Bryan Talbot is a British comics artist and writer, best known as the creator of The Adventures of Luther Arkwright and its sequel Heart of Empire, as well as the Grandville series of books. He collaborated with his wife, Mary M. Talbot to produce Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes, which won the 2012 Costa biography award.

After a gap of over 20 years The Legend Of Luther Arkwright, an eagerly-awaited third volume in the series, is published on 14th July – read our review here

Question 1 – What book changed your life?

I spent a long time considering which story most affected me but realised that the book which literally had the biggest influence was The Penguin Book of Comics, a glowing homage to the medium written by George Perry and illustrated by Alan Aldridge, published in 1967, when I was fifteen. It was the first time I’d seen anything that treated comics as a legitimate art form and, for the first time, I discovered their history. It covered the Bayeux Tapestry, which I already knew from weekly partwork The History of the English-Speaking Peoples, and introduced me to the prints of William Hogarth, the pioneering strips of Rodolphe Töpffer, late 19th Century British comics like Ally Sloper’s Half-Holiday and the USA’s rich history of newspaper strips. It included my then-current mania, Marvel Comics, and offered me a brief glimpse into European adult comics via Barbarella (which I only knew from the movie) and also touched on American underground comics, with one page of Robert Crumb’s Fritz the Cat. I was thoroughly intoxicated with the idea of a whole world of undiscovered comics and the fact that intelligent people could take the medium seriously. It probably led directly to me having career writing and drawing comics.

Question 2 – What is your comfort read – a book you often re-read or turn to when you need cheering up?

I’m cheating here, as they are collected in five books, but the Sherlock Holmes short stories. I first read them when I was thirteen and seen and heard umpteen film, TV and radio versions of them, so they are very easy to slip into.

Question 3 – What book do you wish that you had written?

The Satanic Verses.

Only kidding. BTW, I do think that Rushdie’s Shame is a great book. I find this an extremely difficult question to answer, as I never have a single favourite anything – not one meal, one song, one painting, and so forth. Also, my preferences change over time and situation. I’ve read and re-read Aldous Huxley’s novels and short stories. I love his seemingly total fluency with the English language, his absolute precision in his choice of words. So…maybe it’s Huxley’s Island, though it’s a corker of a marmite book that some people loath. No, I think I’ll chose the magnificent Hogarth by Jenny Uglow. Or, perhaps, Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud…or, come to think of it…

A superb exhibition – ‘Bryan Talbot’s Luther Arkwright: 50 years of a British comics legend’ – is currently running at London’s Cartoon Museum until 2nd October. Click here for more details.