Eddie Campbell interview at the FPI blog

That very talented Mr Eddie Campbell has been talking to Pádraig Ó Méalóid at the FPI blog. As interesting and readable as you may expect.

Eddie Campbell on the Small Press & his TV series in development.....

Eddie Campbell writes on his blog about the origins of the term "small press" in comics and gives us all a nice history lesson on the famous Westminster Comic Marts, Fast Fiction, Escape Magazine and Eddie's subsequent work for Harrier Comics in the 80s.

As always Campbell's blog is required reading for all comics fans as Eddie' skills as a raconteur apply just as much to his writing as his spoken performances.

And while we're talking all things Eddie Campbell, it seems our man has a TV series in development based on his works. I'll let Eddie take it from here:

The original plan that was put to me was for the production of six five minute short films. However, after initial tentative approaches to a network the producers were encouraged to think on a much bigger scale. Now we were talking about eight half hour episodes, which would involve coming up with a lot of extra material as there are no obvious half hour tv stories in After the Snooter or Fate of the Artist. The possibility of me playing myself was kicked around when it was five minute shows we were talking about, but now it was starting to look complicated.

For the time being at least it would have to be me in the photo-shoot that was organized for the purpose of making a promotional image to front the proposal. We had a brainstorming session to come up with a working title. For a while it was Eddie Campbell's Domestic Apocalypse, which is one of the assorted subtitles of Fate ("EDDIE CAMPBELL, his Domestic Apocalypse: The Fate of the Artist: An Autobiographical novel, with typographical anomalies, in which the author does not appear, as himself") but that was soon deemed too complicated. But for the time being, the image had to reflect the 'domestic' angle as well as being a combination of cartoon and photographed figure. This was the result:

Eddie Campbell's blog: The Fate Of The Artist.
Posts about the TV series: Our TV Adventure.

Eddie Campbell is blogging again....

And he said he was giving up back in June. Nice to have him back.

So far we've had his meeting with Lenny Henry, who was a regular at Nostalgia & Comics when I was there. Huge man, absolutely lovely and knows his comics.

The big news is that he's going to be visiting our shores this August. Sunday 3rd August at Page 45. 1:30-3:30pm at the store. Turn up and get stuff signed and be pointed in the direction of the ultra secret drinky that they're having afterwards with Page 45 crew, Campbell and Bryan Talbot. Information on the Page 45 My Space.

Of course, in a stroke of genius planning this is one of the few Sundays in August when I'm actually busy, so we won't be heading down to see him. Blast.

Eddie Campbell interview - maybe someone can give him a job?

Toward the end of this nice Publisher's Weekly interview with Eddie Campbell, it's revealed that he's had the book he's currently working on rejected by 6 publishers so far.
Call me naive but the final paragraph had me sitting here open mouthed.....

I'm working on a book titled The Playwright, which is about the sex life of a celibate middle-aged man. Six publishers have rejected it so far, but I'm clinging to hope like Leotard clung to that wooden door after the ship went down, after filling his capacious trousers with oxygen.

This is Eddie Campbell. Award winning artist, Of renown. And he can't get a book deal? That's insane. Surely his track record should be enough alone?

Of course the other thing about this is that presumably he offered it to 1st Second, who've published The Fate Of The Artist, Black Diamond Detective Agency and his forthcoming Mr Leotard and presumably they turned it down? Strange.


Of course, this would be a great point to mention that The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard is out in August.
Whilst his back catalogue of incredible Bacchus and Alec work is going to be re-released in 2009 in big, big omnibus sets courtesy of the great folks at Top Shelf. A must have for any shelf, but the shelves in question may need to be reinforced.

First Second's Mark Siegel interviewed at ICv2 ...

First Second are quickly becoming publishers of note, building up an extensive collection of really good and varied material. Their Spring publishing catalog is looking just as good as previous releases, plus they've got new releases by Eddie Campbell and Paul Pope's wonderous THB in the pipeline.

ICv2 have a two part interview with Mark Siegel, Editorial Director, here.

Page 45 Eddie Campbell signing. Sunday 3rd August 2008

I found about this a while back, when Eddie mentioned it on his blog, but no-one else seemed to be mentioning it and out of respect for dear Stephen at Page 45 decided to let him announce it in his own time.

So, here's the my space announcement: Eddie Campbell signing. Sunday 3rd August. 1:30-3:30. Meet in Page 45.
Then, as Stephen is known to be partial to alcohol (Preferably red, but he's not that fussy really), they're all off down the pub. And so could you. Turn up at Page 45 for the signing and be let in on the secret pub location for a night of revelry with Eddie (who's also partial to a drop of the good stuff so I'm told).
I may get around to going. I hope so. I still owe Holland a drink from many years ago.

For those of you who don't know Page 45 is one of the best comic shops I've ever been into. In fact, purely on shops I've visited; the top three are Nostalgia & Comics, Page 45 and GOSH. I know I'm biased about Nostalgia & Comics but I really believe we are a fantastic shop, passionate, great stock and continually striving to get better.
In terms of other UK shops I really mean to visit but haven't yet; OK Comics at Leeds is meant to be really good, as are various FPI stores around the country (Edinburgh, Glasgow et al). Again, I know I may be seen as biased about FPI, but just talking to some og the folks at FPI about the business has proven to me thatFPI, despite it's flirtation with being a pop culture store is predominantly a Comic Shop.
Like we always used to say at Nostalgia & Comics: It's what we do best. And if, as reported by those who should know, other FPI stores are doing the same as Nostalgia & Comics; putting comics and graphic novels right at the heart of everything we do, then the future looks bright.

And with stores of the caliber of GOSH, N&C and Page 45, the future does indeed look extremely bright indeed.

Eddie Campbell - Posy Simmonds review & the claws are out for Bryan Talbot. Ouch

Eddie Campbell puts up a lovely piece praising the wonderful Posy Simmonds, particularly her seminal Graphic Novel True Love
(or, in a nod to Mr Campbell, who doesn't much care for the GN tag - insert preferred description here).
It's a well written, interesting read that should make you scuttle off to Amazon or ebay and snap up some Posy. Or nip down to the comic shop to pick up the next Comics Journal which has a huge Posy interview done by Paul Gravett.

But what will be picked up on in the post, certainly the thing that made me go Ouch will be this snippet:

"Firstly, Bryan Talbot in what was very much his own version of the history of 'comics' recently in the Guardian, credited himself along with Raymond Briggs with introducing the 'graphic novel' to Britain in 1982. Even allowing for the existence of such a thing, that would of course be complete bollocks. Posy's True Love came out in 1981. I'm not putting up a different candidate for primacy, because you know I have no time for that race-to-the-patents-office mentality, but we can't let faulty facts end up in Wikipedia"

And in further news - Here's today's post:

"wait, it's the phone
"hi, honeybee. eh? the blog?"
"yes i've written today's. the public apology to Brian? well, yeah, kind of. And then the one where I start writing about trees from now on and forget all that 'graphic novel' shit.
well, uh...."

Ladies & Gentlemen: Eddie Campbell - always entertaining, always worth reading, both his blog and his work!


In related news - Posy's latest book, Tamara Drewe, is out on 1st November. Perfect Christmas present.

Harry Potter. Harry Potter. HARRY POTTER

Oh, we're excited at Bruton mansions.
Molly went off yesterday to see the movie for one of her friends 8th birthday party.
Her verdict; it's brilliant.

Then this Saturday we;re off to get our book from Pocklington's Simply Books at the midnight collection.
Unfortunately for Simply Books; our local independent bookseller, it seems everything is conspiring against them actually making any money on this.

First there's the deep discounting problem - if you can find me anyone paying anything like full price for the book, I'll send you a prize. It's really not fair on the booksellers. It seems the Harry Potter phenomenon has simply meant that supermarkets and Amazon are battling it out to see who does it cheapest.

Then, even worse for them, is the release date.
It's on the first Saturday of the school holidays. Ideal for midnight collections perhaps.
But Simply Books was due to get over 100 boarders from Pocklington school coming, all dressed up in wizarding finery at midnight. But they've all gone home for their holidays already.

I know I'm as guilty as anyone, because I get my books from Amazon as well. But every so often Molly and I will go in and buy something - purely out of guilt on my part.

Anyway, Saturday night Molly and Louise and I will be at Simply Books for half eleven rather than midnight. Because that's when the local falconry centre is coming up with some of their owls. Can you picture how excited Molly was when we told her this.
(Answer - no, you can't. trust me).

We are so looking forward to it. Of course, the problem then will be whether to start reading it to Molly on the night? And whether I'll stay up and read it to the end once she goes to bed.
My bet on the ending? Harry and Voldemort die in one final epic battle. Dumbledore is genuinely dead, having given up his life to come back stronger from beyond the grave and Snape is the ultimate deep cover agent for Dumbledore.

Meanwhile the ever wonderful Eddie Campbell has a long and interesting post on the Potter phenomenon and how well JK Rowling has handled it all. There's some interesting points on the deep discounting farce in the comments as well.

Eddie Campbell's Blog at First Second Books

Missed this when it was out the first time, but Eddie's linked to it on his blog.

It's the blog he did while he was waiting for the publcation of the wonderful Fate of the Artist. As we could expect from Eddie, it's well written and a fun read.

Another new Eddie Campbell book. We're really being spoilt now!

Latest post from Eddie Campbell sees the author talking about another new book.

He already has us waiting with expectation for his 2007 book; The Black Diamond Detective Agency and now he goes and spoils us all with news that he's already 41 pages into the Amazing Remarkable Mr Leotard.

I'm looking forward to both immensely.

Alan Moore / Eddie Campbell & the best description of rain you'll ever read.

More proof, if proof were needed of how wonderful Eddie Campbell is. The weblog has become required reading day after day as Eddie shows us around his life. (Although in this case, I'd fallen behind on my blog reading today and I picked it up via Pete Ashton)

Currently he's putting up the Alan Moore scripts to From Hell that he received whilst illustrating it.

The current one just goes to to show us how, even if we kept going for centuries, none of us have the talent available in our bodies that means Alan Moore has the ability to describe the rain in some marvellous new way:

Panel 3:
The rain continues to fall like Morse code for some huge, depressing Russian novel.

That's the one Eddie Campbell picks out, but it's worth reading the scripts for all the interesting asides, all the jokes, all the insights and then sit back and marvel at the detail involved.

Then wonder how the hell Eddie Campbell managed to wade through these huge scripts to actually produce a page of stunning art from them.
The answer to that one I believe, as far as I recall reading somewhere, is that Eddie's wife Annie used to pore over the scripts with a highlighter to pick out anything that actually described what was in the panel so Eddie just had to draw what he saw in fluorescent yellow.

Ladies & Gentlemen - My Graphic Novel of 2007....

Fell
Volume 1: Feral City
Warren Ellis & Ben Templesmith

Out April 2007

I can't see anything entertaining me more than this is going to.
Maybe the new Eddie Campbell in July?

Looks like a bumper year already. January and already we have two fantastic books to look forward to!

New Eddie Campbell book

On his blog - Eddie Campbell talks about his new book due to be released in summer 2007.

The Black Diamond Detective Agency.

Always nice to have something wonderful to look forward to. And after how great his last book was I just can't wait for the next.

Eddie Campbell has a blog

The wonderful, incredibly talented Mr Eddie Campbell has a blog.
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