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DE: How did LPC going bankrupt affect you?
EC: Well, it came at a bad time because they still
owed us for November and December, which were big
months because of the release of the movie. We were
hit quite hard. It stopped our checks for a little
while. I think I’ve got about fifty thousand tied up
in all of that. For a one-man operation that’s a lot
of money to wave bye-bye to.
DE: To talk a little bit about your actual drawings
now. How did you develop your scratchy harsh style of
penciling?
EC: With From Hell I was trying to imitate the
drawings of the period. 1890 is really the end of the
domination of the woodcut in illustrations in popular
magazines. It was always wood engraving. So the 1890’s
is the period of what Richard Marshall [an independent
curator and former in-house curator at the Whitney
Museum] calls the liberated pen. This was the first
time where you could illustrate things reproduced
photographically. Up until then they all had to be
hand engraved by master craftsman. So much of it had
that dead look on the page just from the industrial process. But
the liberation of the pen meant you could scratch
around, splash ink, use wash and use all these
exciting and different techniques. So what I was
trying to do was to draw as though I was living in the
1890’s. Not to draw in the style of Charles Dana
Gibson [ famed illustrator of the late 19th
and early 20th century and creator of the Gibson Girl]
or other artists of the era. If I was living then I
would be using the pen all different ways from the way I use it now. I was
trying to give it that period look.
For the Alec books I use the brush a bit more. But
I’m changing all the time. If you see the books I
did with Alan like the Birth Caul and Snakes &
Ladders, I try to go for a painted look using collage,
stick things onto the page. There was one page where
we smashed up an alarm clock and stuck the bits on.
There was another page where I cut up a pair of
pajamas, made a little five-inch tall pair of pajamas
and glued that onto the page. With those books it’s
exciting to try different techniques on every page.
DE: Why did you move to Australia?
EC: I married an Australian girl way back in 1984.
We were living in Brighton on the south coast of
London. After we had our first baby she wanted to come
home to Australia. I didn’t mean to get stuck over
here. I just figured that I would be doing Bacchus and
the publisher is in England, the printer is in Canada
and we’re distributing it through Diamond, so it
doesn’t really matter where I’m living, does it?
It's kind of global operation. I could be sending it in
from anywhere. I tried it as an experiment but I got
stuck over here. By the time I was making money I had
three kids. So I’m stuck forever. It’s a very
sunny, lovely and cheery place. It’s easy to be
optimistic when the sun is always shining and we don’t
have winters here.
DE: How old is your oldest kid?
EC: She’s sixteen.
DE: Does she read your books and what does she
think?
EC: She does and she appreciates the good ones.. I
took her to the premiere of From Hell actually. I
suspect she might like to work in the movie business.
But she doesn’t have any illusions about it. As for
comics she likes Ghost World and things like that.
DE: What’s the comics scene like in Australia?
EC: There isn’t one really. There’s no comics
industry like in England. I think we have a different
tradition of cartooning. I think Australia has a great
tradition of political caricaturists. Some of the
greatest political caricatures of the 20th century are
from here. Like Pat Oliphant
on The Washington Post. Australia’s greatness in
cartooning lies in another area. There are Australian
comics of course but you would have never heard of
them outside Australia. The most popular comic here is
The Phantom [created by Lee Falk]. His popularity has disappeared in the States, but there's a company here that puts out a new Phantom comic every two weeks. It’s the biggest
selling comic in Australia. They just keep reprinting
the old stuff, over and over. It's up to issue 2000.
DE: You used to publish your books through Dark
Horse. Are you going to be doing anything with them
anymore?
EC: No, really I’m just doing my own stuff.
Occasionally somebody asks me to do something. I just
did eight pages of X-Men number 400. I’ve got a
ten year-old boy and he was impressed with that. I let
him fill in some of the blacks so that he could say he
worked on the X-Men.
DE: You worked on the Bizarro hardcover as well.
EC: Yeah, I wrote a Batman story ten years ago. So
when Joey Cavalieri asked me if I would like to do a
dopey version of a DC character I had this thing on
the shelf. I was able to tidy it up and sell it and
Joey put that into the Bizarro hardcover.
DE: I read that you called Frank Miller’s Dark
Knight Returns a load of old
rubbish?
EC: That’s not what I meant. I was talking to a
reporter and trying to sell him on the idea of the
graphic novel as a literary idea. He kept coming back
to the Dark Knight and I said “Forget the bloody
Dark Knight, it’s a load of old rubbish. Just listen
to what I am saying.” Basically just to get him to
stop coming back to that one book. I was trying to
tell him about Joe Sacco’s Safe Area
Gorazde,
Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan, and Raymond Briggs’
Ethel & Ernest. These are the great graphic novels
I was trying to tell him. But he kept bringing up
Spider-Man and Batman.
DE: It seems like a few creators don’t like Dark
Knight. Daniel Clowes doesn’t like it all.
EC: Well, I’m trying to sell the world on the
literate graphic novel. Every time I’m interviewed,
the interview starts "Bang Pow Wham Comics grow up!" I’m
so sick, angry and fed up with the whole thing. When I
do interviews with mainstream press the first thing
they always ask is ask about superheroes. Did Ingmar
Bergman have to justify Star Wars before he went on
with an interview? I don’t think so.
I just became dismayed with the whole thing. I don’t
think we’re ever going to change it. They’ve been
doing that now since Watchmen.
DE: It's only going to get worse with the release of
the Spider-Man movie.
EC: I know. But I thought Frank Miller’s 300 was
a great book. A magnificent piece of work. He’s
totally unpretentious. He does these great action
books but he does them in this colossal huge style, it
just rattles your bones.
I’ll tell you something
funny, I've been playing around with an idea in my interviews. Here's a quote from Alan Moore from ten years ago,
when he was embarrassed by the success of Watchmen. He
was on a television show and he said, “We were
caught on the main street of culture wearing our
underwear on the outside.” It was funny; he was
sitting there on all these cultural television shows
talking about superheroes. That’s why he went and
did Big Numbers and From Hell. He wanted to do these
serious comic novels. Plus he did an actual novel,
Voice of the Fire, which is a sadly ignored book but
it's one of his best pieces of writing.
I sold the Australian rights to From Hell to Random
House because in America I work with Top Shelf. It had always been an option that we could take From Hell to a big book company for when the movie hit, but in the final analysis I thought it would be an adventure to tackle it myself, meaning me and Top Shelf. So it struck me as an interesting idea to try the book company route in one of our other domains, and the Customs ban on From Hell last year suggested that possibility for this country. That is, I could get past the importation ban by publishing locally. It was
an experiment to go with the local branch of Random
House. When their catalog arrived I thought, “This
is it, here I am in a regular book catalog instead of
being in a Diamond's Previews with all the toys, junk
and lunch boxes." I was in a catalog with all the
great literary works. In the inside covers they had
the complete lineup of covers that were being offered.
There was From Hell sitting between The Natural Guide
to Better Breast Feeding and The Dog Owner’s Manual
[laughs]. We’ve arrived on the main street of
culture. My bubble was burst.
DE: Eddie, thanks a lot.
EC: No problem, you’ve got quite a bit to work
with there. Thanks.
EddieCampbellComics.com
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