Eddie Campbell

Eddie Campbell (born 10 August 1955) is a British comics artist and cartoonist.

He was the illustrator and publisher of From Hell (written by Alan Moore), and the creator of the semi-autobiographical Alec stories collected in Alec: The Years Have Pants, and Bacchus (a.k.a. Deadface), a wry adventure series about the few Greek gods who have survived to the present day.

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).

Campbell's writing has been compared to that of Jack Kerouac and Henry Miller.

Campbell has won almost every award the comics industry bestows, including the Eisner Award, the Harvey Award, the Ignatz Award, the Eagle Award, and the UK Comic Art Award.

Campbell made his earliest attempts at autobiographical comics in the late 1970s with In the Days of the Ace Rock 'n' Roll Club (1978–1979).

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 pamphlets 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.

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 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 Horse Presents published by Dark Horse Comics.

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).

While in Australia (where he moved in 1986), Campbell published a number of comics with the new British publisher Harrier Comics.

These included the one-shots By The Time I Get To Wagga Wagga (1987), and Ace (1988), as well as his first Bacchus comics (see below).

With Glenn Dakin and Phil Elliott, he helped found Harrier's alternative-flavored New Wave imprint.

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.

In 1990 all three Alec volumes were collected, together with some unpublished material, as The Complete Alec by Acme Press/Eclipse Comics.

Two further slim volumes, The Dead Muse (1990) and Little Italy (1991) appeared through Fantagraphics Books.

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.

The collection won the 1991 UK Comic Art Award for Best Graphic Novel Collection.

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.

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 (Vol. 1 ISBN 978-1-60309-026-1, Vol. 2 ISBN 978-1-60309-027-8).

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.

After Taboo folded From Hell was published in instalments by Tundra and then Kitchen Sink Press, until the epilogue Dance of the Gull-catchers saw print in 1998.

In 2000 this material was republished as The King Canute Crowd.

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 series, but were reworked upon collection.

Alec: How to Be an Artist was nominated for the Harvey Award for Best Graphic Album of Previously Published Work in 2000.

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.

In 2007 Campbell spent some time serving as a court illustrator in Australia.

All the Alec stories, with the exception of The Fate of the Artist, were published in one volume, Alec: The Years Have Pants by Top Shelf Productions in 2009 (ISBN 978-1-60309-025-4).

this was followed in 2012 by the publication of The Lovely Horrible Stuff (Top Shelf), a continuation of the autobiographical theme which playfully investigates our relationship with money.