Episode 615 - Eddie Campbell

Cartoonist & historian Eddie Campbell returns to the show with his fantastic new book, KATE CAREW: America's First Great Woman Cartoonist (Fantagraphics Underground), which explores turn-of-the-(20th)-century artist, cartoonist, illustrator, caricaturist, interviewer & journalist Kate Carew. We get into how Eddie discovered Kate's work while researching The Goat-Getters, how Kate wound up interviewing the likes of Mark Twain, Picasso, the Wright Brothers, and other celebs (& non-celebs) of her time, how her self-caricatures serve as a sorta graphic autobiography (and precursor to the whole world of graphic memoir storytelling), her support of women's suffrage, and how I accidentally semi-sorta inspired Eddie to make this book. We also talk about how Kate's story evades sentimentality, how Eddie & Audrey Niffenegger formed the Digital Art Burglars firm™, what he's learned from exploring the early history of American cartooning, why his next book is about the Midwest school of cartooning, how he wound up writing the comics histories he wanted to read, and why he had to pull a page from this book due to a complaint from the printer. Plus we discuss his new graphic novel about how he met Audrey, how his comic strip of the Pajama Girl, a murder victim in Sydney, led to him working with Alan Moore on From Hell, his life-lessons about making every pitch & taking every job that was offered, and why Kate Carew was such an enormous outlier in the world of cartooning. Follow Eddie on Bluesky • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal and via our e-newsletter