Episode 292 – Eddie Campbell

Virtual Memories Show 292:
Eddie Campbell

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“What if you could be employed just sitting in a pub telling stories? I think that’s where it began for me.”

Legendary cartoonist Eddie Campbell joins the show to talk about his first (sorta) prose book, The Goat Getters: Jack Johnson, the Fight of the Century, and How a Bunch of Raucous Cartoonists Reinvented Comics! We get into this forgotten piece of comics history, the challenge of offensive ethnic stereotypes in old cartoons, cartoonists’ blind spot toward sports, the other pieces of cartooning history he wants to chronicle, and the amazing, unsung career of Kate Carew. We also talk about the bookshelf of Eddie’s comics work, what took him away from autobiography, the challenge of coloring From Hell (and succumbing to the temptation to redraw some of it), his Bizarre Romance comics collaboration with his wife, Audrey Niffenegger, the lessons of age, the joy of telling shaggy-dog stories, and what it’s like to be known as “Hayley Campbell‘s dad”. Give it a listen! And go buy The Goat Getters and Bizarre Romance!

“I think Kate Carew is a greater cartoonist than most of the so-called ‘Masters of American Comics’, but they’ve defined it to keep women out.”

“The Goat-Getters is a book I’ve wanted to do since about 1980.”

Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes!

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About our Guest

Eddie Campbell (born 10 August 1955) is a Scottish comics artist and writer now living in Chicago. Probably best known as the illustrator of From Hell (written by Alan Moore), Campbell is also the creator of the semi-autobiographical Alec stories collected in Alec: The Years Have Pants, and Bacchus, a wry adventure series about some of the Greek gods surviving to the present day (vols. 1 and 2). The Fate of the Artist, in which the author investigates his own murder, and The Lovely Horrible Stuff, an investigation of our relationship with money, are also among his graphic novels. A Disease Of Language is a collaboration with Alan Moore, The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains is with Neil Gaiman and in Bizarre Romance Eddie has turned the short stories of his wife, Audrey Niffenegger, into comics. Eddie is also a historian of cartooning and comics; The Goat Getters is his first large-scale work in this field.

Credits: This episode’s music is Fella by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded at Jesse Sheidlower’s apartment on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 Microphones feeding into a Zoom H5 digital recorder. I recorded the intro and outro on a Heil PR-40 Dynamic Studio Recording Microphone feeding into a Cloudlifter CL-1 and a Mackie Onyx Blackjack 2×2 USB Recording Interface. All processing and editing done in Adobe Audition CC. Photos of Eddie Campbell & Audrey Niffenegger by me. They’re on my instagram.