Grandville

Grandville by Bryan Talbot, author of the excellent Alice In Sunderland, is a steampunk graphic novel set in an alternative universe where Britain, having lost the Napoleonic Wars, is a former colony of France. This world has curious parallels with our own - British anarchist terrorists have been blamed for flying a dirigible into the Robida tower in the French capitol of Grandville, an atrocity which the French attempt to use to their advantage. Detective-Inspector LeBrock - a badger, naturally - investigates a series of murders which may have some connection with these events.

According to Talbot, Grandville was inspired by the work of French caricaturist Jean Ignace Isidore Gérard aka J.J. Grandville, as well as Albert Robida, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Rupert the Bear and Quentin Tarantino.

All the illustrations from J.J. Grandville's Un Autre Monde (1844) - acknowledged by the Surrealists as a precursor - can be found in this Flickr set. Below are a few of them.