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The 100 Graphic Novels You Should Read While Stuck Inside: Day Forty-three: Grandville: Force Majeure
Not Sett In His Ways
Tripwire continues its 100 Graphic Novels You Should Read While Stuck Inside with its forty-third choice, Grandville: Force Majeure written and drawn by Bryan Talbot, reviewed by Tripwire editor-in-chief Joel Meadows…
Grandville: Force Majeure
Writer/ artist: Bryan Talbot
Jonathan Cape/ Dark Horse
Today’s choice is the final volume of Bryan Talbot’s inventive Grandville series. Grandville started back in 2009 and creator Bryan Talbot has produced five volumes to date of this ambitious detective sci-fi graphic novel series with a twist. Force Majeure is the final tale starring his slightly irascible badger police inspector LeBrock and is arguably the most ambitious of the five graphic novels.
Bryan Talbot has always been one of the finest ambassadors for British comics for the wider world. Ever since The Adventures of Luther Arkwright back in the 1970s, he has displayed his unique talents as both a writer and an artist. Graphic novels like A Tale Of One Bad Rat and Alice In Sunderland have shown an erudition and an understanding of comics and British culture that very few other comic creators have been able to match.
Grandville: Force Majeure sees Detective Inspector LeBrock forced on the run as he finds himself embroiled in a criminal conspiracy masterminded by Tiberius Koenig, one of the most truly despicable gangster kingpins we have seen anywhere in fiction. Koenig is determined to destroy everything that LebRock holds dear and he is forced to battle with the law he has loved for decades to bring this conspiracy into the light. We get to meet his mentor, the wonderfully named Stamford Hawksmoor, who plays a major part in this tale. Hawksmoor is obviously closely based on Sherlock Holmes.
There is an elegance and an invention to Talbot’s art that really helps to lift his work off the page. His cinematic storytelling, a trademark of his, is very much in evidence here and thanks to Talbot’s mastery of larger-than-life characters, you actually forget that the characters here are actually animals.
With Grandville, Talbot has created a world rich with symbolism and analogy and it is this attention to detail that lifts him above many of his contemporaries. Force Majeure is an ambitious and intelligent science fiction detective story that is uniquely British, just like its predecessors. It is a very impressive conclusion to nearly a decade of work from Talbot. Despite over five decades of an artistic career, it is evident from this that his ardour for creating thought-provoking work hasn’t diminished.
Joel Meadows
https://www.penguin.co.uk/company/publishers/vintage/jonathan-cape.html
Here’s links to the other graphic novels reviewed so far
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