Grandville Force Majeur

December 1, 2017

If Sherlock Holmes were a badger with an itchy trigger finger and a sexy fiancee, you'd get detective inspector Archie LeBrock of Scotland Yard. Talbot's (Luther Arkwright) masterly steampunk series, set in an alt-history Europe of anthropomorphic animals, concludes with this fifth volume. Psychopathic crustacean Stanley Cray has been attacked by overlord Tiberius Koenig, who controls the Paris crime world and now plans to annex the British gangs. Koenig is a Tyrannosaurus rex--the name (koenig and rex both mean "king") is typical of Talbot's sly wordplay throughout. It falls to Archie and colleagues in both London and Paris to finger Koenig's spies in the Yard and take down the overlord himself with disguises, an elaborate charade, and explosive combat. Among Talbot's numerous visual jokes, the Yard's coroner is a vulture and the cancan girls are bunnies. His excellent coloring delivers emphasis while enhancing panel design. VERDICT Delightful and compelling, the entire "Grandville" series will enchant adult detective and fantasy lovers, likely including readers of Canales/Guarnido's Blacksad, Gabus/Reutimann's District 14, and Starkings/Kelly's Elephantmen.--MC

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 30, 2017
The lively final installment in Talbot’s Grandville series is set in an alternate 19th century in which England is under French rule, steampunk technology proliferates, and, oh yes, everyone is an anthropomorphic animal. Grandville is named after a classical French caricaturist but is perhaps more directly influenced by the French/Spanish Blacksad series. In this volume, hero Archie LeBrock, a police detective with the deduction skills of Sherlock Holmes and the tenacity of a badger (which he is), takes on an international reptile crime organization that puts his family in jeopardy. The convoluted story takes a while to pick up steam, but the action-packed climax resolves mystery after mystery with panache. Half the pleasure of the series is in Talbot’s carefully drawn menagerie of animal characters, from horned toads to baboons to honey badgers, and in beastly gags like a pair of gangster crayfish called the Cray Brothers and, inevitably, a cameo by slimy piscine pulp writer Byron Turbot. It’s a rousing finish to a series that displays Talbot’s fertile imagination at its best.