Husband and wife graphic novel team Bryan and Mary M Talbot - interview

The pair collaborated on Dotter of Her Father's Eyes

This article is from 2012.

‘I think we’re living in the golden age of the graphic novel,’ explains veteran comics artist and writer Bryan Talbot, whose art has graced the pages of 2000AD, Batman and Sandman. ‘Every major literary festival has something on graphic novels these days.’ To prove that point, he will be appearing in Edinburgh alongside his wife Mary M Talbot discussing their collaborative work, Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes. ‘It’s partly Mary’s story of her relationship with her own father, James S Atherton, an eminent Joycean scholar,’ he notes. ‘The other half is a biography of Lucia Joyce, James Joyce’s daughter.’

Mary saw the book as a continuation of her academic work but in a new format. ‘It was contrasting two different periods showing the social expectations of girls, their life choices, career options and how much they changed,’ she says. ‘Being married to one of the developers of the graphic novel format obviously helped. He suggested having a go at a script, the idea being that he illustrate it. It was a completely new venture for me exploring the same gender issues but in a different medium.’

Bryan chips in: ‘We discussed it each step of the way; usually with a collaboration it ends with the writer sending the artist the script, and that’s it. Whereas me and Mary live in the same house.’

24 Aug, 3.30pm, £7 (£5).