The Adventures of Luther Arkwright
"The Adventures of Luther Arkwright" is a seminal graphic novel by Bryan Talbot that combines elements of science fiction, fantasy, and political commentary within a richly constructed multiverse. The narrative unfolds across an infinite number of parallel Earths, each grappling with its own unique conflicts, primarily set against an alternative version of British history characterized by a struggle between Royalists and a Cromwellian regime. The protagonist, Luther Arkwright, is depicted as a mystical figure capable of traversing these parallels and represents a transformative force amid chaos and turmoil.
Talbot's artwork is notable for its meticulous crosshatched pen-and-ink style, creating a stark black-and-white visual experience that enhances the themes of power misuse and societal conflict threaded throughout the story. Arkwright's journey is supported by a cast of diverse characters, including Rose Wylde, his formidable assistant, and Nathaniel Cromwell, the story's antagonist, who embodies corruption and decadence. The narrative employs nonlinear storytelling and rich cultural references, such as the destruction of the Crystal Palace and the Bayeux tapestry, which serve to critique class systems and humanity's persistent struggles.
Emerging from the alternative press landscape of the late 1970s, "The Adventures of Luther Arkwright" has influenced the evolution of politically engaged science fiction and graphic storytelling, contributing to a new vocabulary of adult narrative forms. As readers engage with Arkwright's epic battles and philosophical musings, they are invited to reflect on the nature of power, conflict, and the possibility of redemption in a fractured world.
The Adventures of Luther Arkwright
AUTHOR: Talbot, Bryan
ARTIST: Bryan Talbot (illustrator)
PUBLISHER: Dark Horse Comics
FIRST SERIAL PUBLICATION: 1978
FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION: 1997
Publication History
The outlet for Bryan Talbot’s work was alternative even for the British science-fiction comics audience. As a point of comparison, the magazine 2000 AD and its spin-offs were widely distributed, but Galaxy Media, Talbot’s original publisherfor The Adventures of Luther Arkwright, was far less accessible. That circumstance, however, might well have provided the autonomy necessary to create such an intentionally innovative work.
The Adventures of Luther Arkwright started as a serial; its initial installment was featured in the alternative science-fiction title Near Myths (1978), issues 1-6, in Britain. All subsequent publications were by British companies until the series was released by Dark Horse Comics. In 1982, a revised and expanded version appeared in the comic publication Pssst!, issues 1-5. From 1987 to 1989, the story was serialized over the course of nine issues for Valkyrie Press, which released the complete series in a set of three books. The nine-issue limited series was released through Dark Horse Comics in 1990. A trade paperback edition was published by Dark Horse Comics in 1997. Another trade paperback appeared in 2008.
Plot
In its basic conceptual approach, Talbot’s initial work on The Adventures of Luther Arkwright was linked to the aesthetics of the politically engaged “new wave” of fantastic British literature (from the late 1950’s and early 1960’s). This mode may be roughly characterized as an amalgam of psychedelic visual and textual intensity and content informed by savage social commentary.
The action takes place within a grand multiverse; existence itself is composed of an infinite number of parallel Earths, in which conflict and tribulation seem to be the norm. The main flow of events is based in an alternative-reality variant of British history, although the epic scenario jumps to sites throughout Old World Europe and the former Soviet Union. Accordingly, the story’s presentation is essentially nonlinear, featuring cumulatively revealed, even impressionistic, plotting. Narrative devices, such as the presence of a narrator and flashbacks, are also woven into the metacontinuity.
Of the multitude of possible Earths, the technologically advanced parallel “zero-zero” exists in harmonious exception to the near-universal human struggle, and its agents enforce zero-zero’s objectives throughout the other parallels. Among these agents, only the mystically adept “übermensch” Luther Arkwright possesses the ability to pass between parallels at will. Another exceptional warrior, Rose Wylde, Arkwright’s assistant and lover, exists in duplicate form throughout the parallels and can communicate with her other selves.
The London of the novel is a hellhole, in ruins as a result of that particular parallel’s extended variation on the English Civil Wars; the country is under Cromwellian rule. The Royalists, revolutionaries under King Charles, oppose this ruling class. While Oliver Cromwell’s forces are as ironfisted as they are decadent, their power is not absolute. A malevolent, covert force, the Disruptors, has been manipulating events across parallels and throughout history. Arkwright pits himself against both Cromwell’s fascist regime and the Disruptor overlords.
What follows is an intellectually vital spectacle, a showcase for one visual crescendo after another, in which political intrigues, enacted against a backdrop of Old World ceremonial architecture, erupt in hellacious battles.
Arkwright, in his role of reformer, is a remorselessly effective killing machine, becomes a captive, and is then martyred and resurrected. Throughout this work, the reader witnesses his recurring transcendence beyond the confines of the material plane. Moreover, overlain references to Western art history, British history, and mysticism comprise a multilayered allegory on human conflict and the acquisition and misuse of power. This is all on behalf of the questionable cause of a humanity destined to fall somewhat short of redemption.
Characters
•Luther Arkwright, the protagonist, is not governed by limitations of time or space; he is “the next stage of human evolution.” His motivation appears to be beyond considerations of mere heroism. As a supreme being, he essentially acts to defend the balance of existence itself. It is noted that Arkwright’s only personal allegiance is to his women, of whom Rose is his one true emotional connection.
•Rose Wylde is parallel zero-zero’s field operations section leader; her incarnations are active across multiple parallels (up to seven points at once). Rose exemplifies the inspired woman warrior and is embroiled in a multiparallel conflict characterized on either side by ineffectual or corrupt male leaders.
•Nathaniel Cromwell, the antagonist, is a descendant of the Cromwell family and, thus, high lord protector of England. His degenerate private behaviors suggest inbreeding, or at least something equally unholy. His perversity, particularly a nasty streak in regards to women, is a trait passed on to his rampaging Puritan troops.
•Harry Fairfax is a major supporting player. He is a sixteenth-century-style throwback, a Royalist operative, and a guttersnipe with a natural gift for vulgarity. He is a good man in a battle and a comic foil for Arkwright, being as earthbound as Arkwright is ethereal. By the end of the novel, he represents the success of the revolution and the ascendance of the common man to the ruling class.
•Octobriana is a somewhat bestial woman warrior, a sexually aggressive Ukrainian freedom fighter in league with Arkwright in the struggle against the Disruptors. As is fitting for a graphic novel dealing with alternative histories, she is a previously established character from early 1970’s cult comic strips, here appropriated by Talbot.
•Hiram Kowolsky is the United Colonies’ war artist and a foreign correspondent for The New Amsterdam Herald, reporting as a neutral observer, though in hiding because of the danger of the assignment and Cromwell’s expulsion of the press. As a journalist, and in interaction with Arkwright, he contextualizes the narrative of events and is engaged in drafting history as it is being made.
•Princess Anne, later Queen Anne, is to become the ultimate post-Restoration ruler of England and the leader her brother Charles, pretender to the throne, could never have been. She is the third of Arkwright’s women and the mother of his twins, born during the novel’s cataclysmic final battle at Nasby Circus.
Artistic Style
Talbot employs a meticulous, primarily crosshatched pen-and-ink style for the majority of his illustrations. His rendering and characterization indicate a concern for realism, providing the reader with readily identifiable characters. Some of the key players, notably Rose, are recognizable in their multiple parallel incarnations. The art is in black and white, even to the point of appearing to be composed on scratchboard (an illustration medium featuring a black field, from which white line work must be scratched away with a stylus) and is designed to not be colored but to lend the proceedings a bleak aspect.
Other techniques, such as what appears to have originally been wash but has since been gradated with computer assistance, have been used to indicate flashbacks and cosmic activity fields.
Apart from the role that the book’s faithful renditions of historical artwork and architecture play, visual design is used to support characterization. For example, Cromwell’s regime considers representational art, such as official portraiture, to be idolatry. They prefer nonrepresentational op-art canvases, which lend an interesting aspect to the set decoration.
Talbot consciously evokes earlier illustrative styles, particularly works from England’s history. His hatching is meant to be read as engraving and, to the extent possible, recall printmakers such as William Hogarth, thus borrowing from some of the antique power for the informed reader who might be able to place such an association. In any case, Talbot’s artifacts and particular stylistic quotes provide just such a sophisticated platform for his intensive visual storytelling.
Themes
The misuse of power features strongly in the plot. The set pieces, so reminiscent of epic war films, might actually be a distraction from that point. There is more depth to the book’s thesis, however. At the least, the narrative carries multiple meanings.
From the beginning of the graphic novel, with the destruction of the Crystal Palace and, with it, the Bayeux tapestry, Talbot employs a dizzying number of cultural associations. The Crystal Palace, the chief architectural wonder at the 1851 Great Exhibition in London, stands for Britain’s supremacy as a mercantile center at the peak of the Industrial Revolution. However, its glamour obscured those who might elsewhere be caught in the gears of progress. Blowing it up, as in Talbot’s treatment, is tantamount to striking a blow against the class system itself. Likewise, the Bayeux tapestry pulls double duty here. It is a touchstone in the history of sequential art, but, for the sake of the novel, it also represents the universality of violent conflict, another human constant.
Another setting is Karl Marx’s tomb, another indication of class consciousness. Does Luther Arkwright, in his perfect messianic mode, represent a force for the liberation of the common man? A parallel can be drawn between Talbot’s representation and the time in which he lived, specifically during the era of Margaret Thatcher, prime minister of England from 1979 to 1990, which was a time of popular disenchantment.
Impact
The movement toward socially and politically conscious science fiction was spearheaded by science-fiction writers but influenced the creativity of the era in general, with observable effects on other media, such as comic books and rock music. This movement was both cosmic and grounded in reality, as seen in science-fiction writer Michael Moorcock’s collaboration with space rockers Hawkwind, for example.
Moorcock and comics author Alan Moore share a commonality with Talbot in their quest to express the depths of London’s mysticism. Talbot has woven supernatural intrigue into the fabric of TheAdventures of LutherArkwright.
Having emerged from the underground press, Talbot contributed to the narrative visual-art segment of this new wave. In the epilogue of Valkyrie Press’s Arkwright editions, he declares that he is striving for a new vocabulary and framework with which to create an uncharacteristically adult, multitextured tale.
Further Reading
Moorcock, Michael, and Walter Simonson. Michael Moorcock’s Elric: The Making of a Sorcerer (2007).
Moore, Alan, and Eddie Campbell. From Hell (1989-1996).
Wagner, John, and Brian Bolland. Judge Dredd: Featuring Judge Death (2001).
Bibliography
Groenwegen, David. “Royals Amok.” The Comics Journal 218 (December, 1999): 31.
Sabin, Roger. Comics, Comix, and Graphic Novels: A History of Comic Art. London: Phaidon Press, 1996.
Talbot, Bryan. The Adventures of Luther Arkwright. Milwaukie, Ore.: Dark Horse Books, 2007.
Tong, Ng Suat. “Flopsy, Mopsy, Cotton-tail, and Helen.” The Comics Journal, no. 1777 (May, 1995): 50-52.