Bacchus

Eddie Campbell's Bacchus reimagines the Greek god of wine as a shabby, immortal layabout still wandering the modern world, centuries after Olympus fell out of fashion — divine power faded, but too stubborn (or too drunk) to simply disappear.

Eddie Campbell's Bacchus is one of the most singular creations of the late Copper Age — a figure drawn from classical mythology and reimagined for the underground-inflected, literary wing of 1980s and '90s independent comics. Debuting in 1988 from Harrier, this is a character who inhabits a world where ancient legend rubs shoulders with the mundane, sharing his pages with the likes of Doc Stearn across a run that stretched into the mid-'90s. Campbell's deeply personal, scratchy linework gives Bacchus a voice unlike anything the mainstream publishers were producing at the time, and while the catalog footprint is modest, the devoted following this series earned speaks to just how special that vision was.