Campbell is perhaps best known for illustrating Alan Moore’s acclaimed From Hell (2000), but the comics he writes as well as draws are equally accomplished if less monumental.  The strongest, such as The Fate of the Artist (2006), are quasi-autobiographical, while recent, more fanciful excursions have a cockeyed charm.  Case in point; this whimsical chronicle of young Etienne, who assumes his uncle’s identity as Monsieur Leotard, the original Man on the Flying Trapeze, as well as the leadership of his uncle’s motley traveling circus.  Etienne leads the troupe, which includes a quartet of performers reminiscent of a superpowered foursome that would hit the comics pages a century later, in a series of adventures coinciding with such epochal events as the Siege of Paris and the wreck of the Titanic.  Campbell’s deftly casual watercolors are as delightful as the freewheeling story, and his formal playfulness matches the tale’s whimsy, with action occurring on the margins and outside the panels and pages incorporating everything from ersatz newspaper accounts and sheet music to Etienne’s childlike notebook drawings.  -- Booklist