The Complete Alec

Alec

by Eddie Campbell

Book by Campbell, Eddie

Hardcover

Published January 1, 1990

About the author

Eddie Campbell is a British comics artist and cartoonist whose work has shaped the evolution of modern graphic storytelling. He is widely known as the illustrator and publisher of From Hell, his long collaboration with Alan Moore that reimagines the Jack the Ripper case through an ambitious and meticulously researched narrative. Campbell is also the creator of the long-running semi-autobiographical Alec series, later collected in Alec: The Years Have Pants, and the satirical adventure cycle Bacchus, which follows a handful of Greek gods who have wandered into the contemporary world. His scratchy pen-and-ink technique draws on impressionist influences and early masters of expressive line art, while his writing blends humor, candor, and literary ambition in a manner that critics have compared to Jack Kerouac and Henry Miller.
Campbell began developing autobiographical comics in the late 1970s before expanding the Alec stories throughout the following decades, publishing early instalments through small press networks in London and later with major independent publishers. After moving to Australia in the mid-1980s, he continued to produce both Alec and Bacchus stories while contributing to a range of international anthologies. His partnership with Moore on From Hell, initially serialised in the anthology Taboo, became one of the most acclaimed graphic novels of its era and further cemented his reputation for grounded, character-driven illustration.
Across a varied career Campbell has worked as a creator, editor, publisher, and occasional court illustrator. His contributions to comics have earned him numerous industry awards, including the Eisner Award, the Harvey Award, the Ignatz Award, the Eagle Award, and the UK Comic Art Award. He continues to produce new work while maintaining a strong presence in both literary and comics circles.

Reviews

[Joni · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lo que tiene de bueno es lo novedoso que fue en su momento. Por estilo de dibujo y narración secuencial también.
Pero con el paso del tiempo a veces tirano nos queda una obra autobiográfica con mucho autobombo que cae pesado.
El dibujo podría pensarse como feísmo, obvio en blanco y negro, parece sin emprolijar, hecho a las apuradas.
Las situaciones son las de un joven inglés típico frecuentando el mismo mítico bar.
Poesía melancólica hecha historieta.
Es una lectura para ver la raíz del under autobiográfico que con variantes sigue vigente hoy en día.

[D.M. · Rating 2 out of 5]

My relationship with the work of Eddie Campbell has always been a bit...precarious. Though I kind of like his scratchy, amateurish, stiff artistic style, I've never been a really big fan of his writing. Too often, it comes across as pretentious, high-handed and overbearing. This collection of the three-issue (now plus one) Alec series is a perfect example of just how unappealing that can be.
This seems like pretty clearly autobiographic stuff, though why Campbell felt the need to rename his proxy is beyond me. We spend the hundred-odd pages of this book watching Alec MacGarry and his fluid circle of 'friends' (read also 'drinking buddies'), comrades and girlfriends go from one vaguely interesting boozy pseudo-adventure to the next. Between times, Alec indulges us in just how smart he is and how amazing he considers his circle of lower-class rabble. By the end of the four parts of this book (wherein we get a several-page dissertation from Alec about just how very clever he is from reading books), it's all gotten a bit much.
While I do still enjoy looking at Campbell's art, I think this was the last remaining vestige of his writing in my library. And now that's going, too.

[Tucker Stone · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eddie Campbell is best known in America as the artist for Alan Moore's ambitious From Hell, but across the shores in the UK, Campbell is recognized primarily for his auto-biographical "Alec" series. Using the pseudonym "Alec Macgarry." The three stories collected in 1990's The Complete Alec are now published under the title The King Canute Crowd, both due to the collapse of Eclipse (his original publisher) and the fact that Campbell went on to write more material under the "Alec" title. As the series is autobiographical, it can be read in any sequence, still, Complete is the only portion of stories where Campbell's success as a writer/artist do not figure into the narrative; by the time of the later works, Campbell's honesty does not allow him to ignore his own celebrity (however meager it may seem to the non-comics reader, Campbell is a widely respected and emulated talent.) Literary critics like to compare Campbell's autobiographical work to luminaries such as Jack Kerouac and Henry Miller, and in the case of Complete, the comparison is apt. Regardless of how accurate he may portray of Campbell, Alec Macgarry is a fascinating individual. Full of the same blue-collar intellectualism and alcohol based friendships that abound in Kerouac's work, The Complete Alec is an exciting story of happy young men and their loose attempts at maturing in a dead-end town. Although the story itself would come across as cliched in plot synopsis format, Macgarry and his friends are so realistically imagined and frightfully optimistic that the story cannot help but be fresh and innovative. The art is Campbell's own brand of pen and ink sketching, able to seem both dashed off and intricate; it both foreshadows his later, more refined work and portrays a youthful version of the style which brought him later success.

Considering that Complete Alec was originally published using the copy and staple method still employed today by thousands of hopefuls, it's amazing that this collection even exists, much less that now, more than twenty years later, they are still being read. For people interested in independent art, Campbell has proven that he has staying power in a field with no love for history. The Complete Alec is worth any serious reader's time.