about Grandville.
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