In the field of the graphic novel a new attitude has grown up over the last twenty-five years. We tend to think now in terms of comics for the bookshelf. At first the artist used the available machinery of the monthly periodicals, serializing his ambitious narrative in parts, with a view to collecting them between two covers later. There are even a few, that I would number among the great graphic novels, that never got assembled together for one reason or another. And due to the vicissitudes of the publishing business, there are even one or two that never got finished.

Eventually the successful author in this field finds himself (or herself of course, but I'm really talking about myself, Eddie Campbell, here) in the position, like successful authors in the realm of the literature generally, of being commissioned to create a work that is all of a piece, to deliver his so called graphic novel all at the same time, without serialization in parts. Now he finds himself in the unexpected role of the recluse. It's a new experience for him.

Removed from a regimen of monthly publication and the rigmarole of conducting a readers letters page and other sociable activities, he inhabits his own hollow head, with its reverberating echoes. The emails dry up: somebody offering him the jackrabbit vibrator... can he use more length... minimize his mortgage... somebody in Africa has got six million dollars for him... The doubts start to arrive. What was he thinking, doing such a complicated book? Why did he go so far out on a limb? He has revealed to much of himself in this one. It's too much of an open nerve, all this real pain and joy. The Fate of the Artist, indeed. Why didn't he pick up another superhero job, like his quaint, odd little version of a Batman book of two years ago. That would have been much safer His editor, Siegel tries to put him at ease by telling him the book looks splendid. What? Siegel has an advance copy? He cajoles and wheedles and coaxes Siegel into sending him the one advance airmail copy.

Now the author is the only person in the world who has one, as the rest will still be some time coming from Hong Kong and even then it won't be released until April. What if they never arrive? What if they all go down to the bottom of the sea?. The author gets his book out again. He admires it. Tears of happiness come to his eye. At last his eye falls upon the one typo. He convinces himself he is a crushed failure. This too passes.

Days go by. He admires his book again. The only copy in the world. The author begins to imagine that he has entered into some 'vanity publishing' arrangement.

But there's little point in telling his readers about that other mythical book, as it will never be seen, and anyway will continue to be replaced ad infinitum in his restless sleep. Life must proceed. There are other jobs to be done. However the author wants to share with you a quotation he found after it was too late use it on his frontispiece and thus give the impression that his title was quoting a noble source:

"Often he who has chosen the fate of the artist because he felt himself to be different, soon realizes that he can maintain neither his art nor his difference unless he admits that he is like the others. The artist forges himself through a continuous to-and-fro between himself and the others, midway between the beauty he cannot do without and the community he cannot tear himself away from." Albert Camus

And while I have your attention, check out the new issue of Comics Journal this week (no 273). The author gets the cover-featured interview. It was some five hours of blather, much of it about The Fate of the Artist. You can see the cover showing the author with a dagger in his back at http://www.tcj.com/ (Issue #273). An editor is helping police with their inquiries.

Mr Campbell is very rarely photographed working at his drawing board.
Here we see him there, but not doing very much work.

On Friday last, the 27 January, it was Mozart's 250th birthday. The CD stores have lately filled up with box sets comprising everything by Wolfgang Amadeus in every recording company's back catalogue. MY next door neighbor went off to a 'Mozart party', where, I imagine, all the participants take turns at banging out 'Rondo Alla Turca' on the old upright. The town of his birth, Salzburg, is awash with tourists and there are Mozartian entertainments around the clock. All over the world, in fact, they are playing the great man's works.

What has this got to do with me, you ask?

It has made me a little concerned that my Mozart anecdote in Fate of the Artist, the first page of which you can read here http://www.firstsecondbooks.net/FOA/FOAgift007.html and which I drew two years ago, long before I had found a publisher for my book, may now look like a piece of shameless opportunism. Oh well, move over and make some room on that bandwagon.

Diary of an author, waiting. Part 5

"The dignity of the artist lies in his duty of keeping awake the sense of wonder in the world. In this long vigil he often has to vary his methods of stimulation; but in this long vigil he is also himself striving against a continual tendency to sleep."
-- Marc Chagall

As I sit here twiddling my thumbs, waiting for my book, The Fate of the Artist, to come out, I have time to get jealous of my fellow artists. Like my dear old pal, Nick Abadzis looking windswept and interesting in Moscow in front of exotic minarets on Feb 13 of this very blog. Well, after I finish ironing my pants an t-shirt here in the humdrum familiarity of my living room, I'll get back to carefully composing a 13 page shoot-out in a long-ago demolished Chicago Rail station for my next book from First Second, The Black Diamond Detective Agency. But it's all based on antique photographic reference; it still doesn't get me out of the house. That does it! My next book after this will be set somewhere very far away, like Tierra del Fuego, or Mount Killimanjaro, or the jungle of Beng Melea, and I will be required to pack my pencil case and go and do the necessary research. Damn it!

My editor just told me my book, The Fate of the Artist, has gone back for a second printing even though I'm still waiting for the first one to come out. I have decided to pass the time by having a 'thought for the day', whether i feel like one or not. Today's thought:

Genius is a nuisance, and it is the duty of schools and colleges to abate it by setting genius-traps in its way. --Samuel Butler

Now, I don't wish to imply that I see myself in this quotation, that I claim to be the genius mentioned. I would only think such a thing after one bottle of Retsina. And after two I would be no less than the king of Persia. But it reminded me of that day away back in 1970 when, at the age of 15, it was my turn to front up before the school careers advisor. I candidly informed the man that I wished to spend my life drawing comics. He had never in all his days heard of such a low ambition and tried to dissuade me from my course. I can only thank my finely tuned instinct for self-preservation that I kept to myself my whacky theory that the great story of our times could be aptly told in the form of a kind of extended comic strip.

While waiting for my new collection of wise words and pictures to appear in the stores, my Fate of the Artist, my old ones hurry back to haunt me. Actually, upon reading this, it's not so bad. I managed to spice it with enough humor to keep it alive in the bottle. Nearly two years ago, just after the NY Times magazine did their big piece on the graphic novel (Jun '04) , I observed a tendency in our artistic community to waste precious print space arguing about things of no importance (such as what is a graphic novel and why don't we go back to saying comic book?). I attempted to galvanize the practitioners of the form into a state of solidarity by writing a manifesto. It got reprinted widely and I think it may even be quoted in full on the Wikipedia site.

This chappie (I think he's in the Phillipines) just decide to present it afresh for all our readers who missed it the first time around.

While I wait for my book, The Fate of the Artist, to come out in May, I search for early sightings of it in the form of reviews. Don't believe an author who says they don't read the reviews. We're all rampant but insecure egotists who start the day by googling our own names. I enjoy the sight of those words Eddie Campbell so much that I have even read many of the entries on Eddie C. Campbell, the blues musician. I have a passing familiarity with his oeuvre without having heard a note of it.

While searching I read the PW comics week's review of the upcoming autobiographical graphic novel Fun Home from the excellent Alison Bechdel. It sounds like a childhood haunted by jarring incident.

"His (her father's) court trial over his dealings with a young boy pushes aside the importance of her early teen years. Her coming out is pushed aside by his death, probably a suicide."

Fun Home
ALISON BECHDEL.

Anyway, it sure looks like it's going to be an excellent year for the graphic novel. Just be patient. I see Alison's book is due to come out in June. She's got even longer to wait than I have.

Here's another guy who is suffering, (thanks to Heidi at the Beat for drawing my attention to this).

http://www.artrenewal.org/articles/2006/Peter_Panse/case1.asp

"PETE PANSE is a talented and popular high school art teacher in Middletown, NY who uses traditional techniques to to train his students. In December 2005 Mr. Panse was suspended from his job for recommending that some of his advanced students consider taking figure drawing courses that included nude figure drawings. Mr. Panse is suspended from his job pending hearings after which he may be permanently fired, ending a 25-year teaching career."

Now, anyone who has ever built his life around art, even abstract artists, will tell you that the very cornerstone of an education in the practice of the subject is an extensive study of the nude. The linked article is a very intelligent and balanced view of the story.

Give it a read.

The Fate of the Artist, indeed!

Among the flotsam and jetsam of today's egosurfing, the author comes across a short session filmed at the last San diego con. Or do we say 'taped' still? The author has no idea about the technical processes. In fact he can't figure out how to get a look at the thing. Do us a favor, check it out and if he look like a twerp, let us know so we can remove this link.

Writer and artist Eddie Campbell talks about The Fate of the Artist.

Quotations. I'm not so much a collector of them as a user. When I published a monthly comic I'd always start the letters page with one, and when I had a website I'd put a new one at the top of the home page as often as I could. Inevitably I'd use them up quicker than I could come across new ones in my day to day reading so I'd bookmark those sites who make it their business to collect and store quotations. Since The Fate of the Artist is our obsession of the moment, and the subject of this author's interminable wait, I draw your attention to an excellent site at artquotes.net and borrow one from their archives:

The problem with the youth of today' is that one is no longer part of it.
::: Salvador Dali :::

Since my esteemed editor Mr Siegel is more likely to use my blog entries if I include a picture with my words, here's a quick scribble of Dali.

While he's waiting for his book, The Fate of the Artist to find its' way onto the market, the author receives those little cheer-me-ups from his wife, little quotations and such designed to remind him that he is on the right path and that all will turn out right.

Today it's this:

Don't give up too soon. Not even if well-meaning parents, relatives, friends and colleagues tell you to get 'a real job.' Your dreams are your real job. --
Joyce Spizer, author of Rejections of the Written Famous

Alas, it only reminds him of the time he was fired from a 'real job' for daydreaming.

"How much of human life is lost in waiting."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The author draws a picture of himself twiddling his thumbs while waiting for his book, The Fate of the Artist, to come out. it occurs to him that until he tried to draw it, he had never really considered before what that actually means, to twiddle one's thumbs.

"It is strange... that the years teach us patience;
that the shorter our time, the greater our capacity for waiting."
— Elizabeth Taylor

The author checks his calendar. only nine days till his book, The Fate of the Artist comes out. Meanwhile, he reads an interview with his editor at Comics Reporter and makes sure Siegel is saying nice things about him.

"We only live to discover beauty. All else is a form of waiting."
— Kahlil Gibran

The author passes his days collecting quotes on the subject of waiting. Only seven days till The Fate of the Artist arrives.

"Light thinks it travels faster than anything, but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first and is waiting for it."
— Terry Pratchett

In between collecting quotations on the subject of waiting, the author walks around in circles.

The author is using his collected quotes, on the subject of waiting, at the dinner table

"Waiting and hoping are the whole of life, and as soon as the dream is realized it is destroyed"
— Gian Carlo Menotti.

"The opposite of talking isn't listening. The opposite of talking is waiting."
— Fran Lebowitz.

[editor's note: indeed — and there's more juicy Campbell talk here in another excellent piece from Jennifer Contino.]

"We usually learn to wait only when we no longer have anything to wait for."
— Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach .

Somehow, I don't believe these blog entries from Eddie Campbell. I doubt he's sitting idly, either watching butterflies or twiddling thumbs, given that he's past the hundredth page of his next project with First Second — a mighty project called THE BLACK DIAMOND DETECTIVE AGENCY.

Care to share a few glimpses of it, Eddie?

More to come with First Second luminaries at the Powell site. Powell's, by the way, is the largest independent bookseller in America (I think) and my first and favorite stop whenever I'm in Portland.

My favorite Simpsons episode is the one where Bart sells his soul to Milhouse. And it's actually a Simpsons episode.

Link to the interview on this site here

Just back from San Diego's ComiCon — First Second's first time! We had a little booth, but it was a happening one. We came with the attitude of getting our first taste, and learning for next year. We were pleasantly surprised by the number of people coming by who knew all about :01 already.

Here's how this panel would have come out if his #%^&*! editor had had his way — but for those who've read THE FATE OF THE ARTIST, Eddie Campbell prevailed...