"During an endless Covid lockdown in which everybody wears a mask and needs a haircut, Eddie’s wife is certain that he has been supplanted by an imposter. She hires a detective, the square-jawed Royler Boom, to solve the mystery. What follows — interspersed with Campbell’s trademark wry anecdotes, dreams, parodic pastiches, and pandemic peccadilloes — is a thrilling investigation that builds to a car chase and a violent conclusion. The author cunningly passes this off as another piece of autobiography."

(from publisher Top Self's description)

The Goat Getters: Jack Johnson, the Fight of the Century, and How a Bunch of Raucous Cartoonists Reinvented Comics

With more than 500 period cartoons, The Goat Getters illustrates how comics were developed by such luminaries as Rube Goldberg, Tad Dorgan, and George Herriman in the sports and lurid crime pages of the daily newspaper. This wild bunch of West Coast-based cartoonists established the dynamic anatomy and bold, tough style that continue to influence comics today, as well as their own goofy slang that enriched the popular lexicon.

Bizarre Romance

Internationally bestselling author of The Time Traveler’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger, and graphic artist Eddie Campbell, of such seminal works as From Hell by Alan Moore, collaborate on a wonderfully bizarre collection that celebrates and satirizes love of all kinds. With 16 different stories told through illustrated prose or comic panels, the couple explores the idiosyncratic nature of relationships in a variety of genres from fractured fairy tales to historical fiction to paper dolls. With Niffenegger’s sharp, imaginative prose and Campbell’s diverse comic styles, Bizarre Romance is the debut collection by two of the most important storytellers of our time.

Published BooksKenneth GerleveJanuary 29, 2018Bizarre Romance, Audrey Niffenegger, Eddie Campbell, 2018, Portrait

From Hell

Alan Moore (Watchmen) and Eddie Campbell (Bacchus), grandmasters of the comics medium, present a book often ranked among the greatest graphic novels of all time: From Hell.

From the squalid alleys of the East End to the Houses of Parliament, from church naves to dens of the occult, all of London feels the uniquely irresistable blend of fascination, revulsion, and panic that the Ripper offers. The city teeters on the brink of the twentieth century, and only the slightest prodding is necessary to plunge it into a modern age of terror.

Moore and Campbell have created a gripping, hallucinatory piece of crime fiction about Jack the Ripper. Detailing the events that led up to the Whitechapel murders and the cover-up that followed, From Hell is a modern masterpiece of crime noir and historical fiction.

, Published BooksKenneth GerleveJanuary 25, 2018From Hell, Alan Moore, Eddie Campbell, 2004, Portrait, Bookstore

The From Hell Companion

FROM HELL occupies a monumental place in the history of the graphic novel: a Victorian masterpiece of murder and madness which has won numerous awards, spawned a major Hollywood film, and remained a favorite of readers around the world for over two decades.

The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains: A Tale of Travel and Darkness with Pictures of All Kinds

The text of The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains was first published in the collection anthology Stories: All New Tales edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio. This gorgeous full-color illustrated book version was born of a unique collaboration between writer Neil Gaiman and artist Eddie Campbell, who brought to vivid life the characters and landscape of Gaiman's story. In August 2010, The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains was performed in the concert hall of the Sydney Opera House to a sold-out crowd—Gaiman read his tale live as Campbell's magnificent artwork was presented, scene-by-scene, on large screens. Narrative and art were accompanied by live music composed and performed especially for the story by the FourPlay String Quartet.

Bacchus Omnibus Edition Volume One

In Bacchus, the visionary behind From Hell (with Alan Moore) and ALEC: The Years Have Pants presents his version of "an American-style comic book," filtered through his own brilliant, whimsical, and wide-ranging sensibility. With a fine blend of action, comedy, suspense, and an ear for a great story, Bacchus brings the gods and myths of ancient Greece to modern life, as if they had never left.

Nearly 600-pages, this deluxe volume collects the first half of the Bacchus saga (including Immortality Isn't Forever, The Gods of Business, Doing the Islands with Bacchus, The Eyeball Kid: One Man Show, and Earth, Water, Air & Fire) with new notes and commentary by the author.

Published BooksKenneth GerleveAugust 21, 2017Bacchus Volume One, Eddie Campbell, 2015, Bookstore

Bacchus Omnibus Edition Volume Two

Eddie Campbell’s Bacchus is a true epic, spanning a decade of work, over a thousand pages, and several millennia of alcohol consumption. In Bacchus, the visionary behind FROM HELL (with Alan Moore) and ALEC: THE YEARS HAVE PANTS presents his version of "an American-style comic book," filtered through his own brilliant, whimsical, and wide-ranging sensibility. With a fine blend of action, comedy, suspense, and an ear for a great story, Bacchus brings the gods and myths of ancient Greece to modern life, as if they had never left. Nearly 600 pages, this deluxe volume collects the second half of the Bacchus saga with new notes and commentary by the author.

Published BooksKenneth GerleveAugust 21, 2017Bacchus Volume Two, Eddie Campbell, 2016, Bookstore

ALEC: The Years Have Pants

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.

Published BooksKenneth GerleveAugust 21, 2017Alec, The Years Have Pants, Eddie Campbell, 2010, Bookstore

The Black Diamond Detective Agency

John Hardin is a desperate man. When a train carrying official US currency paper explodes in his town, he's the prodigious Black Diamond Detective Agency's sole suspect. John is innocent, but his wife is missing, his old friends are coming back to haunt him--with guns and explosives--and he's on the run through rural Missouri.

THE BLACK DIAMOND DETECTIVE AGENCY is based on the historical journals of Arthur James Quindlen, the agency's founder. Adapted and illustrated with watercolor art by Eddie Campbell, this graphic novel brings a new perspective to that time in America when small farmers were the backbone of the country, graft was rampant, and railroads thundered through western towns.

The Lovely Horrible Stuff

Money makes the world go round, as they say... but HOW, exactly? Award-winning graphic novelist Eddie Campbell (From Hell, Alec) presents a fascinating journey into the wilderness of personal finance. With his trademark blend of research, anecdote, autobiography, and fantasy, Campbell explores how money underwrites human relationships, flowing all around us like the air we breathe — or the water we drown in. The result is a whimsical graphic essay, deeply grounded in Eddie's personal experiences with "the lovely horrible stuff," ranging from the imaginary wealth of Ponzi schemes and television pilots to the all-too-tangible stone currency of the Micronesian island of Yap.

In a world where drawing corporate superheroes requires literally transforming oneself into a corporation (which is kept in a shoebox under the bed), we are in strange territory, indeed. Fortunately, Campbell's wry eye and vivid full-color artwork imbue the proceedings with real humanity, making The Lovely Horrible Stuff an investment that's worth every penny.

The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard

‘He flies through the air with the greatest of ease – the daring young man on the flying trapeze!’

Step right up, Ladies and Gentlemen, for a glorious spectacle of graphic literature beyond your wildest imaginings, in which youngEtienne discovers that replacing his uncle as the Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard, world-renowned acrobat and head of a circus troupe, is every bit as difficult as it appears to be.

Etienne is swept up in wonder and work even as he struggles to keep up his grandiose façade, while every day his chances for happiness slip further away. For Etienne, taking a stand for his own happiness is as daring as any trick the Amazing Remarkable Leotard could perform.

Eddie Campbell and Dan Best bring to life the historical story of the daring young man on the flying trapeze in a tale filled with wonders and marvels.

Dapper John

Dapper John: In the Days of the Ace Rock ’n’ Roll Club follows the lives of a group of teddy boys in Southend in the 70s – characters who could mythologise their walk down the street before they got to the end of it. The stories are a direct precursor to Campbell’s Alec series and are essential reading for any Campbell fan.

Dapper John was an inspiration for John Constantine from Swamp Thing. And it was with Eddie Campbell that Moore created the magnificent From Hell. Eddie Campbell, of course, is now recognised as the one of the world’s most talented comics artists, with his Alec stories included in the Comics Journal’s list of the 100 most important comics published. His graphic novels The Fate of the Artist, Bacchus, and The Playwright have all drawn great critical acclaim.

Dapper John collects together all the Ace Club stories for the first time and supplements them with previously unpublished colour art, a survey of the 80s Fast Fiction scene with dozens of illustrations, an introduction written by Eddie Campbell and an exclusive interview on the creation of the Ace Club stories.

Published BooksKenneth GerleveAugust 21, 2017Dapper John, Eddie Campbell, Bookstore

The Playwright

The Playwright rather enjoys a quiet moment in the local park. It is a good place to mentally sort his ideas, and is often frequented by pretty young ladies. He once saw a pigeon defecate onto a businessman's shoulder. It struck him as absurd that such an event is often considered lucky. Surely the luck lay with passers-by who, statistically, were far less likely to be similarly soiled, at that precise moment. Similarly, the Playwright always derived an almost perverse sense of relief whenever he received news that an old friend had developed prostate cancer. Because statistically, he reasoned, such news significantly reduced the chances of him being similarly afflicted. And to be honest, at his age, his prostate needed all the statistical support he could muster."

The Playwright: a dark, romantic comedy about the sex life of a celibate, middle-aged man.

Published BooksKenneth GerleveAugust 21, 2017The Playwright, Eddie Campbell, Darren White, 2010, Bookstore

The Fate of the Artist

In this pseudo-autobiography, the subject of the memoir has vanished without a trace. Through six separate threads, each one typographically and stylistically distinct, a private investigator tries to discover the artists' fate through false trails, family and daily life reenactments, and even an imaginary Sunday comic strip. As the narrative threads intersect and collide in surprising ways, the reader is carried along on a fantastic journey through the life of the artist.

A master comics artist, here Eddie Campbell offers a complex, caustic, and surprising meditation on balancing the lonely life of the artist with the demands of everyday life.

Published BooksKenneth GerleveAugust 21, 2017The Fate of the Artist, Eddie Campbell, 2006, Bookstore

PS Magazine: The Best of The Preventive Maintenance Monthly

Will Eisner—best known for his influential comic book series The Spirit and his groundbreaking graphic novel A Contract with God—believed in the teaching power of comics, and from 1951 to 1971 he produced PS magazine for the U.S. Army. This Preventive Maintenance Monthly (called PS because it was a postscript to the standard technical manuals) was aimed at teaching American soldiers everything about weapons safety for vehicles, aircraft, firearms, and electronics.

Published BooksKenneth GerleveAugust 21, 2017PS Magazine, Will Eisner, Eddie Campbell, 1951-1971, Bookstore

A Disease of Language

Originally a performance piece by Alan Moore and Tim Perkins, The Birth Caul is a shamanism of childhood, a journey from the present to the past, back into the womb and beyond. The magical creation theory story of love, death and resurrection Snakes and Ladders was also a performance, entwining the disinterment of Oliver Cromwell and Elizabeth Siddal, the visionary nature of Arthur Machen's experiences after the death of his wife and Alan Moore's magical traveller, John Constantine.

Published BooksKenneth GerleveAugust 21, 2017A Disease of Language, Alan Moore, Eddie Campbell, 2010, Bookstore