FINAL CUT by Charles Burns graphic novel review

Honestly, this is the only graphic novel that matters right now.

Final Cut. Charles Burns. Pantheon. 2024. 224pp. $34.00.

Honestly, Final Cut is the only graphic novel that matters right now. And we’re about to take a look at it. Everything about it, from the title on down, is true to the artist’s vision. Charles Burns had to invent his place in comics. As he has said himself, the underground comics of the 1960s had receded into the twilight around the time he came of age. There was no alt-comics scene when it was Charles Burns up to bat. He had to create a whole new thing. Yes, there were other cartoonists of his generation in the same boat but Burns brought in such a distinctive and original vision that only a few others could stand alongside. In recent years, perhaps Burns wondered if he could still pull a rabbit out of his hat. Well, that is not asking the right question. It’s more just a matter of when and now we have a new book. Burns’s comics are typically set in the atmospheric woodlands of the Pacific Northwest, circa 1970, and this one is no different. No need to change a winning format.

Boy Meets Girl. Boy Obsesses Over Girl.

It’s a new book following in a well established Burns tradition of alienation nation, just what the doctor ordered if what ails you is a need for the extraordinary. This is the story of one young man’s need for the transcendent, and his inability to rise to the occasion when he comes face to face with it. What’s wrong with him? Maybe it has to do with him being a teenager, a little too young for his own good. When he met the girl, he flinched. He didn’t win her over. Instead, he did quite the opposite: he obsessed over her.

At the movies!

As much as this book is about horror movies, from classics to B-movies, this is also about fan culture and the fans who have a need greater than they can fully express to other people. There is no way that Brian is going to connect on a deep level with Laurie. Maybe when he’s older but not now while he’s in high school and that’s all he’s got. At this point in his life, he is driven to tears by the disturbing ending of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. He took Laurie, on a just-friends-date, to see it at the local movie theater but, no such luck, she didn’t really get it. So, for now, his love of horror movies is all he’s got. And that’s not too bad. He’s a budding filmmaker after all.

My last reading of Charles Burns goes back to the trilogy (X’ed Out, The Hive, Sugar Skull) he did about a decade or so ago. Before that, I read Black Hole when it came out in singles. By comparison, this new full length graphic novel feels as grounded as Black Hole and more accessible, even personal. Brian feels a bit more like an alter ego. The reader is supposed to be sympathetic to Brian. He seems a little off but, at the same time, he seems to be figuring out things at his own pace. For now, he has an unstable mother to attend to and he’s got the afternoon horror movie on local TV to help him cope.