CAMPBELL, EDDIE 81
always stack the deck in their favor. Th is landmark solo project off ers a procession of
memorable and sometimes startling images. Its portrayal of lonely Londoners is a case
study in what works and does not work about modern cities. It is also an Olympian un-
dertaking; it views its protagonists from the detached perspective of the mountaintop.
Kent Worcester
CAMPBELL, EDDIE (1955–). Eddie Campbell was born in Scotland and moved to
Australia in 1986. Best known as the illustrator for Alan Moore’s From Hell, Camp-
bell has been an active comic book artist, writer, and self-publisher for nearly three
decades, producing a distinctive style in his stories and art that continue to evolve.
Inspired by his friend, Dave Sim, Campbell decided to self-publish, and in 1995, he
formed Eddie Campbell Comics, which collected and published the majority of his
works in addition to the collected From Hell books. Th e company lasted until 2003
whereupon Campbell began publishing his back catalog with Top Shelf Productions
and new work with First Second Books.
Campbell’s earliest works are autobiographical, and he continues to explore this form
of comics to the present day. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Campbell wrote and
drew a series of semi-autobiographical comics about his alter-ego, Alec McGarry. He
photocopied and distributed these pamphlets and became a key fi gure at the beginning
of the small-press scene in Britain. He later chronicled these events in his book, Alec:
How to Be an Artist (Top Shelf Productions, 2001). Campbell published shorter Alec
stories in a variety of places, some of which are serialized in his Bacchus books.
Initially titled Deadface and published by the British company Harrier Comics
(reprinted by Dark Horse Comics in 1990, which also commissioned new stories),
Bacchus appeared from 1986–99, for a total of 60 issues. Th e main character, Bac-
chus, is the Roman god of wine, and the series chronicles a modern mythological tale.
Dave Sim’s titular character, Cerebus, shows up in Bacchus issue #1 as an independent
“c r o s s - o v e r.”
Despite Campbell’s long publishing career, it was not until he started to work with
Moore on From Hell that he achieved international recognition. Campbell drew the
story, which was initially serialized in Steve Bissette’s Ta b o o anthology, from 1991 to
1996, with “Dance of the Gull Catchers” appearing in 1998. Campbell’s rough, black-
and-white art depicting the grime and poverty of Victorian England suited Moore’s
obsessively researched story about Jack the Ripper. For his work on From Hell, Camp-
bell won a Harvey Award in 1995 (Best Continuing or Limited Series), and two Eisner
Awa rd s: in 1993 (Best Serialized Story) and in 2000 (Best Graphic Album: Reprint).
In 2006 Campbell published his next autobiographical book, Th e Fate of the Artist
(First Second Books), a detective story in which Campbell searches for the reason for
his own disappearance. Ultimately, the story becomes a meditation of what it means
to produce (or not to produce) art. In this work, as with others, Campbell plays with
the form of comics with a postmodern sensibility in disrupting linear narrative both
visually and textually. For example, he inserts a sequence of real photos of his daughter
