The Rumpus has a fantastic interview up with Eddie Campbell, first talking about the collection of his Alec stories, “The Years Have Pants,” but ultimately going through his career, the state of making comics, his fan reactions, etc.
Here’s a great highlight:
Campbell: No, the reason I got out of it was because it was becoming more—the business model that existed when I went in had now evolved into another model. When I came in, I was supplying to the comic book shops, and there are no returns in that market. The publisher gets a smaller percentage, but he’s not taking returns. That makes all the difference. The retailer takes the risk. They’re specialists, they know their subject. It was a retailer who designed the scheme in the first place, and proposed it to the publishers. With the swift breakdown of that market through the late nineties, in order to survive we had to deal more and more with the regular bookstores, and these are two market types that have trouble interfacing. It’s like taking electrical appliances abroad. I was grappling with it up to the point where our bookstore distributor went bankrupt, owing me about $50,000. Then I thought “I don’t know how this works anymore.” This was supposed to be our safety net, dealing with the bookstores. Because one market wasn’t working, we go to the other market. And the first thing that happens is our distributor in the new field goes bankrupt. The terrain was getting too rocky, too mountainous, too impossible to negotiate. In fact, three years after my distributor went bankrupt the printer of From Hell went bankrupt as well, owing us $20,000, and we were in trouble because we were still working the old way with big sheets of negative film, and no digital files. The whole thing was just impossible. I don’t know how I survived it. Because everywhere I turned there seemed to be a disaster. That’s the reason I gave up.
Ronnie Scott certainly deserves a medal for transcribing all this stuff, in addition to asking such insightful questions. Want to read more? Click here for the rest of the interview.
