Rain by Mary and Bryan Talbot review – climate-crisis graphic novel

We provide help in disaster areas all around the world,” says the aid agency volunteer serving warm samosas. “Not usually in Yorkshire, though!” That natural disasters can and increasingly will affect not just people in rolling news stories a long way away but anyone, anywhere, is at the heart of Rain, a love story that’s also a flood story.

Illustration from "Rain" by Mary M Talbot and Bryan Talbot.

The samosa-bearing aid worker isn’t the only person on unfamiliar ground: with its tight contemporary focus, Rain is something of a departure for Mary and Bryan Talbot too. Two of Britain’s finest graphic novelists, the husband and wife team have previously covered the Paris Commune and imperialism in the South Pacific (The Red Virgin and the Vision of Utopia) and the women’s suffrage movement (Sally Heathcote: Suffragette). Bryan’s Grandville series stars a steampunk badger; and while his magnum opus Alice in Sunderland may start in modern Britain, its twists and turns connect prehistoric beasts, Humpty Dumpty and Sid James. And the pair’s finest hour, the Costa-winning Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes, slips between Mary’s childhood and the troubled life of James Joyce’s daughter Lucia.

Read the story from The Guardian by James Smart - “Rain by Mary and Bryan Talbot review – climate-crisis graphic novel.”