By: Bryan Talbot Publisher: Dark Horse Average Rating: Binding: Hardcover Label: Dark Horse Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 328 Publication Date: April 25, 2007
Product Description: Sunderland! Thirteen hundred years ago it was the greatest center of learning in the whole of Christendom and the very cradle of English consciousness. In the time of Lewis Carroll it was the greatest shipbuilding port in the world. To this city that gave the world the electric light bulb, the stars and stripes, the millennium, the Liberty Ships and the greatest British dragon legend came Carroll in the years preceding his most famous book, Alice in Wonderland, and here are buried the roots of his surreal masterpiece. Enter the famous Edwardian palace of varieties, The Sunderland Empire, for a unique experience: an entertaining and epic meditation on myth, history and storytelling and decide for yourself - does Sunderland really exist?
A breathtakingly original work of art Bryan Talbot's ALICE IN SUNDERLAND is so unique that it is difficult to find anything to compare it to. It would be inaccurate to call it a graphic novel, because it tells no story. There really is no plot of any kind. What it actually is is a local history. Talbot essentially tells the story of his town of Sunderland while tracing unexpected connections it has with Lewis Carroll and relatives of Alice Liddell.
The story, such as it is, concerns "a guy" (the book begins "Well, there's this guy . . . ") who walks into the Empire Theatre in Sunderland for a performance of ALICE IN SUNDERLAND, only to find himself the only person in the theater. Onstage appears a man in a puffy shirt (think "the pirate shirt" of SEINFELD fame) and the head of a rabbit. The Rabbit Man begins to talk, only to remove his head, revealing a human face (which is, in fact, Bryan Talbot's own). He then proceeds over the next 300 pages to provide an endlessly inventive history of the local area, repeatedly drawing connections to ALICE IN WONDERLAND. The exploration is categoric, embracing prehistoric and ancient history, medieval history, and modern history. He covers local the economy, politics, architecture, and cultural life. By the end of the book you not only feel like you've explored a corner of the world you never even thought about investigating, you feel that you'd love to visit the place. And indeed, you feel like you know it. You also learn a very great deal about Lewis Carroll.
What is astonishing is that Talbot keeps his story fascinating from beginning to end. In actuality this is a one-note symphony, but he so successfully disguises this that you scarcely notice it. Frequently his story approaches the sublime. For instance, at one point he enters the first house in a row of elegant dwellings for Sunderland's economic elite. He searches local records and discovers that it was built by a Quaker merchant named Joshua Wilson. He then spends the next five pages exploring his life and character. He seems to have been a thoroughly likable and admirable individual, a genuinely good, though largely forgotten, man. And then the sublime: " . . . and Joshua, long dead and long forgotten, now lives again in some small way in the mind of you, the reader." The book is filled with magical moments like that.
This is easily one of the most beautiful to look at books that I've ever seen. Talbot is unusual in the world of graphic literature in that he not only writes and pencils his work, but colors it as well. He also employs a hot of graphic techniques in organizing his pages. He uses paintings, drawings, retouched photographs, reproductions, collages, and just about anything else you can think of in creating his pages. I've shown the book to several friends who have been instantly struck by the sheer physical beauty of the pages.
I can't recommend this book strongly enough. It is easily one of the most beautiful books that I own (the only one that might surpass it is the first two volumes in THE ABSOLUTE SANDMAN -- Talbot, by the by, illustrated some of Gaiman's stories). It is also one of the most unique.
Unlike anything you've seen before Throw away your notions of what constitutes a graphic novel because Bryan Talbot has rewritten whatever rules there were. This is a book that can't be devoured; it is a history of the Empire theatre in Sunderland but it isn't. What is evident is Talbot's love of Sunderland and its true importance in history. But it isn't a history book. It defies genres and so I will call it what it simply is:- a masterpiece.
The best graphic novel of 2007.....so far The book took me by surprise. I was expecting another boring graphic novel, but Alice delivers so much more. I've little to compare it to in the field of graphic storytelling, but the only thing that comes to mind is From Hell. Like From Hell it delves with an enormous amount of information on a subject and this occurance is Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll, and Sunderland England and how they all tie together.
Talbolt does this by presenting the facts in a lucid style of a theatrical presentation. Using this device, he jumps around the history of Sunderland(from it's begginings to the theatre he's telling the story and to so much more) and how Carroll may have been influenced by the location when writing the Alice stories. Yet it isn't just a story about a book for kids, it touches upon so many varied things that it had my head swimming with information so I could only read about fifteen pages a day. His artwork adapts to the element of story that needs it. There are about a hundred smaller stories under this title and he jumps and creates some interesting designs to make this work. Talbot has gone beyond the usual standards of comics and presented a amazing new book.
The only complaint I have is how he overuses a photoshop filter over photographs. If he did this once in a while it would be alright, but it's a technique that is driven into the ground by the end.
Will you won't you, will you won't you, will you join the dance? There have been and always will be books that intimidate your average everyday book reviewer. As someone who works primarily with children's literature, this doesn't happen to me all that often. After all, as much as I'd like to be overawed by the latest Junie B. Jones series title, it just ain't gonna happen. But encompassing the whole of literature written with children in mind means sometimes having to deal with books that only just barely touch on my sphere of experience. When I first heard of Bryan Talbot's graphic novel, "Alice in Sunderland," I had no idea what it was. Not really. A glance at the cover gives the reader some hints to the contents, but for your average everyday American the word "Sunderland" means nothing. It's a nonsense word. A play on "Wonderland" obviously, but beyond that we're without reference. Standing at an impressive 328 pages, the book is obviously publisher Dark Horse Comics' most ambitious project to date. Dense, intense, and without comparison, Talbot has constructed the ultimate love letter/tour guide to his home. The fact that it may have also inspired Lewis Carroll's best-known work? Almost a sidenote.
Step right up! Step right in! Take off your hats and coats and make yourself at home. A man walks into a theater for a performance unlike any other. Onstage, the rabbit mask-wearing lead performer begins to tell the story. But it's not the story of Alice in Wonderland or even Charles Dodgson, her creator. Rather it's the tale of a place. A little strip of land on the North Eastern side of the island of Britain. A location that has inspired so many heroes, stories, tales, and legends you'd be amazed to hear them all. But Talbot isn't going to concentrate on the biggest folktales of his region. Nothing so straightforward. Instead, the book leaps, glances, references, and side-steps around every possible connection Sunderland might have to the world of Alice. What's more, the very history of Britain itself is tied intricately into Sunderland's tale. At the heart of it all, however, is the story of Lewis Carroll. For every seemingly inconsequential tangent, Talbot continually and continuously ties Alice Liddell, muse to the great author, and Carroll to the land they belonged to. Part historical treatise, part series of Rosicrucian-like connections, Talbot is unafraid to absolutely stuff his book with as much information as humanly possible. The result is a ridiculous and magnificent ode to a too little appreciated region.
It might sound a tedious affair. Constant backing and forthing between the present and the past. History coming alive is meant to be boring, right? So what are we to do when an artist like Talbot bends over backwards, not only to fit everything in, but to violently and continually change his style so as to both retain our attention and show off his prowess? Care to hear Henry V's speech before Harfleur, Act III, Scene I, done in the style of Mad Magazine? A Jabberwocky poem via Tenniel (right down to the unisexual hero?). Bryan Talbot can tell the story of brave Jack Crawford like it was a boys adventure tale then turn around and present some pretty nasty Normans ala Jack Kirby. There's even a bit of D.C. horror, odes to Herge, and a visitation from god-amongst-comic-artists Scott McCloud. Tenniel and Hogarth may get their due praise, but let us too admire what Talbot has seen fit to sneak in here and there artistically.
But I love the little things about this book too. The central plot concerns a single attendee, treated to this magnificent show in the Empire Theater. Of course the performer, the viewer, and even the man giving the walking tour are all various rather handsome versions of Talbot himself. Still, you grow very attached to the man watching. You're touched by his continual love and interest in George Fornby, local boy made good, ukulele phenomenon, and general nice guy. It's history is what it is. Hearing that the current Queen of England is related by blood to Alice Liddell isn't just good fun. Talbot can then turn Her Majesty into the Red Queen and at the same time show the moment Queen Elizabeth unveiled Sunderland's ode to the Great Library of St. Peter's in 1993. No detail is so small that Talbot can't weave it into the text in some fashion.
I had the pleasure of seeing Mr. Talbot discuss this book at a conference held by the Lewis Carroll Society of North America. And let me tell you, it takes guts to stand before that kind of assemblage so to present a book on their beloved. From that talk, however, I learned all kinds of secrets about "Sunderland". The amount of Photoshop that has gone into some of these pages looks daunting at the outset. It's even more so when you hear how Talbot meticulously reconstructed some of his photographic scenes. The image of photographers taking pics of Alice at Columbia in her later years? Some of those fellows were lifted out of the original filmed production of "King Kong". That image of the Bayeux Tapestry? It took some wrangling to get to display even the replicated version held in the Reading Museum of Berkshire.
Not that the book is flawless. Sorry folks, but while Talbot may be a genius he is by no means perfect. He tends to bog down on the topics that are of the greatest interest to him and him alone. A walking tour thorough the public art of modern day Sunderland is cool to begin with but can't maintain the book's momentum after a while. Facts about Sunderland's shipbuilding and geography come across as akin to Melville's whaling portions of Moby-Dick. You feel obligated to read through them, but you get no pleasure from doing so. It's also funny to take into account what Talbot didn't include alongside what he did. He fails to speak on whether or not the Cheshire Cat's origins are also Sunderland-based (a notable absence, I feel). He doesn't mention, when discussing the Bayeux Tapestry (England's first graphic novel and compiled by "a single artist") that the creator was widely considered to be a woman. Sometimes watching the unmentioned becomes as fascinating as the mentioned.
Ah well. It's a remarkable affair just the same. For those readers willing to dedicate a couple days of their time to reading it through, "Alice in Sunderland" is one of the most rewarding reads. The convergence of graphic novel enthusiasts, Lewis Carroll advocates, and history majors is sweet indeed. An intimidating work in the best possible sense of the term.
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