Review – Eddie Campbell’s Alec: The Years Have Pants (a Life Sized Omnibus)

Eddie Campbell is a Scottish born comic book artist and cartoonist, probably best known as the illustrator and publisher of From Hell. Campbell is also the creator of the semi-autobiographical Alec stories, Bacchus (a.k.a. Deadface), The Black Diamond Detective Agency, The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard, as well as the two visual adaptations of Alan Moore’s performance pieces, as collected in A Disease of Language.

The Alec stories represent a semi-autobiographical version of Campbell’s own life, as told through the filter of his alter-ego, Alec MacGarry. The stories feature the adventures, and misadventures, of Alec as we witness his progression “from beer to wine” — starting out with stories of wild nights at the pub, and evolving into tales of existential despair, the hunt for love, the quest for art, becoming a responsible breadwinner, and much more!

Campbell’s earliest attempt at an autobiographical comic was in the late 1970s, when he created the story In the Days of the Ace Rock and Roll Club. Pretty soon, this idea evolved into Alec, with the character of Alec MacGarry standing in for the author. The early Alec stories were distributed as photocopied pamphlets, before Escape published the first proper collection in 1984, titled simply ‘Alec’. This was followed by two further collections, Love and Beerglasses (1985) and Doggie in the Window (1986). In 1990 all three were collected, together with some unpublished material, as The Complete Alec (republished as The King Canute Crowd in 2000).

This new 640-page omnibus collects the previous Alec books The King Canute Crowd, Graffiti Kitchen, How To Be An Artist, Little Italy, The Dead Muse, The Dance Of Lifey Death, After The Snooter, with several short stories, as well as an all-new 35-page book, The Years Have Pants. Unfortunately, the most recent Alec book, The Fate of the Artist, is notably absent from this collection, due to the fact that it is currently in print with a different publisher (First Second).

The new stories in this collection, in the titular book The Years have Pants, consist of a series of anecdotes, which span a period of 27 years. Several of these anecdotes and tidbits have previously appeared on Campbell’s blog, and occur during the periods of Alec’s life covered in previous installments, such as The King Canute Crowd; and also include a wonderful Alan Moore anecdote by Eddie’s son, Callum, that with make you laugh out loud!

Reviewing a collection of this size is a difficult task, not only because this collection rings in at a whopping 640 pages, but also because it documents over 30 years of someone’s life! How can one accurately take in that much information, judge it, and then fully articulate how one feels about it? So please, in advance, excuse my clumsy analysis of this masterpiece. In Alec, Eddie Campbell has performed that most marvelous of tricks: to turn normal life into something quite extraordinary. While it’s true that the life of Alec probably feels far more eventful than my own, the magic of this story really doesn’t lie in the events that happen to the character, but rather in the ways that the character reacts to said events, and how Campbell is able to express these thoughts and feeling on the page. It is often said that one person’s normal is another person’s

strange (or words to that effect), and it’s this law that Campbell takes advantage of in Alec – the ability to take the seemingly mundane details of life, and through his superior storytelling skills, make them into something completely fascinating. How many awkward conversations have you had like those at the start of Alec and Danny’s fledgling friendship? How many uneventful evenings, sat in the pub, just chatting with your friends? They are minor events in the scale of things, but Campbell manages to give them an almost ethereal quality. This is the sign of a true master of storytelling, and Eddie Campbell is among one of the very best there is!

Not only does Campbell weave some wonderfully sublime tales in this series, but he also uses the various Alec books to explore a variety of writing and art techniques, which make this collection into a real masterpiece! Campbell has an amazing ability to turn his hand to any style he sees fit, and in this collection varies his own style several times, as well as emulating the styles of other famous cartoonists, when characters from their intellectual properties turn up in the narrative. Watching Campbell experiment in such ways, and refining his own style over the 30 years that these stories cover, is a joy to behold, and only adds to the magic of this splendid omnibus.

It’s hard to pick favourites out of this collection, but I find the book that I’ve enjoyed the most over the years is How to be an Artist, Campbell’s “graphic novel about the rise and fall of the graphic novel itself”. It’s a story about making it as an artist, and is a true inspiration (and warning) for anyone who’s ever felt that creative urge tugging at them! This one also contains all those wonderful Alan Moore anecdotes, which manage to make Alan out to be some sort of mythical entity – as we watch his career in comic elevate him to rockstar status, with his infamous white suit and glamorous photo shoots, before crashing on the rocks of disappointment, as he looses the rights to his best loved creations. Throughout the book, Campbell refers to Moore as “big hairy Alan”, before eventually changing his nickname to “The Magus”, for obvious reasons. You really couldn’t make up stories like this, to indulge in the old cliché.

Alec: The Years have Pants (a Life size Omnibus) is one of the most interesting and moving autobiographies that I have ever read, in comic form or otherwise. While I have enjoyed several of the Alec stories over the years (these stories were begun in the year of my birth), the immensity of the project never really dawned on me until I laid into this 640-page collection! The sheer level of dedication required to keep a project going this long is deserving of great accolades, but to keep the quality of these stories as high as Campbell has, and to continue to challenge himself and refine his style – well, there isn’t a honor grand enough to bestow on him for such as achievement. In much the same way that Harvey Pekar was able to take the mundane events of his daily life and convert them into American Splendor, Eddie Campbell has managed magically transform the ins and outs of his own existence into something truly magnificent. Every self-respecting comic fan needs a copy of this book in their collection, it’s stories like these that truly elevate the level of the comics medium!

Rating:

Alec: The Years have Pants (a Life size Omnibus) was released on Wednesday, December 23rd, as a 640 page graphic novel, (7 1/2″ x 10″), which is available in two handsome editions:

Softcover with French Flaps:

http://www.topshelfcomix.com/catalog.php?type=12&title=618
– $35.00 (US), Diamond: JUL091081, ISBN 978-1-60309-025-4

Deluxe Hardcover:

http://www.topshelfcomix.com/catalog.php?type=12&title=643
– $49.95 (US), Diamond: JUL091082, ISBN 978-1-60309-047-6

Or see both (and more) at EDDIE CAMPBELL’s webpage:

http://www.topshelfcomix.com/eddiecampbell

Normally I’d send you to my Amazon affiliate store, but Top Shelf are a wonderful company, and are far more deserving of your money!