Grandville - Softcover

Bryan Talbot was born in 1952. He has worked on underground comics, science fiction and superhero stories such as Judge Dredd and Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight. His books include Alice in Sunderland, Dotter of Her Father's Eyes (with Mary Talbot), the first graphic novel to win the Costa biography award, and the Grandville series.

*Starred Review* Already famous for creating one of graphic fiction’s most memorable characters, universe-hopping Luther Arkwright, Talbot tries his hand here at creating another, albeit of a very different stripe. And the stripe in this case is literally on the head of Scotland Yard Inspector LeBrock, a muscular, talking badger with a penchant for fisticuffs. The opening installment in a projected five-part series, this beautifully illustrated murder mystery is one part Sherlock Holmes, another part Wind in the Willows, wrapped in a steampunk veneer. Not only badgers, but also rats, dogs, and every other kind of talking animal populate Talbot’s alternate nineteenth-century Britain and France. An increasingly suspenseful plot finds LeBrock and his stalwart assistant, Detective Ratzi (a rat, of course), investigating the murder of a British diplomat. The trail leads across the channel bridge into a second-empire-controlled Paris still reeling from the terroristic destruction of a famous tower. The hirsute pair’s clue-collecting takes them through Parisian back alleys into nightclubs and brothels in which they tangle with assorted gun-wielding canines and uncover a French government plot to launch an even more deadly terrorist attack on its own citizens. Talbot’s masterful attention to detail, down to his character’s muzzles and whiskers, makes every panel a work of art. One of Talbot’s best graphic novels to date. --Carl Hays