Bryan Talbot

I picked up this book a few times last year and put it back deciding to read it around Christmas time. Christmas came and went and I did not even think about it. So when I saw it again while looking at my shelves for something lighter to read, I just picked it up.

LeBrock is on a Christmas break when his landlady tells him about her missing niece. As he has nothing better to do and it gives him a chance to visit Billy in Grandville, he crosses into the continent once more to chase after the show more young girl.

I expected this installment to be lighter than the previous ones - not in the number of pages but in its tone and coverage. As it turned out, I could not have been more wrong. Talbot continues the story of the human terrorists and Tiberius Koenig's ascendance and throws a religious cult into the mix. If that was all that was in this part of the story, I would have been a very happy reader. But he decides to use this easier case to add more to the world mythology - and part of that is an explanation of how this world is so different from ours and some very disturbing revelations of how it got that way.

Of course it is Talbot so there are a lot of literary and historical allusions and part of the fun in reading the story is working them out.

My biggest issue with this series is that there is only one left for me to read. I don't think it will be long before I pick it up. show less

Talbot closes his series with a double-sized installment. After killing Koening's brother in the last book, LeBrock is back home in London preparing to marry Billy (who as we found out is pregnant). Koening has other ideas - he really does not like being bested by our badger and after taking over the criminal world of Paris, he is ready for a new challenge: London.

I was hoping to get some more details about the parallel worlds and how this one diverged from ours but this is not even show more mentioned here (which is fine - it was never supposed to be the story anyway). It really is the story of Archibald LeBrock and Koenig - good vs bad, policeman vs criminal. This installment gets back to exactly this with more twists than usual (the double length helps) and with a very satisfying conclusion.

But the series, and this graphic novel in particular, is not just a crime story. Setting it in the alternate world allows Talbot to explore in a new way the question of race, belonging and what makes one human (despite almost all characters being anything but). Here we also get a look in the past of pretty much everyone who matters. And if one reads carefully enough, they know the twist is coming and yet, there will be surprises on the other end.

A very enjoyable end of a series I will miss and my recommendation in the previous installments is even stronger. I suspect I will be rereading these at some point - because there are so many references and gorgeous art that I am sure I missed a lot on this first pass. Which is always a good thing in a graphic series. show less

Although the graphic novel format of ‘The Red Virgin’ looked lovely, it really whetted my appetite for a more in-depth biography of Louise Michel. [b:The Women Incendiaries|701743|The Women Incendiaries|Edith Thomas|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1354902967s/701743.jpg|688043] (which I recommend very highly) included a fair bit about her role in the Paris Commune, but not much about her subsequent life. Whereas, somewhat to my surprise, I found this book situated the fall of the show more Commune on page 66, so that plenty of time was also given to Michel’s life in exile and return to Europe. The art was distinctive and vivid, in part because the only colour used was red and that sparingly. I found the pages depicting Michel's funeral especially moving. I liked the inclusion of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the feminist pioneer known for [b:The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories|99300|The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories|Charlotte Perkins Gilman|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1327909237s/99300.jpg|1467808]. (I also appreciated that Perkins Gilman’s racism was not glossed over.) The discussions of utopian literature were great, although I would have liked more focus on the debates about practical policy that took place during the brief existence of the Commune. There wasn’t much of a sense of continuity between the Commune as an attempt at utopian government and subsequent utopian writing. Perhaps this was deliberate?

The annotations at the end included some fascinating facts and references. While I’d known that Victor Hugo spoke up in defence of the Communards, and Louise Michel specifically, during their trials, I hadn’t realised the two were correspondents. Better still, Michel apparently signed her letters to Hugo as Enjolras, angelic leader of the barricade uprising in [b:Les Misérables|24280|Les Misérables|Victor Hugo|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1411852091s/24280.jpg|3208463]! I also learned that she treated her sentence of transportation as an opportunity for a scientific expedition, which is deeply impressive. Whilst in New Caledonia, she tried to defend and support the native people, then continued to agitate once the Communards were pardoned and she was allowed home. In short, Louise Michel is an incredibly inspiring historical figure and I really enjoyed this beautifully presented account of her life and work. show less

I like this a lot - the art is never short of amazing and in some cases is beyond amazing - but it opens on a sour note when, after the escape of a murderous psychopath, our hero turns out to be on a bit of a bender owing to the death of a love interest in the first book. Yes, we have a fridging, a female character killed off to give a male lead character something to emote about. fair enough, this is a kind of anthropomorphic steampunk neo-noir, and noir heroes and anti-heroes are often show more typically filled with angst over the death of a true love, so it's just about justifiable, only not really, because in this day and age it's lazy and distasteful.

Aside from that, it's an enjoyable romp as Archie LeBrock returns to Grandville in pursuit of Mad Dog, a resistance fighter turned serial killer, and in the course of his hunt turns up a few nasty secrets about the past. The art and the story-telling are brilliant, even if parts of the story, as above, could have done, perhaps, with a little more consideration and subversion. show less