by Mike Favila, Senior Editor
I loved From Hell when I first bought the original version many years ago. The dense characterizations and interweaving plotlines, effortlessly mixed with Eddie Campbell’s casual, yet detailed, artwork, made for a great read. I think I read through it a few times immediately after, in an effort to catch and understand everything. Of course, this was before smartphones. Otherwise, I would have probably spent hours just reading through everybody’s interpretations online.
Top Shelf has released the From Hell: Master Edition, and it’s a brand new experience. Everything has been recolored carefully by Mr. Campbell, and certain pages/panels have been completely redone. I’m going through each chapter slowly and just enjoying the clarity and extra depth that the coloring has added. Additionally, the Appendices are still available to cross reference and enhance the reader’s understanding.
ComicsOnline: How did the idea for this new edition of From Hell come about?
Eddie Campbell: It’s the 20th anniversary of From Hell’s original publication and my publisher, IDW/Topshelf pitched the idea of doing something special with the book. Like for example, the kind of stuff you get in DVD extras. But I had already used up everything of that nature when I did the From Hell Companion in 2014.
However, I had just finished colorizing some other stuff of mine for my new website at eddiecampbelldammit.com (The Emptynesters — do check it out for some free laffs) so the first thing I thought of was, why don’t I color the whole book? Thirty years ago when we started From Hell, there wasn’t really an option of doing it in color. The economics of it was too hazardous to even think about. So through the ‘90s when we were putting From Hell out in parts (eleven of ‘em) we had three different publishers go out of business on us. I wound up publishing the big collected edition myself at first, and full color was too big for me to handle, working out of the front room of the house.
But here we are now and I’ve done a number of books in color in the last twenty years. It took a while, but I figured out how to get what I want from the computer. SoI felt that at last that a full color From Hell was within reach. Things have changed in recent times, with globalization and all. You can get a workable price for full color in Korea and China. Took me two years to do the work though.
CO: The press release had mentioned that you wanted to correct a few things that had been bothering you. Did you have a list of them ready to go, or was it more of fixing things here and there as the coloring process went along?
EC: In twenty years I had come to pile up quite a catalogue of things, in my head, that needed to be fixed. In that time a book gets to be so that one just can’t look at it any more. For example, if you look at the last two panels of Chapter 6, page 4, Abberline arrives home which we see from the outside, then when we go inside, the hinges have switched from one side of the front door to the other. Something like that is easily fixed, just flip that one panel. Then there were more complicated problems. In the original black and white version, Chapter 4 page 27-28, we had Gull going across Tower Bridge in the script, which was still being built at the time. So I sent Gull over a different bridge and split one page of Alan’s script into two pages of art. But after a while I came to think that wasn’t right. The density of text on the two pages was now lighter than the density of the rest of the chapter. I came to see a better way of doing it and that the extra page was unnecessary. It involved throwing out a few panels and consolidating the information into a new one I would have to draw.
So those are two examples of things I wanted to fix, and really there were dozens of them, quite a few requiring replacement images. Sometimes it was for a scene where I had inadequate reference for how it actually looked, sometimes there was a panel where I felt my interpretation was off. But readers who loved the original may be assured that Han still shoots first.
CO: How did you go about replacing or upgrading the panels that you wanted to correct? Can you talk us a little bit about your process?
EC: In the old days we’d have to draw a new picture and paste it over the old one with glue and then worry like blazes that the past-up lines would show. You’d end up having to do a lot of redrawing. It’s so much cleaner fixing this kind of problem in Photoshop and Indesign. Then there is the Wacom tablet, with which I was able to make lines that look like they were made with an old fashioned flexible nib, which is important when you’re talking about From Hell.
CO: Did you speak with Alan about the new edition?
Briefly, at the beginning, and he had some thoughts about it, but in the end I mostly just forged ahead solo.
CO: Do you feel like the From Hell: Master Edition supplants the original, or is more of a companion? I know you called it the Master Edition, but fans tend to get so attached to the original at times.
EC: I’ll always keep the old one around here, but sometimes we keep an old book more for the smell of it than for the contents.
CO: How do you feel now that the From Hell: Master Edition is available to the public? It’s been an extensive process!
EC: Firstly, it was satisfying to look at it and see that nothing had gone wrong in the production. Except for one silly-assed mistake. There is always one of those. But I won’t talk about that now or ever. One must bear one’s self-inflicted hurt to the grave.
CO: What project are you looking forward to working on next?
EC: I have a book that I have finished but it’s all snagged up because of the current world situation and I don’t want to talk about it yet. Readers who want more of me may have missed my most recent books, Bizarre Romance and The Goat Getters.
CO: What’s the best way for your fans to keep up with you?
EC: twitter @ecampbelldammit
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