In comparison to Alec: The King Canute Crowd or Alec: Three Piece Suit, After the Snooter is a more modern work, more in keeping with the Eddie Campbell of today instead of decades ago. The most obvious difference is the dropping of the Alec psuedonym — Campbell’s now Eddie, raising kids and publishing for himself (an endeavor he seems to have since stopped, with his former website gone and Amazon listing his books as coming from Top Shelf instead of […]

Alec: Three Piece Suit collects three short books previously published as Graffiti Kitchen, Little Italy, and The Dance of Lifey Death. I very much appreciate the way Campbell includes a brief publishing history of his work on the indicia page. Knowing when he drew the stories and when and where they first appeared helps put his autobiographical work in the appropriate context of the times. These were all drawn between 1983-1993 and were originally published from four-six years after their […]

Alec: The King Canute Crowd, this first collection of Eddie Campbell’s life stories, established his reputation as a dean of autobiographical comics. “Alec” is Campbell’s version of himself, an artist working a job at a metal-stamping plant he’s overeducated for. He and Danny go to the pub frequently to drink and talk. Each see something in the other they don’t have in themselves: Danny’s the “man of action” while Alec is hesitant and reflective. The nine-panel grid doesn’t get in […]