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. Deep in the basement of a Victorian terrace in Sunderland there lurks a living legend.
Dressed all in black with his long silver hair tied back, Bryan Talbot certainly looks the part as he stands at a large drawing board in the semi-subterranean bay window.
His walls are lined with shelves of well-thumbed books, from his childhood comic collection to reference works on art and anthropology, Victoriana and zoology.
Two bookcases groan under the heft of his own extensive canon of works created over half a century.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.
Source: BBC
In other news – Microsoft announces new AI office in UK
Microsoft is opening a new office in London dedicated to artificial intelligence (AI) research and development. The tech firm’s AI boss Mustafa Suleyman said it will advertise roles for “exceptional individuals” in the coming weeks and months. But he has not said how many jobs will be created.
Microsoft is a major investor in ChatGPT-creator OpenAI, which itself opened an office in London in 2023. Read more
