Grandville Force Majeur

by Bryan Talbot

Overview

A fiendishly ingenious tale of treachery, tenacity, and tragedy, the acclaimed Grandville series concludes with its largest and most shocking volume yet. Graphic-novel pioneer Bryan Talbot fashions an anthropomorphic steampunk roller coaster of thrills, humor, and mystery. 

Wanted for murder and on the run, Detective Inspector LeBrock is the victim of a diabolical scheme engineered by gangland overlord Tiberius Koenig. But LeBrock is a fighter, and now against insurmountable odds the British Badger risks all to thwart Koenig’s plot and save Queen, country, and all he loves!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781630089849
Publisher:	Dark Horse Comics
Publication date:	11/21/2017
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	176
File size:	93 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Bryan Talbot is a British comic book artist and writer, best known as the creator of The Adventures of Luther Arkwright; its sequel, Heart of Empire; and the award-winning The Tale of One Bad Rat. He collaborated with his wife, Mary M. Talbot, to produce Dotter of Her Father's Eyes, which won the 2012 Costa biography award.

For more please visit bryan-talbot.com/biog/index.php. The author lives in Wigan, Lancashire, England.

Editorial Reviews

★ 12/01/2017
If Sherlock Holmes were a badger with an itchy trigger finger and a sexy fiancée, 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

Library Journal

10/30/2017
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. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly