The things you stumble across when you Google yourself- TOTAL ECLIPSE is, in its own words,”An Ill-Adviced Re-Reading of All Comics Published by Eclipse Comics”. Eclipse was a comics publisher which existed from 1978 to 1994, run by husband-and-wife team Dean Mullaney and cat yronwode, which published hundreds of comics including early work by Eddie Campbell, Scott McCloud and Dave Stevens, and was the original publisher for my first graphic novel DAVID CHELSEA IN LOVE. The unnamed blogger has taken it on himself to re-read Eclipse’s entire comics output, as well SOME of the trading cards which were their other notable business (but not BLOCKBUSTERS OF RHYTHM & BLUES, the Eclipse card set I illustrated with text by Barry & Pat Katzmann).
David Chelsea is watching: The Savages
starring Laura Linney
The Blogger is not an indiscriminate Eclipse booster by any means- he is quite scathing even about some of Eclipse’s more admired projects, including the Iran-Contra journalistic graphic novel BROUGHT TO LIGHT, but he is rather complimentary about DAVID CHELSEA IN LOVE:
This was one of the few late-stage Eclipse books I bought at the time, and I was hugely taken by it. Just as with Alec, it seemed like a new, fresh twist on autobiographical comics. Even if that new twist was basically making the storyline feel like an independent romantic comedy.
One nice feature about the Blogger’s approach is that he goes back to the original four-issue comics run, which means he can reproduce and comment on some features that didn’t make it into the book reprint, including the previous-issue recaps, the full-color covers, including this Maxfield Parrish-inspired wraparound:
and this publisher’s letter by cat:
TOTAL ECLIPSE: THE BLOG
TOTAL ECLIPSE on DAVID CHELSEA IN LOVE
DAVID CHELSEA IN LOVE also makes it into THE ART OF THE GRAPHIC MEMOIR, a just-published instructional book by Tom Hart, author of the best-selling graphic novel ROSALIE LIGHTNING:
Hart uses my book as a textbook example in his chapter about Finding A Visual Style:
Hart makes the point that author-David’s obsessively detailed style parallels character-David’s obsession:
David is obsessed, and his drawing shows this obsession: little dots of stippling, loads of detail in backgrounds, clothing and expressions. Through the visual style the book celebrates the awkwardness of the whole affair.
You can buy Tom’s book by following this link:
And even though DAVID CHELSEA IN Love is out of print, Amazon has the book reprint used: