INTERVIEW CORNER #20: Eddie Campbell

Comment Written by Θωμάς Παπαδημητρόπουλος on November 9th, 2010 – 08:41

Τί μπορώ να γράψω για καλλιτέχνες που μοιάζουν να έχουν κάνει τα πάντα στη βιομηχανία των comics; Αν έχουν μοιράσει φωτοτυπίες με τα έργα τους στο ξεκίνημα της καριέρας τους, έχουν εκδώσει αυτοβιογραφικές ιστορίες, έχουν συνεργαστεί με ιερά τέρατα του Μέσου, έχουν αφήσει τη σφραγίδα τους σε κάποια από τα καλύτερα comics όλων των εποχών, έχουν ανοίξει δικό τους imprint, έχουν δει έργο τους να γίνεται ταινία, αλλά και να απαγορεύεται λόγω ασέμνου περιεχομένου, έχουν πειραματιστεί και έχουν παίξει με τις φόρμες και τα περιθώρια, πώς μπορώ να τους προλογίσω με καθημερινές λέξεις; Από τη μία, δεν είναι και πολλοί οι καλλιτέχνες που έχουν καταφέρει κάτι τέτοιο – και ελάχιστοι από αυτούς δεν έχουν επαναπαυτεί στις δάφνες τους, συνεχίζοντας να μας εκπλήσσουν με κάθε τους δουλειά. Από την άλλη, όμως, αυτή η σπανιότητα είναι που με κάνει να έχω ήδη αλλάξει αυτή την εισαγωγή δύο φορές και να πηγαίνω ολοταχώς για τρίτη.

Σε αυτή την (απελπιστικά δύσκολη ως προς την περιγραφή) κατηγορία ανήκει ο καλεσμένος αυτής της εβδομάδας, ο Eddie Campbell, με τον οποίο κατάφερα να επικοινωνήσω χάρη στην πολύτιμη βοήθεια της Λήδας Τσενέ. Ο Campbell ανήκει στην παλαιά, μάλλον, φρουρά των δημιουργών και στην πολυετή καριέρα του (ξεκίνησε κάπου στα τέλη της δεκαετίας του ’70), έχει πετύχει πολλά.

Τα πρώτα comics του είχαν τη μορφή φωτοτυπίας και πέρασαν αρκετά χρόνια μέχρι να δει το αυτοβιογραφικό ALEC -αρχικά σε συνέχειες στο ESCAPE MAGAZINE και έπειτα σε collected edition- να εκδίδεται κανονικά. Το ALEC συνέχισε να εκδίδεται, κατά καιρούς, με νέα κεφάλαια και ολοκληρώθηκε το 2002 (και πέρσι κυκλοφόρησε ολόκληρο από την Top Shelf, με τον τίτλο ALEC: THE YEARS HAVE PANTS).

Ακολούθησε η γνωριμία του με τον Alan Moore και η συνεργασία τους σε ένα από τα comics που θεωρείται από τα καλύτερα του Μέσου: το FROM HELL (το οποίο αναδείχθηκε το καλύτερο comic του Moore στο αφιέρωμα που κάναμε στο γενειοφόρο συγγραφέα). Αλλάζοντας εντελώς ύφος, ο Campbell ασχολήθηκε όχι με την ίδια του την καθημερινότητα, αλλά με ψυχοπαθείς δολοφόνους και μυστικιστικές θεωρίες. Στο ενδιάμεσο, είχε παρεμβληθεί το BACCHUS, ένα ακόμη comic που, όπως το ALEC, ολοκληρώθηκε μετά από αρκετά χρόνια, από το προσωπικό imprint του Campbell.

Στα παραπάνω, το σχέδιο του Campbell ήταν αυτό που έδινε μια όψη ξεχωριστή και φαινομενικά ακατέργαστη. Πίσω από κάθε panel, όμως, κρύβονταν πολλά περισσότερα. Αυτό έχει αποδείξει κι ο ίδιος με τους πειραματισμούς, όχι μόνο στα comics του, αλλά και στην καριέρα του. Από τη μία, βρίσκονται οι πιο mainstream δουλειές του, ένα μικρό run στο HELLBLAZER, καθώς και το one-shot BATMAN: THE ORDER OF BEASTS και το limited CAPTAIN AMERICA: HOMELAND και από την άλλη, το πλέον πειραματικό comic του, THE FATE OF THE ARTIST, το οποίο συνδυάζει πρόζα, φωτογραφία και σχέδιο.

Και, φυσικά, δεν πρέπει να ξεχνάμε τα THE AMAZING, REMARKABLE MONSIEUR LEOTARD, THE BLACK DIAMOND DETECTIVE AGENCY και THE PLAYWRIGHT, τρία ακόμη comics του, που, με τον τρόπο τους, καταφέρνουν να ξεχωρίσουν ανάμεσα στα χιλιάδες comics που κυκλοφορούν εκεί έξω.

Κάπου εδώ, όμως, πρέπει να ξεμπερδεύω με μια εισαγωγή που ποτέ δε θα καταφέρω να κάνω όσο καλή θα ήθελα και να σας παραπέμψω σε όσα λέει ο καλεσμένος αυτής της εβδομάδας, ο Eddie Campbell:

What were the main influences (both from an artistic and personal plane) in your work?
The old newspaper comic strips, Like Caniff’s STEVE CANYON and Trudeau’s DOONESBURY, though of course DOONESBURY wasn’t old at the time when I was starting out. Mary Perkins’ ON STAGE was another favourite and I’m so pleased to see it being reprinted at last. Comic books had promised so much but failed to deliver. It was the early seventies and monsters were found to be “in” so everybody was introducing a monster. For instance, Spider-Man fought a vampire, and the Beast in the X-MEN was converted into a monstrous version of himself, which is the version that prevails. When I realized all these writers were using the same book of formulae, I decided I had outgrown this baloney and I looked elsewhere and found myself interested in the old newspaper strips. I delved back into the history of that and found that to be so much more interesting than comic books. But then that failed to live up to its promise too. So many things had to be bent to the requirements of the marketplace. Like for instance, soap opera was the big thing in the late sixties and there was a fashion in the strips for the lead characters to get married. Within a year you had Buz Sawyer, Steve Canyon and Juliet Jones all acquiring a spouse. Ten years later the continuity strips were all losing income, right across the board, so in desperation they tried getting rid of the spouses, but they invariably all did it in the same way. She or he would be kidnapped, or just mysteriously disappear. There would be an adventure where the hero or heroine tried to solve the mystery but could get nowhere. Then they got on with the next adventure. Later there would be a clue that would refresh the trail, but that would just lead to an unrelated adventure. Once again it was so obvious that all these cartoonists were working from the same book of formulae, which naturally crushed my willing suspension of disbelief, which is a crucial necessity to the contract between story teller and his audience. The strips now are mostly gag-a-day and nothing to get excited about. In fact it’s difficult to imagine that anybody could think of the modern day strip as art of any sort. So I was left to my own devices to try to make comics as interesting as I thought they ought to be. Anything that looked or sounded like it came out of the book of formulae had to be thrown out.

Has the decision of (in a way) keeping track of your life in ALEC for so many years affected your personal life?
I guess so but even without that I was thinking that your life should be your story, and you should craft it well. You should tell it to yourself and it should be capable of holding attention. Your own if nobody else’s. Of course, we all do this, like when we look through our photo album, or when we cut somebody out of it that we no longer like, or when we just say “i should have done this instead of that”, but we can expand that to a bigger idea.

FROM HELL is one of the high points in your career. What were the main challenges in illustrating such a comic?
It’s such a long time ago now that it doesn’t come easily to mind any more. Ten years. I certainly couldn’t face doing something like that again. I don’t think it’s my best work, nor is it Alan’s best. I would even say that it’s not the best thing we’ve done together. That would be THE BIRTH CAUL, which is contained in A DISEASE OF LANGUAGE. But FROM HELL keeps on selling. We finally got it published in Japan only about a year ago.

You have tried self-publishing but only for about 8 years. What were the reasons that pushed you to start your own imprint and what made you end it?
It was one of those regularly occurring periods in comics where everything was going from bad to worse (1994). Distributors were going out of business at the rate of one every two months. It’s hard to believe there used to be about 15 distributors servicing the comics market and now there’s only one. All the publishers were in a panic and really it was easier to just keep out of their way and do my own thing. That’s what I did and I made a good living for eight years. By that time it had become necessary, in order to survive as a publisher, to deal with the bookstore market, and that’s a very different thing from the comic book market. You have to start accepting unpredictable returns of product, which involves a high degree of monetary risk, and since you’re no longer printing more or less the numbers that have been pre-ordered, you have a build-up of unsold stock so you have to start remaindering books, and dealing with the book distributors who specialize in that area. It all just got too complicated for an artist/self publisher like me whose head is usually in the clouds, and furthermore, who lives a long distance from the principal markets of the US and Europe.

You have also worked for the big mainstream companies, doing some BATMAN, HELLBLAZER and CAPTAIN AMERICA comics. Has it been a rewarding experience?
I never say no to an offer. I remember what it’s like to have no work, and also there’s always somebody nearby who can use the work, so I take on everything that’s on offer and I get help if I need it. They’re really just jobs. I do them and then forget about them.

Do you prefer illustrating a comic that you have written yourself or one written by some other writer (like FROM HELL or THE PLAYWRIGHT)?
I always have my own work that I’m trying to get done, but it makes for variety to occasionally do somebody else’s story. Nowadays I’m very choosy where I wasn’t before. I turn down stuff.

It seems to me that, in most of your comics (like THE PLAYWRIGHT), the pictures often make slightly different “comments” than the script. Is it difficult to make something like that work? Does it offer more to the reader?
A lot of it is instinctive, but let me explain that. I would say firstly that there’s nothing wrong with doing a drawing which is simply depicting exactly what is said in the words. I sometimes read where that is supposed to be a bad thing, but illustration is a grand old tradition. Over and above that, sometimes when I come to the picture some time after writing the script (or somebody else having written it), it may happen that a new or additional interpretation of the situation or intentions of the characters occurs to me. At that stage it becomes necessary to convey the information pictorially, because there’s a limit on the number of words you can use on a comics page, and since I do all the lettering in advance of the drawing, I can’t just squeeze in another panel. This makes it all sound a bit accidental. I would say actually it’s instinctive. I know in advance that these things are likely to happen once I get started, but I don’t usually foresee the details at the script stage. The bottom line is that the art adds a new layer of meaning to the whole thing.

THE FATE OF THE ARTIST was an excellent specimen of pushing the boundaries of the comics Medium. How important is to challenge yourself as an artist but also the reader?
I don’t think of it that way. The way I think of it is that as I progress in life my understanding of things becomes more complex and so also the things that I want to say. If the work has become more complicated both for me and the reader, then that’s a by-product of the process. It’s not something I sought out for its own sake. In fact I strive to make things look much simpler and more straightforward than they really are. For this reason I still encounter people who completely overlooked what I was doing with THE FATE OF THE ARTIST. Even a few who missed the point completely.

BACCHUS is slated to be collected in two massive volumes from Top Shelf. When will that be? What will these volumes contain?
The first one is wrapped up and ready to go. It all depends on Top Shelf’s schedule, and that depends on the way the market is going.

What are your plans for the immediate future?
I’m working on a new autobiographical book and the theme of this one is money. It’s titled THE LOVELY HORRIBLE STUFF. It’s very complex and dense. I’m also going to be involved in a re-staging of the performance that Neil Gaiman did at the Sydney Opera House in August for which I made a load of painted illustrations. I’m adding a few new pictures to the pile. It’s all keeping me very busy.