I thought that would only work if you do something drastically new, like colorize it.
At first they were like, Thats not gonna work, is it?
Its always been a black-and-white book.
Credit: Top Shelf Productions
That was in January, and we ended up with a September release date.
Im up to chapter 5 now.
Ive been working on this solidly for the last five months, and Im quite excited about it.
Eddie Campbell
Hes also editing and revising certain panels that have bugged him ever since.
EW caught up with Campbell to discuss the newFrom Hell.
Check that out below, along with a couple exclusive pages from the new colored edition.
Eddie Campbell
But with the computer, I can take what used to be black ink and make it red.
I can get a rich palette of color on the computer.
I thought Id love to go back toFrom Helland do it over again.
Eddie Campbell
Like what coach theyre driving.
Sometimes they tend to be driving a different coach from one panel to the next.
Im never an organized person.
A more organized artist would have made a little model.
I slipped a pal 10 quid to run off a reel of photos of Cleveland Street, for instance.
Nowadays we can Google it, and find everything on the internet.
I can find photographs of buildings that no longer exist, that I couldnt find before.
I can draw it properly this time.
Sometimes if things arent clear enough, I can go in and clarify whats going on.
With 600 pages, an artist can get lazy occasionally.
I mean notDave Gibbons, he never gets lazy.Watchmendoesnt have a single line out of place.
But then his world was made up.
Im trying to draw the actual Victorian London.
There were all kinds of obscurities and anomalies that I had to take into account.
Like sometimes were saying this person could have been here, but make it so its deniable.
I mean itmightbe, but who can say for certain?
I had to draw it in a way that was vague.
I remember when we used to hand-separate colors.
Its Eddie Campbell coloring, its not regular comic book coloring.
I did something for Marvel once, and there was a shine on peoples kneecaps and elbow points.
They always like to put these glistening highlights on everything.
The thing with the color is, it gives me another layer of expression to lay over everything.
Of all the layers of expression that are already inFrom Hell, it gives me another layer of suggestion.
I can make things more suggestive than it’s possible for you to in black and white.
In black and white I do it with the cross-hatching.
There are all these subtleties and differences, theres a million choices for everything Im looking at.
For somebody whos already familiar with it, itll be like for seeing it for the first time.
Have you been in contact with Alan Moore at all about this?Ive told Alan Im doing it.
He hasnt said anything so far.
I might jog his memory by getting the stuff to him in the next week or two.
If theres any dialogue thats wrong, nows his time to fix it.
Hes always talked about adding another appendix.
Everybody thinks theyve got the last word on it.
That was great fun doing that, we had a riot doing that in an almost comedic style.
Alan wants to do another one where he brings it up to date.
Im not promising that, because well probably have to beat him up to get it out.
Well have to tie him to the computer and make him pop in it out.
But well see, its a possibility.
The ledgers are incomplete, the final accounting has not been entered, because its a mystery.
What was it Popeye said?
I dont like mysteries on account of I cant understand em.
As long as it remains a mystery, people are gonna be writing books about it.
He was the first great serial murderer, before the term was even invented.
Son of Sam and all the others got caught, sent to jail, or executed.
But hes still out there!
Before that evil men tended to be kings or emperors or generals, people in a position of power.
We dont even know who this person was!
He couldve been some scallawag who escaped from the lunatic asylum, he couldve been a complete nobody.
We cant bear the thought that evil and horror are random.
Thats really whatFrom Hellis, its making a pattern out of all this madness.
I even like Queen Victoria.
I think we maligned her, weve treated her shoddily, I think she was wonderful.
I think the real William Gull was wonderful too, he was probably a great man.
As a doctor he wrote the paper analyzing and giving the name to anorexia nervosa.
That was one of the things he achieved.
Hes not just this obscure figure, he did things that are still relevant to the present age.
I prefer to think weve created a madman who just happens to have the same name as him.
I think weve created a villain on the scale of Hannibal Lecter.
Like in early afternoon it rains and all the color drains out.
The light always looks differently when its catching things that are wet.
I thoroughly enjoyed the different colors at different times of day, I got really into it.
I think that will be the most enjoyable chapter in the book.
Other people just want to see the red blood, but Im a sensible human being.
