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Grandville Noël annotations - batch 1
This is similar in concept to the Directors Cut of Heart of Empire that Bryan and myself created: it is an attempt to answer the eternal "where do you get your ideas from?" question, and a way to showcase the influences and images that went into the creation of Grandville.
We are publishing updates to this page every Sunday and we will cover the entire Grandville series: we have already completed the annotations for Grandville, Grandville Mon Amour and Grandville Bête Noire.
Start reading the Grandville Noel annotations below, or jump straight to page 1, page 2, page 3, page 4, page 6, page 8, page 10, page 11, page 12, page 13, page 14, page 16, page 17, page 18, page 19 and page 20 - or go straight to batch 2 which covers pages 21 to 40, or batch 3 which covers pages 41 to the end.
Page 1
In my journey through the themes of the detective genre, I’d done political conspiracy in the first volume, serial killers in the second and a Bond-style attempted coup d’etat in the third (taking in the locked-room mystery on the way) and incorporated many crime writing tropes, including drug-dealing, prostitution, police brutality, secret police, deductive reasoning and corruption. This time, I did the classic missing person story, centring around religious conspiracy, the politics of hatred, the buddy story and a classic con-man.
Page 2
The robes of the members of the sect are based on Roman togas. You may notice over the pages in this scene that the stage is placed so that the audience has to look at it with the sun in their eyes.
Page 3
Panel 3
The human to the left is a reference to the superhero Plastic Man, created by Jack Cole in 1941.
The character of Nicholas Gryphon is visually a cross between John Tenniel’s grypon from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Nick Griffin, ex-leader of the extreme right-wing British National Party.
Page 4
The reason I chose a unicorn to portray the character of Apollo is that unicorns are symbolic, not just of purity, but often also as a symbol of Jesus Christ.
This frame was used as the back cover of a Baba Brinkman rap CD, but I can’t remember which one.
Panel 3
I needed to make Apollo’s voice special, to suggest his hypnotic and charismatic presence. A simple way I did this was to put all his speech in italics. Another was to have him speak in iambs. All his lines are in even numbers of syllables, so his speech apes the sound of a heart beating. EG. “To be or not to be…” He also often finishes a phrase on a Shakespearean-style rhyming iambic pentameter.
To give him a visual “specialness”, I used a couple of devices. Each scene in the book has its own ambient colouring, something that runs through all the Grandville books. Basically, there’s a very transparent colour tint, different for each scene, to add to that scene’s distinct atmosphere. In Noêl, Apollo is the only part of the illustrations not affected by this tint, right until he is “revealed” to be an ordinary man on page 81, and only given a pale blue shading. He also has an extremely subtle white glow that’s barely visible. It’s most noticeable on page 43. Hopefully, these devices give him a subliminal unworldly quality.
Panel 4
There are several incidents over the last few decades of religious cults committing mass suicide, including those of The People’s Temple, at Jonestown, Guyana (1978) and the Heaven’s Gate cult in California (1997). Wikipedia has a list of them.
Apollo’s spiel here is taken from the ludicrous belief of the members of Heaven’s Gate that, after committing suicide, their souls would “exit their earthly vessels” and migrate to a space ship that was following Haley’s Comet. Apollo has his followers convinced that they will go on an astral voyage to a place of infinite joy.
Page 6
Doc’s wearing something based on a Victorian invention intended to give support to the fingers of typists and pianists. If you look closely at this illustration, there’s what appears to be a masonic symbol on the shirt button.
Page 8
Credits page
“Baby in my cup”: The quote really is from Washoe the chimpanzee (1965 -2007), the first sentence communicated to a human using American sign language, something she’d been taught from birth, upon seeing a doll that had been placed in her drinking cup in 1973.
Later in the book we discover that LeBrock does indeed now have a baby to consider.
Page 10
Panel 1
In case you don’t know, LeBrock is making a fly-fishing lure here. He’s obviously a keen fisherman – cases of stuffed fish he’s caught were first seen in his living room in book two and, in the final volume, we see that he inherited this interest from his father. I though it would be a good indication of his character, as in being a detective is a little like being a fisherman.
Panel 6
“Wessex” was the name of an old Anglo-Saxon kingdom that lasted until the 6th century and was the name of the fictional county in which Thomas Hardy (1840 – 1928) set his novels, among them Far From the Madding Crowd and Tess of the D’Urbervilles.
Page 11
Panel 4
Mrs Doyle’s niece is named Bunty Spall after the U.K. actor Timothy Spall, because he did used to look a bit like a guinea pig.
Bunty’s first name is taken from the classic British girl’s comic Bunty (1958 – 2001).
Page 12
Panel 4
Brighton Promenade. In the background is a fancy version of Brighton’s West Pier, destroyed in our world by a fire in 2003.
Panel 5|
On the wall you can see a picture of the famous music hall singer and teenage heat-throb (Bunty’s obviously a fan) Justin Beaver.
All the examples of Bunty’s embroidery on this and the next 2 pages were sewn sometime around the 1950s by my late mother, May Talbot.
Page 13
Panel 9
“Crewel needle…” etc: These are real embroidery terms.
Page 14
Panel 4
Elm Grove is the name of a school in Brighton except, in our world, it’s a primary school.
Page 16
Panels 3 & 4
A pretty obvious reference to the fable of The Tortoise and the Hare by the father of the modern anthropomorphic story, Aesop (6th century BC).
Here’s a lovely illustration of it by Arthur Rackham (1867 – 1939).
Panel 5
Bettie is using Mary Poppin’s umbrella.
Panel 9
“Church of Evolutionary Theology” – continuing the conceit that everybody is speaking in French.
Page 17
Town Hall, Bartholomew Square: The original location of Brighton’s police station, now the location of the Old Police Cells Museum.
Page 18
This really is a Brighton Street, kindly photographed for my reference by my good mate, Brighton resident and graphic novelist Hannah Berry.
Page 19
Panel 1
A redrawing of Rue de Paris, Temps de Pluie (Paris Street, Rainy Weather) by Gustave Caillebot (1848 – 1894).
Panel 2
Maxim’s is a genuine Art Nouveau Restaurant in Paris, close to the Champs Elysées.
Panel 3 +
Waiters have often been portrayed as penguins in anthropomorphic art, most famously in the film version of Mary Poppins (Disney, 1964).
Page 20
Panel 1
Professor Ursine: see Bête Noire annotations page 44, panel 4.
Panel 2
“The Giant Rat of Sumatra”: To quote Wikipedia:
“The Giant Rat of Sumatra is a fictional giant rat, first mentioned by Arthur Conan Doyle in "The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire". As part of the tale, the protagonist, Sherlock Holmes, declares that there is a "story" connected with this rat, presumably a detective case he has handled. The name of the rat and its implied unpublished history were later used in works by many other writers.”
Now go to the second batch of Grandville Noël annotations.