Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Bryan Talbot, Comics, entertainment, force Majeure, grandville, graphic novels, Red Virgin And The Vision Of Utopia

Bryan Talbot's Next Two Graphic Novels – The Red Virgin And The Vision Of Utopia, And New Grandville: Force Majeure

Published Fri, 23 Oct 2015 09:00:55 -0500

by Rich Johnston

Last updated Fri, 23 Oct 2015 12:40:47 -0500

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Bryan Talbot and Mary Talbot have become true powerhouses of the British graphic novel scene. As well as their involvement in the recent Lakes Festival, they have been putting out graphic novels, together and apart.

And at the Lakes there were two new books to announce. First to be published next year in May by Jonathan Cape, and set against the background of violence and state repression in a turbulent period of French history, The Red Virgin And The Vision of Utopia.

It tells the incredible and outrageous life of Louise Michel, the revolutionary feminist dubbed "The Red Virgin of Montmartre". Louise was an extraordinary woman, but little known in the Anglophone world. A utopian dreamer, notorious anarchist, teacher, orator and poet, she was decades ahead of her time. Always a radical, she fights on the barricades defending the short-lived Paris Commune of 1871 against the reactionary regime that massacres thousands of French citizens after the Commune's defeat. Deported to a penal colony on the other side of the Earth, she takes up the cause of the indigenous population against French colonial oppression. Celebrating the utopian urge in 19th century literature and politics and the origins of science fiction…

And then the year after, is the fifth and final volume of Bryan Talbot's anthropomorphic steampunk Grandville graphic novels, Force Majeure.