Art & Creativity Quote by Eddie Campbell

It lands like a shrug, but it cuts like an invoice. Eddie Campbell compresses an entire modern creative career into two brisk sentences: hired at a distance, discarded just as efficiently. The phrasing is almost proudly unglamorous - "zoomed me over there" turns what should be a logistical detail into the point. The work relationship isn’t built on proximity, mentorship, or even mutual curiosity; it’s a link, a call, a transaction. Then the punchline: "they ended up sacking me". No melodrama, no grievance narrative, just the flat report of someone who’s seen the pattern enough times to treat it as weather.

As an artist who’s spent decades navigating comics, publishing, and the prestige economy around them, Campbell knows how institutions talk about creators: "They asked" sounds like respect, an invitation into the room. "They" also stays faceless, which is its own critique. The power isn’t personal; it’s procedural. You’re brought in for your voice, then removed when the timeline shifts, the budget tightens, the politics change, or someone decides they want the benefits of your labor without the complications of you.

The subtext is less about one firing than about the gig economy’s emotional logic: opportunities arrive packaged as validation, then evaporate without explanation. Campbell’s dry delivery is the defense mechanism - wit as self-preservation. If you can tell it like a joke, you don’t have to beg it to be a tragedy.