Alec: The Years Have Pants

Alec #1-4

by Eddie Campbell

For the first time ever, the pioneering autobiographical comics of master cartoonist Eddie Campbell (From Hell) are collected in a single volume Brilliantly observed and profoundly expressed, the ALEC stories present a version of Campbell's own life, filtered through the alter ego of "Alec MacGarry." Over many years, we witness Alec's (and Eddie's) progression "from beer to wine" - wild nights at the pub, existential despair, the hunt for love, the quest for art, becoming a "responsible breadwinner," feeling lost at his own movie premiere, and much more Eddie's outlandish fantasies and metafictional tricks convert life into art, while staying fully grounded in his own absurdity. This Life-Size Omnibus edition of ALEC includes all the stories from The King Canute Crowd, Three-Piece Suit, How to be an Artist, and After the Snooter, as well as the very early, out-of-print ALEC stories and a staggering amount of bonus material.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Biography Memoir, Graphic Novels Comics, Fiction, Art, Comic Book

640 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

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

[Dov Zeller · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a big book with a lot of great art and brilliant literary moments, but it's also super-self-absorbed-naval-gazing stuff. As a feminist and a queer, I just couldn't handle Campbell's attitude toward women, sexuality, queerness. So, I got half way and had had more than enough. Maybe the second half would have changed my reading of the book and its author? I was so very done with the book by the half-way mark and just had no interest in finding out. It was kind of like reading on the road. The adventures and beauty of it makes it tolerable to a point. Maybe because OTR was so much shorter I managed to get though most of it. And maybe because it was written in a previous era I put up a little more with the shitty attitude toward life and other human beings. At this point, there are a lot of sequential art books I would much rather be reading. And that is all I have to say.

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Huge tome of just about everything autobiographical, including all the Alec stuff, from Eddie Campbell, who worked with Alan Moore on From Hell. Has useful things like How to be an Artist and if you know From Hell you get a few things on Moore, but not much, really... His quick sketch style (like ANTI-glossy) is appealing, especially for its subject: Eddie himself, in some ways like a daily journal.. He digs up everything he could find in every closet, so much of it is like curiosities, throwaways, amusing little tidbits... no huge revelations, but there is honesty, sometimes brutal self-reflection, we get a good idea of who one comic artist really is (well, told to us as Alec, so, maybe it is less "is" than "seems to be"....)

[Hamish · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sometimes I will see an image and I will get a sudden, involuntary flash of a time I never actually experienced, but that (I think) I glimpsed in cartoon form as a child and internalized. It's definitely British (or maybe New Zealand-ish) and it's from the late 70s and that's all I can tell you, because this flash is lightning brief and then it disappears to the nether regions of my brain, only to stop by for brief and rare visits. It's frustrating because it's never long enough to hold on to, yet just the experience of that stab of memory is strangely pleasurable (Proust's Madeline and all that). In all likelihood the thing I am remembering is just a comic strip (Giles, maybe?) that I poured over for an afternoon in my grandmother's house in Lake Taupo, but everything we experience as children somehow takes on this exaggerated importance in memory and I guess that's what's happening here.

Anyways, the point is that the early Alec strips (specifically the ones in The King Kanute Crowd) do this for me. Obviously that's an incredibly subjective (even more subjective than most artistic enjoyment usually is) reason to like a book, but there's a lot of other things to love about them too. Eddie's style is scratchy and should be vague but is in fact wonderfully vivid and evocative. His mini-stories have a knack for honing in on the little things from larger events that are worth capturing. Overall, they're charming and they paint the picture of a life that maybe I wish I had lead (but am dispositionally incapable of). So I really, really like the early stuff.

Ok, so here is the problem I have with a lot of autobio comics (though obviously lots of exceptions exist!). It involves a conceit that really only exists in that genre, which is that any incident from your life is automatically worth relating because that's being "honest" and "shows what life is really like" (see Harvey Pekar and legions of others). Here's the thing: good narrative art, whether fictional or autobiographical, needs to keep the reader's attention and conform to a good structure. That random anecdote about the one time you forgot to take out the trash? That's fucking BORING (unless it has a really good punchline). And when your comic is just non-stop anecdotes like, then your comic is going to be boring. It's certainly possible to mold the raw material of your life into a compelling narrative, but the random, one-page "oh man this funny thing happened this one time" with leaden punchline shit does not fly.

Granted, Eddie only does that sometimes, but there's such an obvious dip in quality after Alec (his autobio stand-in character) gets married (plus the monotonous How to Be an Artist section; pedantic Campbell is my least favorite Campell). Some of those anecdotes are genuinely funny though, and he's forever coming up with novel and clever ways to portray every day life; but still, everything has a feeling of slightness. There was a genuine narrative push in those early books and I missed it once it was gone. It also felt like he was telling stories more about the people around him than he was about himself. After the marriage it's all "then I did this and then I went here and then I said this to Alan Moore..."

I'd like to emphasize that I still enjoyed the later material, but it's the early work that I loved. Also, the recent The Fate of the Artist book (not in this collection) shows that he's still got it. There all he needed was a different approach and he nailed it.

[Kyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alec: The Years Have Pants collects all of Eddie Campbell's autobiographical comics, excluding Fate of the Artist. As such, the individual stories within vary in quality, but the overall collection is an essential book for anyone interested in this area of Campbell's career. Here are my reviews of the individual books.

The King Canute Crowd: 3 stars. This is my least favorite of the stories collected in this volume. There's evidence of Eddi Campbell's skill as a storyteller, but the story of this group's drunken exploits just doesn't interest me much. I also don't like the roman a clef style of it, complete with fictitious names, which unfortunately set the title for the whole series. Nevertheless, it's an adequate start a great autobiographical series.

Graffiti Kitchen: 4 stars. This is where Campbell begins to hit his stride in the Alec series, with a story from the author's younger years and an awkward love triangle. His storytelling is more inventive and entertaining here than in the first book.

How to be an Artist: 5 stars. How To Be An Artist is a fascinating and entertaining account of Eddie Campbell's career, from a poor unknown artist selling photocopies of his comics at a local shop to the illustrator of the acclaimed From Hell. The book is full of insights into the world of underground British comics in the 80s and features appearances by a number of great comics creators from around the world. People unfamiliar with the comics industry may find it tedious, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Little Italy: 5 stars. The little stories in this volume mark a new direction for Campbell's autobiography, in which he mixes anecdotes about his personal life with his professional life. I love the bits about his family and the honest depictions of Campbell's own neuroses.

The Dead Muse: 3 stars. This book is a bit more fragmented and unfocused, which makes sense, considering how it was written. This was originally published as an anthology of underground comics compiled by Campbell, with his own comics serving as interstitials. In this collection, the other artists' work has been removed, leaving only the interstitials. It's nice to have for completeness' sake, and there are a few nice little anecdotes, but it is obvious that it's an incomplete work.

The Dance of Lifey Death: 5 stars. Eddie Campbell continues to chronicle his intertwining professional and personal lives, this time with an increased focus on his mortality, as well as reflections on wine and collecting objects. Campbell continues to be very entertaining in his depiction of the whimsy of everyday life.

After the Snooter: 5 stars. Easily my favorite book from the Alec series, After the Snooter looks back at miscellaneous events from Campbell's childhood as well as his present life. My favorite parts are those that deal with Campbell's family. Delightfully funny and often crazy, there's a sweet affection that shines through each illustration. There are also interesting behind-the-scenes insights into Campbell's drawing and publishing career (out of the front room of his house), the making of From Hell, and the financial stability he finally gets from that work. The book is absolutely delightful from start to finish.

Miscellaneous material: 3 stars. What's nice about this volume is that it also includes material that has never been collected in any other books. Of course, in most cases there's a reason these things were not collected. They vary in tone and style--some of them are very cartoony. They can be amusing, but they are also quite disposable. Also included are the first two chapters of Campbell's ambandoned History of Humor which, while moderately interesting at first, grows tedious quickly, which is probably why Campbell decided not to finish.

In addition to all of the above selections, Eddie Campbell wrote a new little "book" to be included at the end, itself titled The Years Have Pants. This may have been the biggest disappointment of the entire work. Because the book collects all of the autobiographical comics from Campbell's career I had hoped for some kind of retrospective or at least a reflection on his career to that point. Instead, The Years Have Pants is just more little anecdotes from throughout his life, only done in apparently more of a random and unfocused way than in any of the other books. Even worse, several of these new anecdotes are illustrated versions of entries from his blog. One would think that in translating these prose stories to comics, Campbell would make the best use of the visual medium, but instead he mostly draws himself sitting at the computer, writing the words. It's a disappointing close to an exciting collection of comics.

Overall, though, this Alec omnibus is a nice collection of some very funny and moving stories by a great artist, and is an essential volume for any fan of autobiographical comics.

[Gavin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Both cryptic and mundane: take a diary written by someone with the usual amount of self-obsession but no time to explain. Alec is pretentious - the character not the book, except that the author is the character.

I find the 70s dreary for some reason, not just the visual style and relative poverty, but something deep about information poverty and conformist anti-conformity.

Massive amount of time in pubs with no particular narrative goal. Or: the main narrative goal here is to laud aimless friendship and pubs. The other half is chasing women, ineptly. An epic in length only.

[Hiko · Rating 2 out of 5]

Səhifələrdə 9 yox, daha az panel olsaydı, yəqin ki, daha çox bəyənərdim. Fuck! Komiks yox, roman oxuyurdum elə bil ki. -_- Ya normal roman yaz, ya da normal komiks çək də. Bu nədir eee?

[P. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eddie Campbell is a master of the delicate sketch which is weighted down by some secret foundation. Were I to do this over again, I'd find copies of his Alec books in their separate volumes and space my reading of them out.

I really liked the first 3 chapters (2 books and a collection of fragments.) I thought How to Become an Artist was interesting mostly to people who care about the comics business (and artists, obvs). The rest of it was good, but the tone was that of a man who does a lot of dithering. It is poignant in some places but not always cohesive, and it was a bit much to ingest all at once.

[Bill Coffin · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are undoubtedly plenty of folks for whom this book is the perfect read. But despite its flashes of brilliance, it is an epic autobiography of the most self-absorbed sort that feels less like an effort to share one's story than it is an extended cry for attention.

[Koen Claeys · Rating 1 out of 5]

Bored me to death for 150 pages, I didn't have the stomach for another 500 pages of this.

[Brent · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here's a big beautiful collection of thirty or so years of great slice of life moments in great comics, told by a master in youth and then middle age. I'm a fan, and you will be, too. I first heard of these strips in an interview in Escape Magazine circa 1983, and, finally reading them, I recognized what great stuff Campbell keeps making. Thanks to Marietta Georgia publisher Top Shelf, now part of publisher IDW.
Highest recommendation.

[Chris Drew · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really enjoy Eddie Campbell's work, but this one was a bit slow for me, and ultimately not engaging enough to really keep and hold my attention.
Campbell's art style is well on display and is still a joy to see, but the plot is rambling, often with no clear direction, and this didn't work as well for me as it does in Cambell's Bacchus books, which are also rambling but with a little more charm and spark to the characters and action.

If you have read and enjoyed his other books I'd say it is worth trying, if you have not, I would not recommend starting here.

[Andy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this with a book voucher I got on my birthday in 2010. I've slowly been reading through it since. Mostly when the mood struck. I'd never heard of it but then Neil Gaiman mentioned it in his blog and while browsing I found this and thought the weight and size of it made it a worthy purchase.

I haven't always liked it but it's so compelling you can't really leave it for too long (though it clearly took me a while to complete the thing). The more I enjoyed reading the slower I got as I didn't want to rush the journey. And journey it is as we follow Alec/Eddie from his early wild years through to a more sedate middle age. It's a powerful journey which struck a cord with where I am in my life right now and where I've been.

I would recommend this to comic fans, fans of life (and the little things that make it), lovers of beer and wine alike. And lovers of stories. There are plenty of them.

(Thanks to my friends for the gift)

[Tyler · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don't like to review a book when I haven't read it, or even gotten halfway through at the very least, but this is a slog in the worst way possible.

Something was very off-putting about it from the very beginning, but as each tale meanders around and we experience this slice of life, it is never entertaining. I'm not saying Campbell didn't have an interesting life, because he's probably done a hell of a lot more than I, but it's not put across in a fascinating way that is engaging to the reader.

The artwork is fine, I guess, but it's just a competently drawn--but ultimately bland--exterior that houses pathos that fails to conjure up much in the way of intelligent observations. You can do a slow-paced comic but you need to reward the audience with something to grab onto. While trying to read it, I wondered why I was even continuing.

[Damon]

Kind of stalled in the middle of this. Actually, not even the middle. That's the problem, really - it's not that this stuff isn't good, it's just that one giant 600+ page dose of it is enough to choke you. I'll come back to it and finish, but it's impossible to keep enough momentum going to plow straight through.

[Nicholas · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm still figuring out how I feel about this. The Graffiti Kitchen section is amazing.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got bored and gave up on this one. I know it's supposed to be a classic of slice-of-life cartooning, but it was just too slow and meandering for me.

[Dominick · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection of (most of) Eddie Campbell's autobiographical, semi-autobiographical, and pseudo-autobiographical comics may not be the best introduction to his work, but it sure is a great way to trace the evolution of his style (especially in the final, eponymous, section, in which he to some extent deliberately returns to earlier stylistic devices such as the use of zip-a-tone, but with a couple more decades of experiencing behind his drafting, pacing, and layout skills). Even from the beginning, Campbell's work shows a remarkable ability to blend an almost photographic quality with an almost expressionistic line. Early on, this serves largely mundane, if amusing, accounts of life as a young artist struggling to make sense of his place on the world. These earliest sequences are perhaps the weakest in the book (unsurprisingly, as they are the oldest and represent a period in which Campbell was still literally finding his voice and style). Later sequences are arguably just as concerned with the mundane and just as fragmentary, but they also seem more intentional, more carefully chosen and paced. Possibly the strongest sequence, though, is also one of the earlier pieces, the experimental and quite amusing "How to Be an Artist," Campbell's tracking of and theorizing about how being an artist works (or doesn't). Some of the pieces are less autobiographical than opinion pieces (e.g. the unfortunately never-completed history of humour material, included in the "Fragments" section), while others are less autobiographical than flights of fancy (e.g. much of "After the Snooter," which includes, in the Snooter, one of the most surprisingly creepy creatures I have seen in a while). Nevertheless, as a whole, this is a surprisingly eclectic (given its ostensibly autobiographical core) collection, not to mention a master class in cartooning. And there are some dandy anecdotes about Alan Moore ("The Magus") and Neil Gaiman, among others.

[Grady · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can see why the autobiographical comics collected here are lauded as influential, and the sophistication and quality of the craft improves over time. His pastiches of other cartoonists’ styles show real skill. But I couldn't get all the way through it - it just maunders on and on, and for much of the first half, anecdotes that I think are supposed to be funny - or at least, to leave a reader thinking, wasn’t that a wild and crazy time - all sort of run down or play out inconclusively, and the accumulation is just exhausting. Which is perhaps a failure of empathy on my part. Although for the first third of the collection, no one thinks he’s pursuing anything, Campbell (‘MacGarry’) is an artist pursuing his vision of life - which I think is the better way to understand his comment that the only continuity in his life is himself. It’s not so much himself as his evolving narrative/graphic voice that is the continuity. I’m glad he’s had a successful career and met interesting people, but I was not won over. The most affecting sequences are those in which he interacts with his young daughter; those are warm and mostly delightful.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nearly 650 pages, collecting nearly all of Campbell's thinly-veiled autobiographical Alec comics (except Fate of the Artist, from First Second) under one cover and adding a new story, The Years Have Pants is excellent. Campbell's philosophical tangents and wry humor set him far above most autobiographical cartoonists. He relates behind-the-scenes tales of the comics industry in the late 80s (when Sim, Eastman, et. al. were pushing creators' rights) easily alongside stories of his children or his marriage. The family strips he manages to make adorable without being too precocious.
It's very, very funny, and deeply contemplative at the same time. Campbell has a terrific pen and ink style, and he's able to capture anything no matter how fantastic or mundane. In short, it's a must-have book.

[Edward Champion · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an astonishing and subtly moving portrait of life from the inimitable Eddie Campbell, who adheres to the 3 x 3 paneling for a good 650 pages to offer meditations on life, fatherhood, being a young punk in Scotland, becoming a comics guy connected with Neil Gaiman and "the big hairy Alan Moore," and so much more. But what really makes this work is the 3 x 3 snapshot formalism. Those nine panels are almost existential snapshots. In some cases, Campbell simply allows us to see "Alec" his alter ego without much commentary. In other cases, he takes over the narrative. In still other cases, he's more of a cameo in other people's stories. But now I must know about "Alec"'s life in Chicago with Audrey Niffeneger!

[Rob McMonigal · Rating 2 out of 5]

Date read is a guess.

I generally have been into autobio comics quite heavily, less so now than I used to be, like when I read this. But I also remember it was really dense -I'm not keen on omnibi as a rule for this reason - and that's especially true for autobio works. If you love Campbell and somehow haven't read this yet, it's a great collection.

But if you are just a casual fan like I was at the time, it's probably not necessary to track down a copy. It's also probably from a time when folks were more willing to give allowances for books like this to be a big self-absorbed. I can't see works like this playing well to a 2024 ear but I could be wrong.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Basically 30 years of slice of life comics. It's incredible to see how much evolution and growth takes place with the artist. Yet, it's also sometime mind fumblingly nazel-gazing.

Eddie Campbell is an artist's artist. He's quite possibly told THE autobiographical comic (other than perhaps Matt Wagner's Mage). It's great--but it's also very akin to the White Men and Their Ennui that has flourished for the past few decades, and is perhaps finally course correcting.

It's sincere and feels authentic--but it's not always interesting. But that's life.

[Sal · Rating 4 out of 5]

The King Canute Crowd part of this omnibus anthology (a huge chunk of the first 100 pages or so) was the only part I disliked. Campbell's découpage style of making comics is masterful. I liked the passages that demonstrate the development of From Hell into a multi-media property from Campbell's perspective. But the best were some of the smaller, one-page series of wry life observations or Australian biology studies that appear between the longer pieces/series.

[Neil Carey · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish I'd known most anyone chronicled in The King Canute Crowd; I like that-- in addition to Campbell chronicling his own life and offering his general thoughts on "the adventure of art"-- How To Be An Artist is a history of the rise of the comics medium as a cultural force without just once again blubbering/bloviating about comics 'lost innocence'; it makes me glad I've never run afoul of a snooter.

But mostly, I'm just glad I took a chance on this; shy of an all-expenses-paid vacation, I can't think of a better way to spend two weeks than with Eddie Campbell's Alec

[Chad · Rating 1 out of 5]

I made it through about 150 pages before finally giving up on this nonentity of a book. It's kind of a diary where nothing happens. There's panels but they rarely tell a story. The art's not very good either. I just didn't get the point of this tomb of a book and figured I'd stop punishing myself by continuing with it.

[Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Half a life in pictures. Gets better with the passing decades (either that or I empathise with the middle aged Eddie Campbell). The art work is fine and instils the speed at which life passes. It's not philosophy, rather a life well read. A blog, from before such things existed.

[Julia]

DNF... entirely uninteresting

[Scott Foshee · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Life, Honestly

I am a big fan of autobiographical graphic novels. I think they appeal to me because of the way they can personalize an experience with the truth of a diary or journal while still allowing the author to stylize the narrative to present multiple layers of meaning and impression. Excellent examples of this genera include works by Chester Brown, James Kochalka (the “American Elf” series), Derf (“Punk Rock and Trailer Parks” and “My Friend Dahmer”), Harvey Pekar (“American Splendor”), Guy Delisle (“Shenzhen,” “Burma Chronicles,” “Pyongyang” and “Jerusalem”), and Jeffrey Brown. Now I can Eddie Campbell and his terrific “Alec – ‘The Years Have Pants’” to this treasured list.

In “Alec,” Eddie Campbell compiles decades of his autobiographical works in one volume, from his young bachelor days as a Scottish member of the wild King Canute bar crowd in Great Britain, where he scrapes out a meager existence in a manual labor metalworking job. He dates, hones his artistic craft, and begins a journey of self-discovery. We follow him through marriage, children, and the world of self-publishing to see him emerge a mature family man and reasonably-famous artist based in Australia. We even get behind the scenes stories of Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, and other famous writers and artists he comes in contact with. Through it all Eddie Campbell, through his alter ego Alec MacGarry, shares with us the ups and downs, through good drawings and hurried, the real and the surreal. Most of all, however, we share with him the honesty of life that he unfailingly paints on each page. There is very little self-importance here. We get the randomness and seeming irrelevance of the day-to-day through the colorful yet very real characters that flow through Alec’s life.

I have the hard bound edition from Top Shelf and it is wonderful. The spare, no-nonsense artwork on the cover and spine goes perfectly in tone with the gorgeous black and white drawings inside. The paper is heavy and displays the ink well. We even get bonus material in the back of the book. The whole project is well-realized, done in the right way, and I am glad to display it in my home. Highly recommended.

[Batmark · Rating 3 out of 5]

http://morethansuperhumans.blogspot.c...

Technically a roman à clef, Alec: The Years Have Pants follows thirty years in the life of Alec MacGarry (Campbell's alter ego). The book opens circa 1979, with young Alec, a burgeoning artist, taking a job as a sheet-metal cutter at a factory in London. There he meets a forklift operator named Danny Grey, and the two become good friends. What follows is 200 pages of heavy drinking, bouts of philosophy, and light hooliganism. Later, Alec gets married and moves to Australia, at which point the book really comes together. Over the years Alec matures (slightly), raises a family, and explores those aspects of life we all find so wonderful and confusing. As a central figure in the small-press comics boom of the late '80s, Campbell also provides a unique first-person perspective on the independent comic book artists and publishers of that exciting era.

This is the best one-volume, autobiographical comic book I've ever read. Weighing in at five(!) pounds, it earns every ounce of its heft. I must admit I got a little lost amongst the seemingly dozens of characters who were walking through the narrative in the second part, "Graffiti Kitchen" (and, in fact, I started to worry that the next 400 pages would be just as confusing). But the following section, titled "How to Be an Artist," is a masterpiece of the form. Told entirely in the second-person singular, it brought me deep into Campbell's story and I remained immersed till the very end.

The book's (sub)subtitle is "A Life-Sized Omnibus," and that's about right. In the span of these 640 pages I felt as if I'd read Campbell's life story. Of course, you can't fit every minute of thirty years into 640 pages, but it nonetheless feels comprehensive. Perhaps because, as Campbell wrote in the book's preface, his aim with these stories was "to not lose sight of the everyday details that we tend to otherwise forget when we have our eye focused on a goal." By stopping to smell the roses, so to speak, he's created an illuminating memoir of daily life.

[Ruz El · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's not much new these days about autobiographical comics. Seems the shelves are full of them, with each author seeming to try to out do each other with misery and pathos.



Way back in the early 80's (which seems far to soon to be saying "way back", Eddie Campbell of Scotland started publishing the true life tales of the pub crowd he was a part of using the character of "Alec" as a substitute for himself. I stumbled on these when they were being published as a back up feature in his self published "Bacchus". I loved them then, and having them all here in one giant book, from pints to wine, young and single to married and 50... these stories have lost none of their charm, honesty or magic.



One day, comics wont be separated from other books, and this will become regarded as a masterpiece, period. As it is, it's simply a masterpiece of the genre that Eddie so clearly loves himself.