Eddie Campbell’s How to be an artist may be my favorite. Comic. Evah.
He mixes veiled biography and anecdote with a tongue in cheek, future tense second-person narrative mocking how-to manuals, riddled with aphorisms:
“Everybody will be full of unfulfillable promise in the cheery winesodden Friday afternoon of your life when you feel an unbearable nostalgia for events less than a day after they happen. You just see if I’m not wrong, Alex MacGarry. Just see if the Monday morning of your life don’t arrive like a broken elevator.”
(Alec MacGarry being the artist’s alter ego, to whom the instructions are directed)
If it weren’t enough that Campbell is a master of his craft, a razor-sharp critic of the comics medium, and a satyrically inspired autobiographer, his first-hand descriptions of the British comics scene of the 80′s would alone be worth twice the book’s weight in India ink.
“… guys with one eye on the coolometer and myopic guys, dilletantes, pretenders, complete wankers, sweethearts, boy geniuses. They’ll all traffic past you,” and more in-depth portrayals of the people closest to Campbell, er, MacGarry.
Also: the “Bam! Sock! Pow! Comics aren’t for kids anymore!” of the mid- to late 80′s –
“Batman. Well, of course, the whole plot has already gone to fuck as you can see right there. But it’s too late. It’s in the hands of the PR yuppies.”
- and the mess that remains the graphic novel -
“It’s a misnomer, of course, but the so is ‘comic book’ [...] The term will embody the arrival of an idea; a serious intent will be brought into the common comic and remain as a trend through the last quarter of the twentieth century, perhaps further.”
You will need to read this book, at least fifty times. In the end you may have to actually buy it.
In the meantime, Campbell is equally witty and contentious on his blog, Fate of the Artist.
You have been properly instructed, now go be an artist.
It came to me in a dream
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