Bacchus (comics)

AUTHOR: Campbell, Eddie; Campbell, Mark; Kublick, Wes; Moore, Marcus; White, Daren

ARTIST: Eddie Campbell (illustrator); Ed Hillyer (illustrator); Dylan Horrocks (illustrator); Teddie Kristiansen (illustrator); Wes Kublick (illustrator); Marcus Moore (illustrator); Peter Mullins (illustrator); April Post (illustrator); Steve Stamatiadis (illustrator)

PUBLISHER: Harrier Comics; Dark Horse Comics; Eddie Campbell Comics

FIRST SERIAL PUBLICATION: 1987-2001

FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION: 1995-2010

Publication History

In 1984, British publisher Harrier Comics, wanting to take advantage of the increasing popularity of black-and-white comics, consulted with Eddie Campbell and others about a line of “new wave” comics. The first issue of Deadface, introducing Campbell’s character Bacchus, appeared in April, 1987. Harrier folded in late 1988, after publishing eight issues of Deadface and two of the spin-off series Bacchus.

Campbell took the Bacchus series to Dark Horse Comics, which published the new four-issue miniseries Deadface: Earth, Water, Air and Fire, written with Wes Kublick, in 1992. Stories featuring another Deadface character appeared in the anthology comic Cheval Noir from November, 1989, to May, 1991, illustrated by Ed Hillyer; these stories were reprinted by Dark Horse as a three-issue miniseries, The Eyeball Kid, in 1992. The 1,001 Nights of Bacchus was released in 1993.

Many of the Bacchus stories first appeared in Dark Horse’s main anthology title, Dark Horse Presents (DHP). In 1991, these stories, including several written by or with Kublick, were reprinted in the three-issue miniseries Deadface: Doing the Islands with Bacchus. DHP also published “Afterdeath,” written with Kublick, in 1991, and the story arcs Hermes Versus the Eyeball Kid and The Picture of Doreen Grey in 1993-1994 and 1995, respectively. Dark Horse republished Hermes Versus the Eyeball Kid as a three-issue miniseries in 1994-1995. In 1995, the company published a one-issue color story, The Ghost in the Glass, that is not reprinted in the books.

Stories featuring Bacchus also appeared in A1, a black-and-white anthology comic published by the British company Atomeka Press, in 1989, and Trident, the anthology of Trident Comics (also British), in 1990.

In 1995, with the encouragement of Dave Sim, Campbell began to self-publish as Eddie Campbell Comics (ECC). Campbell states that he was happy with his creative freedom at Dark Horse and that the move was purely for financial reasons. For six years, ECC reissued the Bacchus stories in comic book format, added new material to the series, and began to produce the trade paperbacks, for which Campbell reworked earlier material, sometimes substantially.

Plot

The series presents a genre-bending combination of myth, adventure, crime, near-superheroic battles, romance, tender character study, and philosophy. The first story arc, in Volumes 1 and 2, alternates between present-day stories and explanations of the characters’ pasts. Because the gods are not truly immortal, they fight over what power is left and try to settle old scores while they can.

In the United States, Joe Theseus’s hit men ambush Bacchus in a bar, killing Bacchus’s acolytes. Theseus leaves town, but is found on his departing plane by the Eyeball Kid. Theseus and the Eyeball Kid fight, their plane crashes in Belize, and they become guards and attendants for a rich widow in Guatemala. Theseus then returns to the United States, where the police are investigating the bar shoot-out. When enemies of Theseus set him up for a hit, the Kid, who has accompanied Theseus, destroys them.

Meanwhile, the Telchines plan to use a leech from the river Styx to steal Zeus’s thunderbolt power from the Kid, who previously stole it from Zeus himself. They kidnap the Kid and the leech takes the power, but the Telchines do not know how to access it. The Telchines are also involved in the death of Theseus’s child and the suicide of his wife. In remorse, Theseus leaves everything behind, tears out his eyes, and lives under the sea.

The third volume leaves the plot of the previous two to follow Bacchus on a trip around the Greek islands, accompanied by Hermes and Simpson. He gains short-term acolytes and tells stories from mythology and history, many of them about himself or wine. Bacchus also encounters Tam O’Shanter and goes to see a Greek showing of the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).

The main story returns in Volumes 4 and 5, the former of which focuses on the Kid. He seems to find a spiritual mentor, but in fact she leads him back to the Telchines. The Telchines have an Old West-style showdown with the Kid until they are interrupted by Hermes, who fights using an enormous glove. The Kid escapes with the leech and becomes entrapped within it, but manages to regain the power of Zeus. When the Kid attacks the Telchines, Chalcon dies and Chryson escapes.

Earth, Air, Water and Fire connects Greek mythology to crime and politics in modern-day Sicily. Still underwater, Theseus meets and falls in love with a water-breathing woman who turns out to be one of his daughters, sent to him by the Kabeiroi. This volume also introduces the Eye of Past Futurity and the Eye of Fate, powerful false eyes made by Hephaestus for Bacchus and the Kid. The Kid kills the Kabeiroi, and then he and Theseus literally crash into Bacchus and Simpson. During an escape from jail, Simpson dies for the final time.

1,001 Nights of Bacchus is a collection of stories unrelated to the main plot. The framing conceit is that patrons of a pub, the Traveller’s Joy, must tell stories to keep Bacchus awake so the owner will stay open and serve drinks after hours. The end introduces the Castle and Frog, which will reappear in Volume 9.

The final volumes concentrate on the main plot, though not necessarily on Bacchus. In Volume 7/8, the Eyeball Kid and Hermes engage in an epic fight, while Chryson and Eva, the niece and heir of Don Skylla from Volume 5, watch the fight from a blimp. The ending of this story implies that the battle between the Kid and Hermes is eternal and irresolvable. Though blind, Theseus gains the ability to see the patterns of fate, which are apparently drawn with a Spirograph. Big Ginny, Queen of the Amazons, is destined to become Theseus’s thirty-fifth wife, but a fading actress named Doreen Grey wants Ginny’s face to replace the transplanted one her body is rejecting. In the end, Doreen lives in Ginny’s body, and in the realm of fate, Theseus meets God (drawn by Campbell’s grade-school-age daughter), becomes God, and lives happily ever after with Ginny’s soul.

With Theseus’s story resolved and that of Hermes and the Kid in eternal balance, the two final volumes concentrate on Bacchus. The Castle and Frog declares itself an independent state, governed by Bacchus, but it is beset by both the British police and eternal enemies of drink: the small, demonlike Screaming Habdabs, Bacchus’s archenemy Delirium Tremens, and the abstemious Mr. Dry. Bacchus is pursued through various pictures, in which he meets the new love of his life, Collage. Life in the pub is joyful and chaotic; along the way, Campbell satirizes the police, political collectives, and, above all, comics. Finally, an explosion destroys the pub and hurls into space a giant wood phallus, a carved likeness of Bacchus’s own.

This exhibitionism by proxy leads to Banged Up, a more somber and somewhat more coherent story of Bacchus in jail. His cell mate declares himself an acolyte but only makes Bacchus’s life difficult. Collage visits, showing Bacchus their baby. Instead of the mythic interpolations of most previous stories or the narratives of 1,001 Nights, this volume primarily presents the histories of the various inmates. In the conclusion, Bacchus meets Theseus, who is now God, before ending up living happily with Collage; the Eyeball Kid is robbing banks with Eva; and Hermes takes a well-earned rest.

Volumes

•Eddie Campbell’s Bacchus, Book 1:Immortality Isn’t Forever (1995). Collects Deadface, issues 1-4. With the second volume, forms the indispensable core of the series. Introduces Bacchus and other important characters while retelling certain Greek myths through the eyes of the protagonist.

•Eddie Campbell’s Bacchus, Book2:The Gods of Business (1996). Collects Deadface, issues 5-8. Provides more action than Volume 1 and introduces the Telchines.

•Eddie Campbell’s Bacchus, Book3:Doing the Islands with Bacchus (1997). Collects material from DHP, issues 32, 37, 40, 42, 46, 52, 71; A1, issues 1-3; Trident, issues 1, 2, 4, 5; and Harrier’s Bacchus, issues 1-2. Leaves the main plot to accompany Bacchus on a present-day trip around the Greek islands.

•Eddie Campbell’s Bacchus, Book4:The Eyeball Kid—One Man Show (1998). Collects material from Cheval Noir, issues 3, 5, 7, 9, 12, 15, 17, 18, and Dark Horse Insider, Volume 2, issue 3. More linear than many later volumes, but still strikingly creative. Focuses on the Eyeball Kid.

•Eddie Campbell’s Bacchus, Book5:Earth, Water, Air and Fire (1998). Collects the Dark Horse miniseries of the same name. Connects ancient Greek mythology to crime and politics in modern-day Sicily. Features Joe Theseus as a main character.

•Eddie Campbell’s Bacchus, Book6:The 1,001 Nights of Bacchus (2000). Collects material from Trident, issues 6-8; Dark Horse’s story arc The 1,001 Nights of Bacchus; and material from ECC’s Bacchus,issues 15, 32, 33, 35-38, 40, 42, and 43. Unrelated to the main plot, apart from introducing the Castle and Frog. Features various amusing mythical stories told in a dazzling variety of ways.

•Eddie Campbell’s Bacchus, Book7/8:The Eyeball Kid Double Bill (2002). Collects the Hermes Versus the Eyeball Kid story arc from DHP, issues 76-84, and the Picture of Doreen Grey story arc from DHP, issues 94-99. Resolves the main story line of Theseus, Hermes, and the Eyeball Kid, while implying that their stories can never truly be resolved.

•Eddie Campbell’s Bacchus, Book9:King Bacchus (1996). Collects material from ECC’s Bacchus, issues 2-15. Comprises a single story in which Bacchus rules over a tavern that declares itself an independent country. More metafictional than most story lines in the series.

•Eddie Campbell’s Bacchus, Book10:Banged Up (2001). Collects material from ECC’s Bacchus, issues 16-31. A relatively somber story of Bacchus in jail, featuring many interesting and minor characters.

Characters

•Bacchus, the protagonist but not always the focus, is the Greek god of wine and ecstasy. In the comic book, he looks like an old, rough sailor with one eye, and occasionally has horns. He is down-to-earth, preferring to drink wine in a pub rather than pursue world-shaking intrigue, and his sardonic views expose the follies of gods and human beings alike.

•Joe Theseus is the legendary slayer of the Minotaur. He is also the son of Poseidon, the god of the sea. He drinks seawater from his divine father’s skull in order to remain young and handsome. He has become the head of a crime cartel and is an incorrigible womanizer, with former lovers and illegitimate descendants around the globe.

•The Eyeball Kid, the series’ most original and engaging character, is the grandson of Argus, the hundred-eyed guardian who was slain by Hermes. The Eyeball Kid has nineteen eyes, having lost one via an arrow of Athena. When Zeus catches him with Hera, he gains Zeus’s power by trickery, then kills Zeus and most of the gods, largely by accident. He speaks in a fractured slang full of telling malapropisms.

•Hermes is the other remaining Olympian, aging but much younger in both looks and physical strength than Bacchus. His major goal is to retrieve the dead souls that escaped when the Telchines killed Hades and fled to the land of the living, leaving the afterlife in chaos. He and the Kid are archenemies because Hermes slew Argus.

•The Telchines are lesser-known figures from Greek mythology, probably based on the original gods of Rhodes. Originally, they were skilled metallurgists, killed by the gods for malevolent magic; in this series, they have established themselves in the present as rich businessmen and consider themselves gods of capitalism. Clever Chryson is accompanied by musclemen Chalcon and Argyron.

•The Kabeiroi, lesser-known figures of Greek myth, were underworld gods worshiped in a mystery cult associated with Hephaestus. In the series, they begin as apprentices to the god of smiths and become an inbred, greedy, and unpleasantly fat secret society seeking Theseus’s protection.

•Simpson is Bacchus’s assistant and friend, a modern American professor of literature who was taken to Hades’s hell by mistake and escaped when Hades was killed. Simpson’s relationship with Bacchus is understated but moving, and he provides a chilling perspective on death and life.

•Collage is Bacchus’s wife and the mother of his child. She is absurd looking but attractive, wears outrageous outfits or nothing at all, and has a surrealistic way of speaking.

Artistic Style

Credit for specific jobs on the books is not always clear, because Campbell began a studio in which various people contributed various work as needed. This is especially true of the art; sometimes Campbell would draw a face while someone else would illustrate the rest of the figure. Even Campbell often does not recall who did what. However, the Bacchus books do show an overall consistent approach.

The two most-mentioned characteristics of the style of Bacchus are its extreme energy and its great flexibility. While some panels seem relatively static, others surge with action. Close-ups are intercut with long views, and the juxtaposition of various viewpoints and perspectives creates a high level of energy.

Campbell’s art has been described in terms ranging from scratchy to luxurious, with a variety of approaches that includes photocollage. The Bacchus books deliberately explore various established styles, such as that of 1980’s superhero comics, 1960’s and 1970’s pinup girls, and minimalistic caricature. The style also varies by mood, from light and airy to dark, blocky, and somber. The series’ art is as eclectic as its characterization, mythology, and plotting, while still evincing the control of one experimental yet targeted sensibility.

Themes

The most basic concern in Bacchus is stories: how they are shaped by the teller, how they change over time, and how they are used to codify and explore human existence. Bacchus and many other characters both tell and listen to stories, a kind of currency that is subject to myriad uses but is not easily abused. Related to this is the characters’ witty and moving dialogue, demonstrating a love of language.

Power is another major theme. Bacchus is a lord of misrule, governing ungovernable situations and populations, whether in a pub or a prison. The work provides overt political commentary via Chryson’s praise of rapacious capitalism, the police in King Bacchus, and the hierarchies of both guards and prisoners in Banged Up, among other examples. Those who seek power rarely do well, whether it is Zeus being killed by the Eyeball Kid or the Kid and Hermes forever locked in battle. The work implies that instead of seeking power and control, it is better to relax with some nice wine and a good spouse. Some of the plots and many of the stories within the series concern dynasties of fathers and sons, such as the Titans and the Olympians or Bacchus and his child. Women are weaker figures in the earlier volumes, but this is counteracted by later characters such as Collage and Eva.

Violence is not so much a theme as an always-available device to advance the stories. The gouged-out eyes of Bacchus, the Kid, and Theseus may have more to do with a theme of perceptiveness, or the lack thereof, than a theme of violence.

Impact

While Marvel Comics had long used mythology as a basis for superheroes, Bacchus used it in a new way. Campbell’s take is momentous yet wry and self-aware, firmly historical but wildly innovative. Preceding Neil Gaiman’s TheSandman (1989-1996) by almost two years, it might have been either an inspiration or a result of the same creative zeitgeist.

The style of the work is inimitable but nonetheless influenced others to take the genre seriously, to take it in unexpected directions, and to develop their own styles. Campbell encouraged others at Trident, such as Phil Hester, who much later explored the cosmic and comic in Golly! (2008-2009), and Paul Grist, creator of Jack Staff (2003-2009) and the comedic crime series Burglar Bill (2003). Bacchus specifically and ECC in general both played pivotal roles in the black-and-white comics revolution of the 1980’s and the self-publishing movement of the 1990’s, helping to reestablish an experimental sensibility that had begun with the underground comics of the 1960’s.

Further Reading

Hester, Phil, and Brook Turner. Golly! (2008-2009).

Shanower, Eric. Age of Bronze (1998- ).

Templeton, Ty. Stig’s Inferno (1984-1986).

Bibliography

Campbell, Eddie. “Eddie Campbell.” Interview by Dirk Deppey. The Comics Journal 273 (January, 2006): 66-114. Excerpt available at http://archives.tcj.com/273/i‗campbell.html.

Kreiner, Rich. “Lust for Life, Man! Twenty-Five Years of Eddie Campbell.” The Comics Journal 220 (February, 2000): 45-56.

Vollmar, Rob. “The Importance of Being Bacchus.” The Comics Journal 273 (January, 2006): 62-65.