"Dave Sim said in his latest thing of his, 'when you're on the right track, you'll know it, but until you get there, you have to believe you're on the right track'. Interesting little conundrum. It's not easy." -- Eddie Campbell
Eddie Campbell (born 10 August 1955) is a Scottish comics artist and cartoonist who now lives in Australia. Probably best known as the illustrator and publisher of From Hell (written by Alan Moore), Campbell is also the creator of the semi-autobiographical Alec stories, and Bacchus (aka Deadface), a wry adventure series about the few Greek gods who have survived to the present day. His graphic novel The Fate of the Artist, which playfully investigates Campbell's own sudden disappearance, was published in May 2006 by First Second Books. His latest graphic novel, The Black Diamond Detective Agency, was published in June 2007, also by First Second Books.
His scratchy pen-and-ink style is influenced by the impressionists, illustrators of the age of "liberated penmanship" such as Phil May, Charles Dana Gibson, John Leech and George du Maurier, and cartoonists Milton Caniff and Frank Frazetta (particularly his Johnny Comet strip). His writing has been compared to Jack Kerouac and Henry Miller.
"All that political stuff Delano was doing. Me, I've gone off the top, into total fantasy.""And when you look at the Turtle's movie there is something there, definitely something there.""By March '87 we're down to seven thousand, by the end of the year we're down to twelve hundred. The whole bottom just fell out of the market. It was bad for me because I was in Australia at the time.""He would still see it as his duty to shut up and get on with it, not cause any trouble. In our own time we've made a hero of the rebel, and it's more heroic to speak up.""I came in on the decline. Phil Elliot was in first, he got his book out, he sold thirteen thousand, I think he got two issues out before I got mine in, this was March '87. He was out in December '86.""I don't want to write, I'd rather draw.""I remember having an argument with Alan, I said the Queen's not just going to call the guy up and send him out to do it. And Alan says, well, how would a monarch give orders to her assassin.""I think in the corridors of power these dangerous kinds of orders are issued in a much more vague way, passed down two or three levels of command before they're given to the assassin.""I thought, well I can do that. I couldn't be bothered writing a book review, because I'd have to read the book, I haven't got time to read a whole book for a fifty dollar write-up.""I wrote five issues of that and got the sack. Actually, they paid me for eight, but they changed their minds about the direction and threw three issues out the window.""I'd be interested to read Gull's paper on it, and I wish Alan would put it in somewhere. It gives him a relevance to our times, which he doesn't otherwise have. Gull, I mean, not Alan.""I'm just drawing it now. It's totally revolting. I'm sure you'll love it.""I'm thinking to myself, I just love doing the art, it takes me a morning to do.""It's business, selling comics, you work out what sells and you don't want to muck about with it too much.""It's not the last one. Five's out, six is coming out in November, that's a single chapter, and then seven is the big horrifying one. And I think a couple after that to wrap the thing up.""There are a couple of things in there if we're constraining this discussion to horror here.""They asked me to write it and zoomed me over there to do it. But they ended up sacking me.""They've got this house style which is writer driven. I heard of one person who sent his script in, and Karen Berger said there weren't enough words in it. Put some more in.""We could hang around for ten years and nobody would care enough to identify us. Therein lies the horror.""You had to make an appointment to see her. But it was just a crazy spectacle, people filing past."
Campbell made his earliest attempts at autobiographical comics in the late 1970s with In the Days of the Ace Rock and Roll Club. This evolved into Alec, with the character of Alec MacGarry standing in for the author. Campbell self-published these early comics in the amateur press association BAPA and then as short-run photocopied pamphets in London in the early 1980s, selling them at conventions and comic marts and via Paul Gravett's "Fast Fiction" market stall. When Gravett founded Escape Magazine, Campbell was one of the artists featured. In 1984 Escape published Alec, a slim collection of his semi-autobiographical stories. This was followed by two further collections, Love and Beerglasses (1985) and Doggie in the Window (1986). In 1990 all three were collected, together with some unpublished material, as The Complete Alec (republished as The King Canute Crowd in 2000).
Two further slim volumes, The Dead Muse (1990) and Little Italy (1991) appeared through Fantagraphics Books. Graffiti Kitchen, which Campbell considers the highpoint of the series, was published by Tundra in 1993, and The Dance of Lifey Death followed in 1994 from Dark Horse Comics.
Campbell then followed up these works by self publishing two larger works. Alec: How To Be An Artist (2000), a study of the art form and of Campbell's own artistic journey, and After The Snooter (2002), in which Campbell appears to have laid Alec McGarry to rest. Both works were originally serialised within his Bacchus magazine, but were reworked upon collection. The Fate of the Artist, in which Campbell's family and friends investigate his disappearance, undermining the image of himself he had presented in his previous autobiographical works, was published by First Second Books in 2006.
The character of Alec received a nomination for the Squiddy Award for Best Character in 2000. The graphic album Alec: How to Be an Artist was nominated for the Harvey Award for Best Graphic Album of Previously Published Work in 2000.
All the Alec stories, including the early out-of-print ones, were published in one volume by Top Shelf Productions in 2009 (ISBN 978-1-60309-025-4).
Bacchus
The success of Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles led to a short-lived explosion of black and white independent comics in the mid-1980s. Campbell joined in, creating the series Deadface for small British publisher Harrier Comics, telling the story of Bacchus, god of wine and revelry, and the few other Greek mythological figures who have survived to the present day. Harrier published eight issues of Deadface and two issues of a companion comic Bacchus. Campbell then began publishing short Bacchus stories in a number of anthologies, such as the British anthology Trident published by Trident Comics, and the American anthology Dark House Presents published by Dark Horse Comics. Dark Horse reprinted the Harrier series as Immortality isn't Forever in 1990 and a selection of the short stories as Doing the Islands With Bacchus in 1991. Campbell continued to produce Bacchus stories for Dark Horse until 1995 as a series of miniseries.The entire Bacchus saga is to be published in two 500 page volumes by Top Shelf Productions. They are currently scheduled to be released some time in 2010 (Vol 1 ISBN 978-1-60309-026-1, Vol 2 ISBN 978-1-60309-027-8).
From Hell
Beginning in 1989 Campbell illustrated Alan Moore's ambitious Jack the Ripper graphic novel From Hell, serialised initially in Steve Bissette's horror anthology Taboo. Moore and Bissette chose Campbell as illustrator for his down-to-earth approach which gave the story a convincing realism and did not sensationalise the violence of the murders. After Taboo folded From Hell was published in installments by Tundra and then Kitchen Sink Press, until the epilogue Dance of the Gull-catchers saw print in 1998.
Self-publishing
Under the influence of Dave Sim, Campbell founded Eddie Campbell Comics and began self-publishing in 1995, after the film rights to From Hell were optioned. The monthly series Bacchus reprinted and completed the story begun in Deadface, as well as carrying new and reprinted Alec stories. He went on to collect both Alec and Bacchus as a series of graphic novels. He also published the collected edition of From Hell, and comics adaptations of two of Alan Moore's performance art pieces, The Birth Caul and Snakes and Ladders.
After the cancellation of Bacchus, Campbell published two issues of Eddie Campbell's Egomania magazine, in which he began to serialise another work, The History Of Humour. Facing an increasingly indifferent market for his work, and the collapse of his U.S. distributor, Campbell ended his publishing imprint in 2003 after releasing the second issue of Egomania.
The Black Diamond Detective Agency
In June 2007 First Second Books published The Black Diamond Detective Agency, Campbell's adaptation of an as-yet unmade screenplay by C. Gaby Mitchell. Set in the closing months of 1899, it features the eponymous private detective agency investigating a conspiracy to blow up a train, and their prime suspect's efforts to find the truth.
The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard
In January 2008, First Second Books published Campbell's latest book following the life of circus performers and historical figures as they wander in and out of history. It has been enthusiastically received by critics with Ain't It Cool News saying "Something truly amazing and fun does indeed occur in this book."
