gail-nina anderson catches up with one of the nation’s supreme talents working in the field of the graphic novel, Bryan Talbot, to quiz him about his latest publication, Alice in Sunderland.

We all know the mythic genesis of Alice in wonderland – the Reverend Charles Dodgson, mathematician and innovative Victorian photographer, spent a sunny Oxford day on the Thames with the daughters of Dean Liddell, including young Alice. Stories were told, then written, illustrated and published, and so an idyllic boat trip gave rise to an uncategorisable work of nonsense, wisdom, parody and enchantment (not to mention some seriously weirdness.)
Only it wasn’t really that simple. Dodgson (better known by his pen name of Lewis Carroll) had spent his life quietly absorbing the imagery that would find form in his Alice books, and far from the privileged enclaves on Oxford, much of it is rooted in his (and Alice’s) northern connections. Yes, you’ve got it – Alice in Sunderland. Not a lost Carroll manuscript but a brand new, magically unusual graphic novel by one of the masters of that art form, Bryan Talbot. Bryan’s book not only shows how Alice has come to permeate our culture, but as he told the Crack, is also a paean of praise to his adopted city of Sunderland: “I can’t remember when I first read Alice – probably at primary or junior school – but I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know Tenniel’s illustrations. I’d been wanting to do something based around Alice for about twenty years. In fact, my second published comic in 1976 was a homage to Through the Looking Glass and, like Carroll’s story, was based around a chess game. When I moved to Sunderland, about nine years ago, I suddenly discovered that the city had many links to both Carroll and Alice Liddell’s family and parts of the Alice stories, including Jabberwocky, were written in Whitburn. I was also amazed by the richness of Sunderland’s history and began reading some of the many local history books that seem to be so popular here.

Scholar Michael Bute has researched these links intensively and he was a mine of information on Carroll and all things Sunderland when I was writing the script. His book detailing his research, A Town Like Alice’s, is being reprinted to coincide with the publication of Alice in Sunderland. So the other thread, told in many sequences and interspersed throughout the book, is that of the history of Sunderland – a microcosm of the history of Britain – from before the Romans to the present day. This is a goldmine of fascinating stories. In the seventh century, Sunderland was home to the Venerable Bede, the father of English literature and history and the man who gave us BC and AD as our dating system. George Washington’s ancestors took their name from the district of Washington and the stars and stripes were taken from their ancient family crest. In the mid-nineteenth century, when Carroll was often here, Sunderland was the biggest shipbuilding port in the world, its output exceeding that of all the other shipbuilding ports in Britain combined. His uncle was the port customs collector and Carroll visited him at the docks several times. Implicit in the telling of the history, of how the population of Sunderland has been formed by wave after wave of immigrants – Neolithic settlers, multicultural Romans, Indo-European Celts, Angles, Saxons, Vikings, Normans, Irish workers, Polish Jews etc – is an anti-racist theme. This is made explicit by a sequence near the end of the book where I address the current situation of Sunderland as a resettlement area for asylum seekers.

The myths and legends of Sunderland are all told in appropriate styles. The story of Jack Crawford, the sailor who gave to the language the phrase “to nail your colours to the mast” is told as a 1950s Boys’ Own Adventure. The ghost story of The Cauld Lad of Hylton is an EC horror comic pastiche. The Legend of the Lambton Worm, Britain’s most unique and fully formed dragon legend, is told in an Arts and Crafts style. (This story inspired many others, notably Bram Stoker’s Lair of the White Worm and was an undisputed influence on Jabberwocky.)” The frame for this mixture of history, urban myth, art, literature and gossip is a theatrical performance – the Victorian glories of Sunderland Empire have obviously caught his heart -- where both the Performer and the Plebeian (his only audience) are different caricatures of the author himself. This is hands-on stuff, drawn directly from Bryan’s deep awareness of how graphic modes work, have worked and might work, but also reflecting the man’s marvellous capacity for involvement and enthusiasm. It’s also unique: “Yes, Alice is unlike any other book I’ve written and drawn but I don’t think that I’ll be working on any kind of sequel or equivalent any time soon. After finishing any graphic novel, I always try to work on a book that is very different, to stop me from becoming bored. The next story I want to do is a retro-science fiction detective adventure story set in Paris.”

To catch it while it’s hot, go to one of Bryan’s signing sessions:

The book is published by Jonathan Cape, £16.99.

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