Comic Book Resources

Memento mori: An interview with Eddie Campbell

Sometime soon (hopefully next week) Diamond will be releasing Eddie Campbell's Alec: The Years Have Pants to a comic book store near you. In a year chock full of great, original work and important re-releases and rediscoveries, this has to be one of the most important books of 2009. I know that statement might come off to some as shallow hyperbole, but it's a risk worth taking.

For the the unfamiliar, Pants collects all of Campbell's autobiographical Alec stories (except for The Fate of the Artist, which was published by First Second) in one big (hardcover or softcover) volume. Since the early 1980s, the artist and writer has been chronicling his life's adventures through his barely disguised alter ego, starting as a feckless young man in the King Canute Crowd to the successful cartoonist and family man in After the Snooter. It's saying something to call these stories his most significant and stellar work, considering he also collaborated with Alan Moore on From Hell and created the elegant Bacchus series. One hopes this new collection (and the new material found therein) provides the opportunity for a re-examination and analysis of this impressive body of work.

I had the opportunity to talk with Campbell late last August over email about the book. This was my second time talking to him and he proved to be as gracious and thoughtful over the computer as the phone, if not more so.

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Everyone's A Critic: A round-up of comic book reviews and thinkpieces

Exit Wounds

• Eddie Campbell has been offering one great critique after another lately, first on
Asterios Polyp and David Mazzuchelli's ability to convey a sense of place, and then on Rutu Modan's Exit Wounds ("The impressive thing about Exit Wounds is that there is a keen organizing intelligence at work at every single level of it, from top to bottom."

• Jeet Heer ruminates on the concept of the "proto-graphic novel," i.e. graphic novels that were published before the term became ubiquitous.

• It's a few days old, but this review of R. Crumb's Genesis adaptation by Bill Kartalopoulos is still well worth your time.

• I don't always link to Tucker Stone's "Comics of the Weak" round-up, but this one's worth noting, as he mimics the prose of "controversial French writer Michel Houllebecq," which leads to bits like this one on Batman:

Gotham City has but two types of people-those who wreak violence, and those who have violence wreaked upon them. The first type are all men, for the most part, although the occasional lesbian is permitted participation, as long as she has previously received approval from whomever currently holds the title of most cruel. (Said participation is usually considered an important story point, further cementing the little respect or interest that these stories have for women--there are few other places in fiction where "the bitch can stay" is considered interesting or dynamic.

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Thin wallets, fat bookshelves: A publishing news round-up

• Ladies and gentlemen, Dwayne McDuffie has an announcement:

The very first Milestone comic will finally be collected, 17 years after its original publication. HARDWARE: THE MAN IN THE MACHINE will reprint Hardware #1-8, featuring the character’s origin, and first adventure. The Direct Market (comic book store) release date hasn’t been announced yet, but it tends to be about a month earlier than in the general market.

• In other news, Archaia announced plans to start a new $9.95 hardcover line of books, where one graphic novel will be released each quarter at that low price. The plan kicks off in August with the release of The Engineer: Konstrukt.

• Fantagraphics co-publisher Kim Thompson says the Norewegian artist Jason's next project will be a repackaging of his previous books in the new Low Moon format. The first book, Almost Silent, will collect You Can't Get There From Here, The Living and the Dead, Tell Me Something and Meow Baby! The next book, What I Did, will tentatively collect The Iron Wagon, Shhhhh and Hey Wait. Thompson also adds that Jason is working on a new graphic novel, Werewolves of Montpellier, which will be out in summer of 2010.

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Talking Comics with Tim: Jeet Heer, Part II with Kent Worcester

A Comic Studies Reader

If you have not read the first part of my interview with Jeer Heer, follow this link. In this second part, the email exchange branched out to include Kent Worcester. Worcester, an associate professor of political science and international studies at Marymount Manhattan College, has collaborated with Heer on two books, co-editing 2004's Arguing Comics: Literary Masters on a Popular Medium and (more recently) 2008's A Comics Studies Reader. We discuss both books. My thanks to Heer and Worcester for their time.

Tim O'Shea: Would you ever consider preparing a revised edition of 2004's Arguing Comics: Literary Masters on a Popular Medium? How has your perspective changed--looking at the 2008 critical landscape in comparison to your 2004 view of the medium?

Kent Worcester: Yes, we have considered preparing a revised edition of Arguing Comics. There are at least a few essays on comics by major twentieth century intellectuals that we overlooked the first time around. A second edition would allow us to not only incorporate new material but also to expand the discussion in the introduction concerning the relationship of comics-oriented discourse to larger cultural conversations. I would very much appreciate having the opportunity to strengthen our underlying argument, which is that debates over comics are central to the so-called "culture wars" that have been a defining feature of American politics for many decades.

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