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, y...

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.

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...

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 dit...

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 wo...

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...

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

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.

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 begin...

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

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 friend...

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.

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...

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.