Does it make sense to plug a review?
Never mind. Over at artbomb.net, Warren Ellis does a better job convincing people to buy Bryan Talbot's Heart of Empire than I could. First link takes you to the review, second goes to a preview up at Dark Horse's site. Which is apparently a wealth of material, if you can navigate it. . .
Warren also has a weekly column, Brainpowered, but you already knew that, right?
Sorry. Got Scott McCloud's Reinventing Comics from the library, and have been paying more attention to the things recently. I'm sure it's just a phase.
I will not apologize for the title, since it's actually appropriate for Heart of Empire. More or less. And the bastards at NPR used an instrumental version of the song as a horrible pun after a story a while ago, and I'm still recovering. . .
Have you read Tale of one Bad Rat?
Met Bryan Talbot at a small comic con once where he talked about how he worked and how he used different approaches for Bad Rat and
Heart of the Empire. Since the former was intended for a mainstream, non comics reading audience, he tried to keep the art as simple and clear as possible, with various visual clues to help people understand e.g. when a flashback happened.
Heart is the only Talbot I've read, because I suck. And I only got it (as singles) because the covers were pretty.
Also have Dead Boy Detectives #1 (which he only drew, I think) because it was fiddy cents, but can't get past my elitist, Sandman-spinoffs-suck prejudice enough to read it.
No more comics for me. The last issue of Transmet, and I'm out. This time for sure.
Don't give up on them until you've read the original "Adventures of Luther Arkwright". It's a great piece of work, if very Jerry-Cornelius-Moorcock in places. It will also give you a very good idea of how Talbot's style (both in storytelling and art) has changed over the years.
Oh, and in answer to the "Duck Soup" lyric, my tune of choice of late has been Noel Coward's "There Are Bad Times Just Around the Corner":
There are bad times just around the corner
The outlook's absolutely vile!
There are home fires smoking
From Windermere to Woking
And we won't tighten up our belts
And smile smile smile
At the sound of shots
We'd just as soon as not
Get a hot water bottle and go to bed
We're going to unpack our troubles
From our old kit bag
And wait until we drop down dead