Bryan Talbot interview: The story behind The Tale of One Bad Rat
The Hindsight Hut sat down with beloved British comic creator Bryan Talbot to discuss his most important book, The Tale of One Bad Rat.
In 1994, Bryan Talbot published a graphic novel that would challenge the idea of what comics are capable of. The Tale of One Bad Rat’s depiction of a young woman escaping sexual abuse showed how the medium could tackle serious issues with care, sensitivity and imagination. More than 30 years later, he still receives messages from survivors who say the book helped them.
The Tale of One Bad Rat told the story of teenager Helen Potter, who escapes her father’s sexual abuse by running away from her home in London to the Lake District. While exploring the most sensitive of topics, the book was also a love letter to the area of natural beauty in Cumbria and linked Helen to her hero, Beatrix Potter. As a teenager Bryan spent “every spare minute’ in his parents’ caravan in the Winster Valley and wanted to pay homage to the area. “I’d just go and discover the countryside; I ended up doing maps of the whole place.” Many of the landmarks he discovered, such as the Masons Arms pub, Raven’s Barrow and Bowland Bridge, inspired locations in the book. He and wife Mary still make their annual pilgrimage there and are patrons of The Lakes International Comics Art Festival.
How Bryan Talbot found the story
By the late 1980s, Bryan had earned plaudits for his work on Nemesis the Warlock in 2000 AD and his Luther Arkwright series, but he was keen to set his next tale in the place close to his heart. He read every book he could find about the Lake District, starting with Melvyn Bragg’s Land of the Lakes, and covered everything from Wordsworth to Donald Campbell, but none grabbed his attention until a trip to Potter’s home, Hill Top Farm, opened the door. “Beatrix Potter created stories using a mixture of words and pictures and I thought, that’s what I do – there was a correlation with comics.”
Throwing himself into his task, he learned all about the author, but the story still eluded him. Potter’s early life, growing up in a Victorian London home and her transformation into a writer and countrywoman wasn't quite what he was looking for. Eventually, he gave up on the idea until he saw a homeless girl being harassed in Tottenham Court Road Underground Station – a scene he memorably recreated in the opening pages of the first issue.
“She looked incredibly shy and put me in mind of Beatrix Potter when she was 16,” mused the creator. “It was just as I was walking up the steps, the same steps Helen uses in the book, and I realised she had a synchronistic connection to Beatrix Potter.”
Bryan had found the story of a young girl who, like Beatrix Potter, would make her own life-changing journey from London to the Lake District. But what was the motivating factor? Running away from abuse was powerful, but there was a responsibility to treat it with the weight a serious subject deserved. He researched it thoroughly, with help from Mary, who provided books from her university. “I realised that it was too important a subject to trivialise, that it couldn’t just be a reason for leaving home. It had to be what the book was about.”
The most helpful text featured survivors’ experiences in their own words: “It was transcripts with survivors talking about their experiences and when Helen talks about her experiences, she’s paraphrasing them.”
Creating a different kind of graphic novel
It was clear The Tale of One Bad Rat was different from the superhero stories that dominated the medium and had more in common with Maus and A Small Killing. Bryan wanted an accessible look which suited the story’s gravity and appealed to a wider audience: “I felt the art style had to be different from what I usually do, because it wasn’t an adventure or a superhero story, it was a non-genre story and there weren’t very many non-genre graphic novels at the time. The storytelling had to be very clear and very straightforward, and I wanted to do it in a realistic style.”
He chose the clear-line drawing technique synonymous with Tintin creator Hergé, which was complemented with watercolours to bring the Lake District to life and also tip a hat to Potter. To ensure realism, Bryan opted to use photo reference, taking pictures of subjects to capture characters and key scenes. He looked to two proponents – Dan Dare artist Frank Hampson and France’s François Bourgeon, who used models to ensure the accuracy of his historical epics.
Friends, neighbours and even random people in the street were enlisted as a library of photos and location shots was built up over several years. A family friend was Helen’s mother, while his solicitor had the dubious honour of modelling as the abusive father. Fellow Preston Speculative Fiction Group member Keith Marsland was the basis for Sam, the kindly pub landlord. Bryan, who was working on other projects at the time, would often take the train to London or drive to Cumbria to make sure he had the correct reference images and even followed his protagonist’s journey from Chelsea to Potter’s childhood Kensington home. But finding the right person to play Helen proved elusive, even though Bryan had a clear idea of her appearance, having made initial sketches of a girl with a white-blonde fringe, which went on to be used as the cover of the book's proposal to publishers.
From rejection to a deal
He suffered a setback when the 12-page pitch, which contained sample illustrations and notes, was rejected by every publishing company it was sent to: “About half of them didn’t reply and just sent it straight back. They must have got to the bit in the covering letter where I mentioned it was a comic. You could tell they hadn’t been read because pages hadn’t been separated.”
Tundra Publishing, founded by Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles co-creator Kevin Eastman, invited him to discuss a deal during a convention at Alexandra Palace. While liking several of the company’s books, he sidestepped the meeting after seeing the sheer number of titles on display and becoming concerned his project would “vanish in this sea of rubbish”. His fortunes changed when he met Dark Horse Comics’ boss Mike Richardson, who had published Luther Arkwright in America. While Richardson was hoping for a sequel to the science-fiction epic, an agreement was struck.
“I thought it was very brave at the time, Dark Horse only did superheroes and science fiction stories, but it was quite a big success in America, it was reprinted and won an Eisner Award.”
Finding Helen and her rat
The pressure was on to find Helen, and he discovered the ideal person in Kate Housden after giving a comic art lecture at a Catholic college. Bryan had shared the script with the Head of Drama, Peter Hartley, who asked if any of the students would be interested. He recalls: “There were three girls there to audition for the part and one of them was the spitting image of Helen.”
Serendipitously, the perfect person to portray another key character, Ben (pictured below), was also discovered at the same college and even shared the same name. “I had sketched Ben with curly hair, glasses, heavy metal T-shirt and leather jacket and there he was, walking in the corridor.”
Meanwhile, Helen’s faithful rat companion played a symbolic role and paid homage to Potter, who had her own beloved rat, Sammy. The animal’s much-maligned reputation perfectly suited the book’s theme: “Abuse survivors often think it’s all their fault and they must have done something really bad to deserve it, so it just seemed right that she had a rat,” he explained. Bryan also chose the rodent because his son Alwyn had requested one as a reward for doing well at school and the family’s first two pet rats, Harpo and Daisy, inspired its appearance on the page.
A controversial ending and a message of hope
Helen’s healing process is shown in several powerful quintessential comic-book moments. First, she imagines reality shattering from the release of pent-up emotions while on top of a wind-swept peak in the Lake District. In a particularly emotional scene, Helen then confronts her father about his abuse and tells him she has taken control of her life. Instead of being portrayed as an evil predator, he is demystified and depowered; shown to be a weak and banal man. “I didn’t want to see her dad as a monster, he’s just an ordinary bloke,” he explained. “What I wanted to point out is that most people who do these things are not actually evil, just incredibly insensitive.”
This creative decision did not meet everyone’s approval. According to Bryan, US comics author Tom Veitch felt Helen should have killed her father, while Andrew Vachss, who explored child abuse in several books, pointed out that survivors never fully recover and that sometimes their lives end in tragedy.
“I wanted to give a message of hope,” commented Bryan. Instead, he crafted a fitting conclusion which tied together the story’s fantastical and grounded elements. Helen’s journey comes full circle at Hill Top Farm when she imagines discovering a copy of The Tale of One Bad Rat, which segues into a Potter-style adventure with the titular character. The book finishes with our protagonist drawing in the Lake District, ready for a new journey to become a children’s author, like her hero. This empowering ending saw the novel used by many support groups to help abuse survivors with their own experiences, particularly in the UK, US and Germany.
“It’s probably one of the books I am proudest of. To this day I still get emails from people who have been moved by it, who have been abused. A lot of people say it’s their favourite book; they read it when they are depressed and it gives them hope.” Its reputation continues to grow, and it has been published in 18 countries, with Serbia the most recent (Bryan has a shelf where all the foreign language editions take pride of place). It also scooped a host of accolades, including the Eisner and UK Comic Art awards.
Bryan had begun working on a sequel, provisionally named The Tale of Two Bad Rats and had written “pages and pages” of notes. It would see a grown-up Helen take a homeless girl under her wing, only for him to stop the work because he “didn’t want to ruin the original book.” While it would have been fascinating to read the next chapter in Helen’s story, the original is still as unique, relevant and powerful as when it was first published. The Tale of One Bad Rat is a remarkable achievement, not simply because it demonstrated what comics could do, but because it was a beacon which gave hope to countless survivors in their darkest moments.
Where to find Bryan Talbot’s latest work?
He recently collaborated with wife Mary M. Talbot on a graphic biography of the trailblazing women’s rights campaigner, Mary Wollstonecraft. Lo! An Amazon! The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Mary Wollstonecraft is out now for the discerning history buff.
Meanwhile, a prequel to the groundbreaking Grandville series delves into murder and mystery. The Casebook of Stamford Hawksmoor sees the detective extraordinaire pursue a homicidal killer through the streets of London.
For the latest news and updates on Bryan Talbot’s work, you can also check out his official website.
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