Eddie Campbell (born 10 August 1955) is a Scottish comics artist and cartoonist who now lives in Australia. He is probably best known as the illustrator and publisher of From Hell (written by Alan Moore) and creator of the semi-autobiographical Alec stories. He was originally to be the main Hellblazer writer after Garth Ennis, but left the book four issues in and was replaced by Paul Jenkins.
His scratchy pen-and-ink style is influenced by impressionists such as Phil May, Charles Dana Gibson and George du Maurier, and cartoonists Milton Caniff and Frank Frazetta. His writing has been compared to Jack Kerouac and Henry Miller.
Career[]
Campbell made his earliest attempts at autobiographical comics in the late 1970s with the self-published 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. The first three Alec volumes, Alec (1984), Love and Beerglasses (1985) and Doggie in the Window (1986), were collected with some unpublished material, as The Complete Alec (republished as The King Canute Crowd in 2000). Several more volumes followed, published by Fantagraphics and Dark Horse.
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).
The success of the comic 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, which told the story of Bacchus, god of wine and revelry, and the few other Greek mythological figures who have survived to the present day. Campbell continued to produce Bacchus 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).
Beginning in 1989 Campbell illustrated Alan Moore's ambitious Jack the Ripper graphic novel From Hell. It was initially serialised but subsequently collected years later.
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. As well as collecting From Hell, Bacchus, Alec and other works, 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 US distributor, Campbell ended his publishing imprint in 2003 after releasing the second issue of Egomania.
He subsequently released The Fate of the Artist, The Black Diamond Detective Agency and The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard in , 2007 and 2008, respectively.
Hellblazer bibliography[]
appearance written by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell called Snakes and Ladders (2001), adapted for comics by Eddie Campbell
Other notable works[]
- Alec (1984–2002)
- Bacchus (1995-2001)
- From Hell (1989-1998)
- Batman: The Order of Beasts (2004)
- The Fate of the Artist (2006)
- The Black Diamond Detective Agency (2007)
- The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard (2008)
Awards[]
- 1993 Eisner Award for Best Serialized Story (for From Hell)
- 1997 Comic Buyers' Guide award for Favorite Limited Series (for From Hell)
- 1997 Comic Buyers' Guide award for Favorite Reprint Graphic Album (for From Hell)
- 2000 Eisner Award for Best Graphic Album - Reprint (for From Hell)
- 2000 Squiddy Award for Best Character (for Alec)
- 2001 Prix de la critique (for From Hell)
Nominations[]
- 2000 Harvey Award for Best Graphic Album of Previously Published Work (for Alec: How to be an Artist)
External links[]
- Eddie Campbell's Blog
- Eddie Campbell at Marvel.com