Kindle Unlimited
Unlimited reading. Over 4 million titles. Learn more
Read for Free
OR
Kindle Price: $11.49

Save $3.50 (23%)

Promotions apply when you purchase

These promotions will be applied to this item:

Some promotions may be combined; others are not eligible to be combined with other offers. For details, please see the Terms & Conditions associated with these promotions.

Read with our free app
You've subscribed to ! We will preorder your items within 24 hours of when they become available. When new books are released, we'll charge your default payment method for the lowest price available during the pre-order period.
Update your device or payment method, cancel individual pre-orders or your subscription at
Your Memberships & Subscriptions

Buy for others

Give as a gift or purchase for a team or group.
Learn more

Buying and sending eBooks to others

  1. Select quantity
  2. Buy and send eBooks
  3. Recipients can read on any device

These ebooks can only be redeemed by recipients in the US. Redemption links and eBooks cannot be resold.
Kindle app logo image

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

QR code to download the Kindle App

Amazon book clubs early access
Loading your book clubs
There was a problem loading your book clubs. Please try again.
Not in a club? Learn more
Amazon book clubs early access

Join or create book clubs

Choose books together

Track your books
Bring your club to Amazon Book Clubs, start a new book club and invite your friends to join, or find a club that’s right for you for free.
Explore Amazon Book Clubs

Alec: The Years Have Pants Kindle & comiXology

by Eddie Campbell (Author, Artist) Format: Kindle Edition
4.0 4.0 out of 5 stars 20 ratings
See all formats and editions
For the first-time ever, the groundbreaking autobiographical comics of master cartoonist Eddie Campbell are collected in a single volume! Brilliantly observed and profoundly expressed, the Alec stories present a version of Eddie's own life, filtered through the alter ego of "Alec MacGarry." Witness Alec's progression "from beer to wine" - wild nights at the pub, existential despair, the hunt for love, the quest for art, becoming a "responsible breadwinner," feeling lost at his own movie premiere, and much more! At every point, the author's uncanny eye for irony and wry self-awareness makes even the smallest occasion into an opportunity for wit and wisdom. This edition collects the previous Alec books, as well as a generous helping of rare and never-before-seen material, including an all-new 35-page book, The Years Have Pants. 614 pages!
Previous page
  1. Part of Series
    Alec: The Years Have Pants
  2. Print length
    641 pages
  3. Language
    English
  4. Sticky notes
    Not Enabled
  5. Publisher
    Top Shelf Productions
  6. Publication date
    December 23, 2009
  7. File size
    594904 KB
  8. Page Flip
    Not Enabled
  9. Word Wise
    Not Enabled
  10. Enhanced typesetting
    Not Enabled
  11. See all details
Next page
  • Due to its large file size, this book may take longer to download
  • Read this book on comiXology. Learn more
Add a debit or credit card to save time when you check out
Convenient and secure with 2 clicks. Add your card

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Based on real accounts from author Eddie Campbell’s life, Alec: The Years Have Pants is full of virtually every emotion imaginable, all without seeming bogged down by too much content." — CBR

About the Author

Publishers Weekly calls Eddie Campbell "one of the premier cartoonists of his generation." Campbell has been writing and drawing comics since 1974, and is best known for his collaborations with Alan Moore (From Hell, A Disease of Language) and Neil Gaiman (The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains), as well as for Alec, his tour-de-force autobiographical series that Booklist called "a high-water mark in the graphic novel's short history," and the 1200-page epic Bacchus. Forthcoming is Bizarre Romance (in collaboration with Audrey Niffenegger).

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B01BMV4ZXI
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Top Shelf Productions (December 23, 2009)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ December 23, 2009
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 594904 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Not enabled
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 641 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.0 4.0 out of 5 stars 20 ratings

Customer reviews

4 out of 5 stars
4 out of 5
20 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Translate all reviews to English
Keglan
5.0 out of 5 stars Let's go have an ale at the King Canute
Reviewed in the United States on March 26, 2017
Verified Purchase
Alec, the alter ego of Eddie Campbell, chronicles his life from his younger days as a bar hopping Scot with a keen eye for the absurdities of life to a successful middle aged artist expatriate raising three children with his wife in Australia. The first time I read this I brought it to my wife's dentist appointment so I would have something to to read in the waiting room. I looked up to see several people staring at me after I had been laughing out loud. Any book that can do that gets five stars from me. His adventures at the King Canute, the trip to France, meeting the "man at the crossroads" (Paul Gravett, who publishes some of his early work in Escape magazine), his obsessions, working with "big hairy Alan Moore", his brothers-in-law trying to tell him to quit this cartooning nonsense and get a real job - these are only a few of the incidents Campbell shares with us. One brick of a book, chronicling a lifetime of observations. Highly recommended.
One person found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Ravanagh Allan
1.0 out of 5 stars There's Nothing in It
Reviewed in the United States on February 14, 2011
Whilst there is very nearly nothing in the writing of this book; it must be added that the pict's aren't up to much either. The only purpose these sketchy messes could possibly serve is to imply that the writer's on drugs (which he isn't).

But it's also worth noting that it's not so bad it's good, either -- even if in parts it seems to be trying to be, as it ceilings out at a post-modern level, taking (and "quoting") the over-trodden jaded path to 'cool', as though you won't notice (because he's in print and you're just a reader) that the exact same thing and nothing more has been being done for so long it's not funny!
One person found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Ruth García Martín
5.0 out of 5 stars Perfect
Reviewed in the United States on February 3, 2013
Verified Purchase
Todo a sido perfecto. Ha llegado antes de lo previsto y en perfectas condiciones. No tengo ninguna queja, muy al contrario.
Helpful
 Report
meeah
4.0 out of 5 stars In the summer, they wear shorts.
Reviewed in the United States on April 16, 2011
At nearly 700 pages, you have to be a pretty interesting and unique person to hold a reader's interest in your daily comings and goings. For the most part, I found Campbell's "life-story" only mildly engaging--his artwork, however, I found continually appealing, mainly on account of the variation of his style, not only from comic to comic, but often from panel to panel. His work can have an unfinished febrile sketch quality to it, a polished, "professional" illustration look, and anything and everything in between.

Really, you don't need to read any more of this review. In fact, Im inclined to delete the rest of it, but since I already wrote it, I cant seem to force myself to erase the tracks of my ruminations, if, for no other reason, that it would force me to double-back over the ground which I've already trod with the delete key...and I fear that, having erased those tracks, I may find myself compelled to make them again! You've been warned.

And yet here you still are. Please, don't blame me.

The problem with the autobiographical comic is this: if you resemble a normal human being, your story isnt that much different--or more interesting--than anyone else's. Why does a reader need to be bothered about your friends, your lovers, your quotidian life dramas when he or she has their own to absorb their attention? I mean, you have to be pretty darn bored with your own life to be interested in the minutiae of some stranger's boring life. And if you find parallels between your boring life and their boring life does that really make it any more interesting? Is it distracting and/or comforting to find other people's lives as pointless and boring as yours? Arent you now really just doubly bored? Why, I'm bored just having had to write the above few sentences. Aren't you bored having read them? Would you be interested in seeing drawings of me having written them? Or getting up, as I did in the middle of writing this review, to fix myself a hot chocolate? Are you interested in seeing a comic of me going to the supermarket as I'm going to have to do in a few minutes to pick up some more yogurt for dinner? Would you be interested in seeing a drawing of me talking on the phone to my mother?

Now if, let's say, Aleister Crowley or William Burroughs or Charles Manson, to name a few, were to write an autobiographical comic, *that* would be interesting. People who's lives and perceptions are really wacked out, they would make interesting subjects for autobiographical comics. But the sort of "warts-and-all" autobiographical comic where only a few carefully chosen warts are shown, only so many so as not to altogether disgust and alienate the reader while surreptitiously garnering his or her sympathy, such as "Alec" and it's legion of imitators are wont to do, too often seems an exercise in self-justification.

From what I understand, "Alec", like Pekar's "American Splendor" is considered to be one of the great monoliths of autobiographical comics and, as such, it deserves a place of honor in the history of the genre. But so many have come down the pike since then that "Alec" is somewhat diluted by all its subsequent imitators. Cant we say "enough already"? Can't we say that unless you're a real unadulterated unapologetic jerk and willing to expose yourself at your inhuman human worst don't bother writing an autobiographical comic?

But back, if only momentarily, to "Alec." Where this collection is strongest is where Campbell moves beyond strictly autobiographical themes, like when he deals with the challenges of pursuing the artistic life or when he tries to draw the history of humor. Or when he deals with his fear of mortality or his nagging, and apparently well-founded, suspicion that he drinks too much. When he waxes, in other words, philosophical.

All in all, in spite of all my caveats, its a good book. You can tell, I hope, that I respect it and it's author. It's also a heavy book. My arm must have grown about three extra inches lugging it around over the last two weeks. It must weigh about 65 pounds, even in paperback! If you buy it, may I also suggest you purchase a little hand-pulled wagon to carry it around on your travels? Or a llama. Or, better yet, both.
4 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
GraphicNovelReporter.com
5.0 out of 5 stars A Revelation of Humanity
Reviewed in the United States on June 21, 2010
Taking its cue from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock--"I grow old, I wear the bottom of my trousers rolled"--Alec: "The Years Have Pants" knows we change our pants from time to time, and how we do so details how we make our way through life. It's also the title of the new story that ends this massive compendium collecting Eddie Campbell's (almost complete) catalog of biographical comics works.

Campbell first began drawing his autobiographical comics back in the `70s. To protect the identity of his friends and family, he gave everyone a different name--including himself ("Alec MacGarry"). Alec has stood in for Eddie even since, as Campbell has continued through multiple publishers and multiple venues of his life. All of them (except for The Fate of the Artist, which is still in print from First Second) are found in Alec: "The Years Have Pants".

Today, it's a matter of course to see a comic biography. Comics memoirs are almost a dime a dozen, it seems. But that shouldn't negate the pure joy of experiencing a true master of the form explore the full range of its possibilities, from the mundane to the extraordinary. It's interesting to watch an intelligent, well-thought-out man delve into the ups and downs of his own life with care.

Campbell is a comics veteran, so he peppers his tales with stories of the growth of the industry itself (the mid-`80s burst that sees Alan Moore, Art Spiegelman, and others exploding with greatness coincides with the birth of Alec's first child, a nice parallel that Campbell doesn't miss out on).

The bottom line is this: If you want to see what a master of comics memoir does at the top of his form, Alec: "The Years Have Pants" is the book to read. Its 600 pages are a revelation of humanity.

-- John Hogan
3 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report

Top reviews from other countries

Micky
4.0 out of 5 stars Four Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 8, 2016
Verified Purchase
not finished yet but enyoing it so far, style takes a bit of time getting used to
Report
Report an issue

Does this item contain inappropriate content?
Report
Do you believe that this item violates a copyright?
Report
Does this item contain quality or formatting issues?
Report