Bryan Talbot is considered to be the "godfather" of modern British underground comix, bridging the underground movement of the early 1970s to the emergence of the English "2000 A.D. Generation" at that decade's end. His first illustrations appeared in Mallorn, the British Tolkien Society Magazine in 1969. He then cooperated with his fellow student Bonk on a weekly strip for the college newspaper.
After his education, Talbot continued to work in the underground press, creating Brain Storm Comix at Alchemy Press. The first three issues formed the 'Chester B. Hackenbush' trilogy, reprinted in the book Brainstorm! in 1982. 'Hackenbush' was then restyled into Chester Williams by Alan Moore for the DC series 'Swamp Thing'. Talbot created illustrations for a series of German role-playing-game books, as well as the science fiction strip 'Scummworld' in the weekly rock music magazine Sounds.
Talbot then began the epic 'The Adventures of Luther Arkwright' saga in 1978. This comic is one of the first British graphic novels. The series, with its variety of genres and experimental narrative techniques, has been very influential and gained a cult status. The graphic novel 'The Tale of One Bad Rat' has won countless prizes and appeared on the New York Times annual list of recommended reading. His third 'Luther Arkwright' novel ('Heart of Empire', that appeared at Dark Horse in 2001) also knew a CD-Rom version with words of commentary and a wealth of extra visual features.
Bryan Talbot began working for 2000AD in 1983. He produced three books of the 'Nemesis the Warlock' series in cooperation with writer Pat Mills, which were later reprinted at Titan Books. For four years Talbot produced work for the American company DC Comics on titles such as 'Hellblazer' (with Jamie Delano), 'The Sandman' (with Neil Gaiman), 'Batman' and the 200 page series 'The Nazz' (with Tom Veitch).
He has created a variety of comic strips and illustrations for publications as diverse as Imagine, Street Comics, Slow Death, Vogarth, the Paradox Press Big Books, Stardust, Transmetropolitan, The Radio Times, Wired, Knockabout, i.t. and the Manchester Flash. For Xpresso he teamed up with writer Matthias Schultheiss to create 'Brainworms'. He continued to draw for DC Vertigo's miniseries 'The Dead Boy Detectives'.
