Eddie Campbell
See also: Campbell
Eddie Campbell (born the August 10th 1955 in Scotland) is a draftsman of Cartoon residing in Australia. Propelled on the front of the scene by From Hell , realized with Alan Moore, Campbell is also the creator of Alec , one of the first autobiographical bands.
One feels in his hâché feature grattement of the fountain pen and one perceives the influence of the impressionist there, of the illustrators of the time of the “penmanship released” such as Phil May, Charles Dana Gibson, John Leech or George of Maurier, draftsmen like Milton Caniff or Frank Frazetta (especially in its series Johnny Comet ). Its writing was compared with that Jack Kerouac or Henry Miller.
Noticed beginnings of a precursor of the autobiography
Campbell off approaches for the first time the autobiographical cartoon at the end of the Seventies with In the days the Ace Rock-and-roll Club , which becomes gradually Alec , Alec McGarry being one potrait easily recognizable of her creator. With beginning of the year 80, after being itself car-published a few months during, Campbell publishes Alec in Flick , the fanzine of the BAPA (British amateur close association). As from 1983, the series can touch a larger audience with its publication in Escape Magazine . Escape publishes the year following the first album of Alec . Two other deliveries follow: Coils and Beerglasses in 1985 and Doggie in the Window in 1986.If the récitatifs are sometimes a little lyric, Campbell flees the mélodramatique one and restores with more close her daily newspaper by natural and alive dialogs taken in a slow rate/rhythm. The texts being written before the drawing, this last, of a delicate impressionism pointing out Milton Penknife, Garry Trudeau or Walt Kelly, supports it by avoiding the stylistic effects: the space provision of the boxes is regular, the quasi-iteration iteration occupies a great place. This fidelity with a daily newspaper which does not have anything extraordinary, that Campbell calls “anti-heroic”, the fact of noticing by Alan Moore, and places it among the precursors of the boom of the autobiography in the Nineties.
A major actor of the independent comics
The success of the Tortoises Ninja of Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird led in the middle of the Eighties to an explosion of the independent comics in black and white. Campbell was not remains about it, creating for the small English editor Harrier Comics the series Deadface : history of Bacchus, god of the wine and the festivities, and some other figures of Greek mythology in the current world. When after eight number Harrier stopped the publication, Campbell published various short stories of Bacchus in various magazines, before Dark Horse Comics does not decide to republish all the stories published at Harrier in 1990 ( Immortality isn' T Forever ) and the others in 1991 ( Doing the Islands With Bacchus ). Then Campbell continued the series in this editor until 1995.In parallel, Campbell continues the publication of Alec , at Fantagraphics Books, with The Dead MUSE in 1990 and Little Italy in 1991. Grafitti Kitchen , that Campbell regards as her best Alec appears in 1993 at Tundra and The Dance off Lifely Death in 1994 at Dark Horse Comics.
The dedication From Hell
Begun in 1989 in the anthology Taboo from Steve Bissette, the ambitious Roman graph on Jack the eventror From Hell writes by Alan Moore is the work most famous of Eddie Campbell, selected for her realistic and hard feature, in order to privilege probability with the sensationalism. From Hell , after Taboo , is published in episodes by Tundra then Kitchen Sink Press until 1998. The work gains the price of the critic to the International festival of cartoon of Angouleme 2001.
The failure of the return to the autoreporting
Thanks to the money rising from the contracts for the film adaptation of From Hell , Campbell creates Eddie Campbell Comics in 1995 and republishes Bacchus and Alec . It publishes also an limited edition of From Hell and two adaptations as a cartoon of parts performances of Alan Moore. It continues its autobiographical work by the publication of two work of greater width: Alec: How To Be Year Artist (2000), which evokes the art and the artistic life of the author, then After the Snooter (2002) which seems to show that Campbell definitively buried Alec. The character of Alec is selected with Squiddy Award of the best character in 2000 and the album Alec: How to Be year Artist for Harvey Award of the best republication of graphic novel in 2002. These two works were initially appeared in Bacchus but were worked over again on the occasion.Campbell begins in the pages of her magazine Eddie Campbell' S Egomania another autobiographical work The History Of Humor , but the end of the periodical in December 2002 seems to mark that of the series. Indeed, vis-a-vis the indifference of the public and with the bankruptcy of her American distributer, Campbell stops the experiment in 2003, after having left the second number Egomania .
Critical activity
In July 2004, discussing merits of the term “Romance graph” on the forum of the Comics Newspaper , Campbell Formula One a proclamation having for goal to advance the discussion via the creation of a movement artistic.Eddie Campbell' S (Revised) Graphic Novell Manifesto (the proclamation of the graphic novel of Eddie Campbell)
There are so many dissensions (between us) and incomprehension (on behalf of the general public) about the graphic novel which it is high time to propose some principles.
- “Roman graph” is an inappropriate term, but we will continue to use it, heard that graphic does not mean that one deals with Romance graphic art nor with novels. (Just like “Impressionnisme” is not really a relevant denomination: first of all used as insult, it was then adopted by provocation.)
- Since we do not refer ourselves to in no case with the traditional romantic literature, we do not hold so that the graphic novels have same dimensions or the same weight as it. The terms of replacement such as “ novella ” or “ novelette ” (these two terms are in translatable French by “short novel”) do not have any utility here and cannot that to add to already large confusion as for our goals (see below) while implying that we do nothing but create illustrated versions of standard literature whereas our objectives are much more ambitious: we forge a new art which does not have by being dependant by the arbitrary rules of another more old.
- “Romance graph” qualifies more a artistic Mouvement than a form. Thus we can speak about “antécédants” of the graphic novel, like the novels in Estampe of Lynd Ward but the retroactive application of the name does not appear interesting to us.
- Although the graphic novelist ( graphic novelist ) regards his various predecessors as geniuses and prophets without the work of which it would not have had the idea to do to it his, it should not feel to oblige to quote Rake' S Progress of William Hogarth with each time it obtains that one speaks about his work or his art in general.
- Since the term defines more one movement, or an event in progress, that a form, it has nothing there to gain to define it or “to measure it”. It is approximately thirty years old, although the name and the concept circulated at least ten years before. Considering its constant progression, it will have still surely changed nature the next year.
- the objective of the graphic novelist is to take the shapes of the cartoon ( comic book ), become embarrassing, and to raise them on a level more ambitious and carrying direction. That generally implies an increase in the number of pages, but we must avoid speaking about this type of things. If an artist presents his last graphic novel in the form of independent short stories (such Eisner in a pact with God ( contract with God has)), we to ask should not baffle but to only us whether its new graphic novel is good or bad collection of short stories. If it uses characters who appear elsewhere than in graphic novels, like those of Gilbert Hernandez, or Jimmy Corrigan (of Chris Ware), or even of the characters whom we do not wish to let penetrate in our “secret society”, we should not return them for that. If its book does not resemble any more one cartoon we let us not should blame some either. We must to only ask us whether it increases or not the human knowledge.
- Contrary to “book of pocket”, “hardcover” or “de luxe edition”, the term “Romance graph” should not be used to characterize a format of sale. It can remain in the shape of new manuscripts, or appear in episodes. The intention imports above all, even arriving after the original publication.
- All that relates to the life concerns the graphic novelist, his included. There or she scorns the usual categories of the fiction and its dreadful stereotypes while trying to remain open of spirit. They particularly want of it with the concept, prevailing today still in many places, and not without reason, that the cartoon is only one subcategory of science fiction or heroic-fantasy.
- the graphic novelists will never use between them the graphic Romance term but will speak only about their “last book”, their “book in progress”, “this food work to the idiot” or even about their “cartoon”, etc the term must be used like an emblem, the such old flag which was used to call the soldiers with the battle, or when, in an unknown bookstore, one seeks to find certain books. The editors can still use it and still until it means even less than only it means already.
- Moreover, the graphic novelists must have with the spirit that the next wave of authors of cartoon will choose to work on the smallest possible forms and will ridicule our pump.
- the graphic novelist reserves the right to deny one or all the points above if that enables him to sell quickly and much.
Work for First Second Books
Not having more editor since death of Eddie Campbell Comics, Campbell joined in 2006 the new American alternate editor First Second Books. It joins again there with the autobiography in May 2006, by publishing The Fate off the artist . In June 2007, it publishes The Black Diamond Detective Agency , according to a new scenario of C. Gaby Mitchell.
Works published
Albums of English cartoons
- Alec , Escape:
- These three albums are republished in 1990 pennies the title The Complete Alec then in 2000 per Top Shelf under the title The King Canute Crowd .
- Bacchus , Eddie Campbell Comics:
- From Hell (drawing), with Alan Moore (scenario), Signal Shelf, 2000
- The Birth Caul , according to a play of Alan Moore, Eddie Campbell Comics, 1999
- Alec , Signal Shelf:
- Snakes and ladders , according to a play of Alan Moore, Eddie Campbell Comics, 2001
- Batman: The Order off beasts (drawing), with Darren White (scenario), cd. Comics, 2004
- The Fate off the artist , First Second Books, 2006
- The Black Diamond detective agency , First Second Books, 2007
Albums of French cartoon
- From Hell (drawing), with Alan Moore (scenario), Delcourt, coll “Smuggling”, 2000.
- Alec , That and there:
Appendices
| Random links: | Pine ponderosa | Marlboro | Canonical Gospels | Kinsale | Vratna | Susannah_McCorkle |