Excellent piece! I think that's an entirely appropriate reaction to this amazing book. I was lucky enough to see some of the pages and some of Talbot's inspirational bits at the Cartoon Museum in London.

My review of Dr. Talbot's book is available at http://www.upagainstthewallmag.com/ISSUE07/AliceInSunderland.html (a little horn tooting is all right, eh?)

LOVE your review, Kate! You also manage to touch on one of the many ways Talbot forces the reader to recognize the nature of his story: by opening first with the preliminary sketch of the Plebeian approaching the Empire Theatre, followed by the rough pencilled version, followed by the fully-inked version. He brings us into his very polished world by degrees.

The book is so full of gems. I was immersed in parts of it on a car-ride to Maryland, with my brother, mother, and nephew, and had to keep reading aloud segment after segment: the story of Mary Ann Cotton, the fate of 5-year-old coal-mine workers, the legend of the Cauld Boy of Hylton....

It's not an easy book if you want to go all in, but it does reward even a casual dip as well.

I am so glad you chose to write about Alice in Sunderland! It is truly one of the most interesting things I've read/viewed/watched in some time. Talbot is simply a master of graphic storytelling. I think he could have written about paint drying for 200 pages and I would have been just as enthralled. I mean, if you told me a year ago that I'd be gushing over a history of a Northeast English town I'd have thought you were as mad as a hatter.

Very few others could have pulled off something so ambitious. That doctorate of his may be honorary, but it was well earned.

Yes, this is a really good book. I read and wrote about it back when it came out, and while I probably didn't do it justice, I certainly tried. It's a fascinating work, and definitely one of the best and most innovative comics of the last ten years or so. It's one that should stay on the radar; people should continue to appreciate it for years to come.