Alice in Sunderland: An Entertainment

by Bryan Talbot

Overview

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?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781630084042
Publisher:	Dark Horse Comics
Publication date:	12/17/2014
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	328
File size:	223 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Bryan Talbot is a British comic book artist and writer, best known as the creator of The Adventures of Luther Arkwright; its sequel, Heart of Empire; and the award-winning The Tale of One Bad Rat. He collaborated with his wife, Mary M. Talbot, to produce Dotter of Her Father's Eyes, which won the 2012 Costa biography award.

For more please visit bryan-talbot.com/biog/index.php. The author lives in Wigan, Lancashire, England.

Editorial Reviews

Talbot's freewheeling, metafictional magnum opus is a map of the curious and delightful territory of its cartoonist's mind, starring himself in multiple roles. The starting point is the history of his hometown, the northeast English city of Sunderland, along with his lifelong fascination with the myths and realities behind Lewis Carroll and Alice in Wonderland-potentially dry material, but Talbot pulls out all the stops to keep it entertaining. He veers off on one fascinating tangent after another. The book encompasses dead-on parodies of EC horror comics, British boys' comics and Hergé's Tintin, walk-ons by local heroes like Sidney James, extensive analysis of a couple of William Hogarth prints, a cameo appearance by "the Venerable Scott McComics-Expert" and even a song-and-dance number, drawing a three-dimensional web of coincidences and connections between all. It's also a showcase for the explosive verve of Talbot's protean illustrative style, with digital collages of multiple media on almost every page: pen-and-ink drawings in a striking variety of styles, photographs, painting, computer modeling, and all manner of "found" images. The book's only real weakness is its scattered focus, but Talbot is a remarkable raconteur, even if what he's presenting is more a variety show than a story. (Apr.)

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