Eddie Campbell started calling his hand-stapled comics “small press” in 1981 when everybody else was saying “alternative” “underground” and “”zines.” He takes some pleasure in seeing that the term has stuck. He self-published his comic book Bacchus for 60 issues as well as the collected From Hell (with Alan Moore). His autobiographical concoctions form his favorite strain of his own work. This strain was collected in Alec: The Years Have Pants and emerges again in his new back-to-back reversible book, The Second Fake Death of Eddie Campbell / The Fate of the Artist.

He has earned the reputation as one of the great raconteurs in the medium of comics. His other collaborations include The Birth Caul and Snakes & Ladders (also with Alan Moore), two moving and personal poems adapted into the comics form, and The Playwright (with Daren White), a dark comedy about the sex life of a celibate middle-aged man.