read yourself RAW - Recommended By... EDDIE CAMPBELL

RECOMMENDED BY... EDDIE CAMPBELL
About Eddie Campbell | Recommended Reading | 45 Graphic Novels

ABOUT EDDIE CAMPBELL:

Eddie Campbell began producing his own photocopied comics in the early 1980's and was a pivotal figure of the British comics 'small press' scene. Since then he has moved to Australia, updated the Greek myths in Bacchus, recounted his life's story in his Alec books and collaborated with Alan Moore on a variety of projects, including the 10-years-in-the-making From Hell. More details here.

If you know of any other comic-related reading recommendations made by Eddie Campbell in interviews or articles we would love to hear from you. Please provide a scan and/or link if possible.
Email: recommended [at] readyourselfraw [dot] com

To Top	RECOMMENDED READING:
	Blooming Books by Raymond Briggs "This is the ideal kind of book I should like to see about a favourite artist, and the best since the book on Herriman by O'Donnell & company. It has the same balance as that excellent volume, about 100 pages of illustrated commentary, in tandem with twice as many pages of complete and readable works by the artist being celebrated - and celebrated is the correct word for the present book, a life's retrospective of the beloved author of Ethel and Ernest... With Briggs now nearly 70, we might feel that the celebration is overdue, except that we would not normally expect our art heroes to be treated so fairly in their lifetimes." From a book review, The Comics Journal #262
	Ethel & Ernest by Raymond Briggs "Published when he was 64, it was a supreme capping of a great career, a masterpiece in any medium. It would be unfair of us to ask him to go any higher than that. It is a biography of his parents and at the same time an account of their times, seen through the particularity of their world view. Briggs himself is in it, of course. The scene of him viewing his mother body in the hospital is almost too moving to look at. The artist fastens upon the distressing detail of the can of industrial scouring preparation located on the table beside the trolley on which the body rests." From a book review, The Comics Journal #262
	Steve Canyon by Milton Caniff "… and anybody out there doesn't agree this is one of the top comic strip sequences of all time must be a stunned mullet." Review in Escape #7
	Abe : Wrong For All The Right Reasons by Glenn Dakin "Back when we were doing our little photocopied comics (what I term "small press") in the 80's, we constantly challenged each other to take the comics form in new directions. Dakin evolved in exciting ways in his Abe stories. They were autobiographical, but more concerned with the inner life than the physical one…He's arrived at a visual poetry, with the pictures distilled to deft strokes, playing the role of calligraphy." From the introduction
	Prince Valiant by Hal Foster "I've always felt that Prince Valiant stands high over its contemporaries in the Adventure/Classical genre of the Newspaper Sunday, because, whereas Alex Raymond's Flash Gordon and Burne Hogarth's Tarzan were sometimes marred by juvenile simplism, Foster's work is not only impressive to look at like those, but is always interesting to read… As an artist, he never in his life rushed a pen-stroke; every tree, cloud and rock is put down with immaculate precision." Review in Escape #6
	Lumakick by Richard Hahn "It's one of the best comic book debuts I've seen for quite some time. I'll be looking for Richard Hahn's next one." From the advertising blurb
	Master Race by Bernie Krigstein "I go along with EC artist Berni Krigstein's ideas. He was against a trend that started with Will Eisner, towards breaking images up into bits and pieces. You can show a close-up of an eye-ball. Now what does it mean? The guy could be having an eye test! When you fragment the image to this extent, it entirely depends on context. To develop a non-melodramatic language I'm proposing that every frame in a strip contains the entire drama of the situation. Krigstein did this in Master Race. There's a chase at the end of the story and every one of the frames contains both characters, the essence of the drama. There's no fragmentation, even though he uses lots of small frames. I find editing into fragments of images a very disjointed and undisciplined way of telling a story." In conversation with Alan Moore, Escape #5
	Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud "I regret not including Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics in my list of books that make the graphic novel an important cultural event of our times. Said list appeared, as you know, as an appendix in Alec: How to Be An Artist. I should not have allowed my disagreement with most of McCloud's theoretical positions to blind me in the past to the immense value of the work as a graphic novel, any more than he would see my irresponsible praises of an intoxicated Dionysos as an impediment to evaluating me as an artist. To think of Understanding Comics only as some kind of textbook is to do it a huge injustice. It is a creative work of the first order, in which its author interprets a complex of abstractions as a universe of graphic symbols and sets a graphic symbol of himself abroad in the middle of it." From an interview in Graphic Novel Review #1
	Promethea by Alan Moore, JH Williams III & Mick Gray "I was particularly impressed with [Promethea] issue 12, a virtuoso performance by both writer and artist Jim Williams in which you tell the history of the world in terms of the tarot deck. This is one of the most inventive comics I've ever read. How on earth did you arrive at this? And are you allowed to do that? I mean, is there an official magical body out there who are going to say Hold up, you can't do that! or does this work sit comfortably in traditional magical thinking?" Eddie Campbell, in conversation with Alan Moore, Egomania #2
	Swamp Thing by Alan Moore, Steve Bissette & John Totleben "And I can't believe Bernie Wrightson's Swamp Thing was a great comic - all that grotesque stylizing of the cliches. It's to Alan Moore's credit that he made something interesting out of it, even in the American Gothic sequences where he set himself the limitation of working with the same original set of cliches." From an interview, The Comics Journal #145
	Voice Of The Fire by Alan Moore "Voice Of The Fire is a wonderful piece of work that is sadly not well enough known. It sets itself up as a historical chronicle of indirectly related parts, and then the Moore trickery starts to come in and strange connections begin to form between one thing and another. One gets a thrill, as the work seems to advance by more than one page for each page read. One of my favourite chapters is the one which consists of the seventeenth century severed heads on pikes on the city gate conversing with each other, written with such a light humorous touch that the grisliness of it is never foremost." From Egomania #2
	A Few Perfect Hours by Josh Neufeld "The travel book has a tradition both grand and frivolous. It's a literary form that continues to welcome the embellishments of illustration long after fiction has expunged them, whether through photographs or the author's own sketches of the sights seen. It has always looked to me, therefore, like a waiting challenge for the so-called comic book, if only comic book artists were more adventurous, daring to get out into the big, strange, wonderful - and sometimes dangerous - world and bring back their observations. Josh Neufeld does it for us here so that we may know about the Cave of Fear in the Thai jungle, having your bags searched by Serbian police in the unhappy year of 1993, and the astonishing cremation of an 'important man from Ubud'. A Few Perfect Hours is a worthy addition to the growing list of serious comic books that have made the form a significant cultural event of our times." From the back cover blurb
	Palestine by Joe Sacco "The trouble with first hand personal-account comics is that the authors generally do not go to much trouble to make their lives interesting enough. Enter Joe Sacco, to whom the above does not apply. Some mighty serious journalism going on here." From the back cover blurb
	Safe Area Gorazde by Joe Sacco "I've just read Joe Sacco's Safe Area Gorazde, about the Bosnian mess. Do yourself a good deed and pick up a copy. The gods will shower all kinds of awards upon this mighty book." From Bacchus #55
	Cerebus: Jaka's Story by Dave Sim & Gerhard "Sim's Jaka's Story, even if you've never read a Cerebus, stands on it's own as one of the great graphic novels of our time." From an interview, The Staros Report 1996
	Strangehaven by Gary Spencer Millidge "Are you folks out there all reading Gary Software Millidge's Strangehaven. It's a bloody good comic but I'm not sure about this upward social mobility trick of giving yourself a double barrelled name." From Bacchus #25
	Ballad Of Doctor Richardson by Paul Pope "… one of the most interesting talents to arrive in comics over the last couple of years. His Ballad Of Doctor Richardson is a magnificently touching book and his regular publication THB is full of graphic delights." From Bacchus #10
	The Arrival by Shaun Tan The author has told the essential story of the universal immigrant using a photoreal style of period clothing and artifacts, except that there also all his trademark alienated things. In fact the cover is a brilliant introduction to the whole shebang. The traveler in this book is wearing clothing that is familiar to us from old photos and film, and everything he meets is an extraordinary alien creation. The purpose of things cannot be deduced from their appearances and the labels and the instructions on them are all in an alien script. The book is a hardback of 120 pages (in contrast to the softcover 32 page volumes of his childrens' oeuvre), with a division of the page more often than not into twelve pictorial parts, though there is are sequences with twenty and thirty parts each. And elsewhere sprawling vistas across two pages. You will think yourself an arrival at New York's Ellis Island, but wait, that is not the statue of Liberty, and what is that odd looking longtailed beast on its shoulder? In all of this, not a single word. At least none that you or I could understand, being 'lost things' ourselves in front the majesty of this masterpiece. It's a beautifully moving and human work, and my favorite picture story book of the year. From the Eddie Campbell Blog
	Carnet de Voyage by Craig Thompson "Everything is pictorial, with the words running helter-skelter obbligato, picking up anything neglected by the image, including people's names, which Thompson collects avidly, as though are endangered folk melodies. Sometimes these words do not bother integrate, but always they are as handmade as the pictures, lovingly so in many instances. Here he stops to lavish attention on a study of a girl (often) who has posed for him, there he lingers over an expanse of rooftop detail, later a whole market stall of attention arresting oddities... In Carnet he is a prince among his fellows. We read and we envy." From a review in The Comics Journal #266
	Goodbye Chunky Rice by Craig Thompson "An eloquent journey. Craig Thompson knows exactly where he is going, and you may be sure of seeing me first in the queue when he announces his next excursion." From the back cover blurb

To Top	45 GRAPHIC NOVELS:
	"Graphic Novel... The term will embody the arrival of an idea; a serious intent will be brought into the common comic and remain as a trend through the last quarter of the twentieth century, perhaps further. The trend will be revealed through attempts to build extended works using the mechanics of the humble comic strip. They are probably to be numbered in thousands. Such a waste of paper is bound to make you wonder if the end result can be worth it. Some will be bad, some dull, perhaps the worst crime a comic can commit. Some will be no more than regular comic books dressed up pretentiously. Some will be well-meaning, some bright. Some may be good even, and just not make my list because I'm a fallible clairvoyant. There will be around four dozen books at year 2001 whose theoretical aggregation (for in reality we cannot expect them all to like each other) will nevertheless imply a worthwhile phase in the human continuum, and to be a part of such a moment is perhaps the longing at the heart of artistic ambition. Needless to say, some of those authors listed will make shorter works superior to the long ones for which I have celebrated them. I am pointing out the landmarks. May a perceptive historian map the ground between and may his book be better than some of the stupidities out there." Eddie Campbell, from Alec: How To Be An Artist
	The Cowboy Wally Show (1987) by Kyle Baker Why I Hate Saturn (1990) by Kyle Baker Dear Julia (2000) by Brian Biggs Ethel & Ernest (1998) by Raymond Briggs When The Wind Blows (1979) by Raymond Briggs The Playboy (1991) by Chester Brown I Never Liked You (1994) by Chester Brown Alec: The King Canute Crowd (1990) by Eddie Campbell Ghost World (1997) by Daniel Clowes David Boring (2000) by Daniel Clowes Stuck Rubber Baby (1995) by Howard Cruse A Contract With God (1977) by Will Eisner A Life Force (1985) by Will Eisner The Dreamer (1986) by Will Eisner To The Heart Of The Storm (1991) by Will Eisner Dropsie Avenue (1995) by Will Eisner Casanova's Last Stand (1993) by Hunt Emerson Tantrum (1979) by Jules Feiffer Violent Cases (1987) by Neil Gaiman & Dave McKean Signel To Noise (1992) by Neil Gaiman & Dave McKean Mr Punch (1995) by Neil Gaiman & Dave McKean Hicksville (1998) by Dylan Horrocks The Jew Of New York (1998) by Ben Katchor Berlin (2001) by Jason Lutes Cages (1998) by Dave McKean City Of Glass (1994) adapted by David Mazzucchelli V For Vendetta (1988) by Alan Moore & David Lloyd Watchmen (1988) by Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons Big Numbers (1990) by Alan Moore & Bill Sienkiewicz From Hell (1999) by Alan Moore & Eddie Campbell The New Adventures Of Hitler (1990) by Grant Morrison & Steve Yeowell Blood Of Palomar (1989) by Gilbert Hernandez Poison River (1994) by Gilbert Hernandez The Death Of Speedy (1989) by Jamie Hernandez Uncle Sam (1998) by Alex Ross Palestine (1996) by Joe Sacco Safe Area Gorazde (2000) by Joe Sacco It's A Good Life If You Don't Weaken (1997) by Seth Gemma Bovary (1999) by Posy Simmonds Jaka's Story (1990) by Dave Sim & Gerhard Going Home (1999) by Dave Sim & Gerhard Maus (1993) by Art Spiegelman The Tale Of One Bad Rat (1995) by Bryan Talbot Goodbye Chunky Rice (1999) by Craig Thompson Jimmy Corrigan (2001) by Chris Ware