Category Archives: Charles Burns

October 5, 2024 · 5:38 pm

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.

What I got out of Burns’s new book is what I expected: a very satisfying read from a master storyteller. The monsters in a good Burns comic tend to remain off to the side, just out of view, unless provoked. It is the demons residing within each character that are the scariest and nearly impossible to get rid of. The trick is to find a way to cope. For Brian, he keeps his monsters up on the movie screen or tucked inside the television. And someday, if his filmmaking dreams pan out, he might get to control all the monsters.

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Filed under Charles Burns, Comics, Graphic Novel Reviews

Tagged as Art, Books, Charels Burns, comics, Entertainment, graphic novel, Horror, Media, Pop Culture, Publishing

September 20, 2014 · 8:14 am

Review: SUGAR SKULL by Charles Burns

Welcome to Hipsterville: SUGAR SKULL by Charles Burns

Welcome to hipsterville. If there is something that is both scary and fascinating to observe (like a train wreck) it is the activity of a hipster. Charles Burns completes his ode to the lives of hipsters gone terribly wrong in the final part of his Nitnit trilogy, “Sugar Skull.” Outside of a Stephen King novel, this new book by Burns offers up plenty to be creeped out over. Think of it as “Carrie” for the Gen X set.

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Review: X’ED OUT by Charles Burns

If you have not yet read what Charles Burns has been up to lately, don’t panic. You have options. There are two installments of his current wild ride, “X’ed Out” and “The Hive.” Both graphic novels can work as stand alones and you will do fine whether you read one first or the other. Essentially, this is a story that follows the main character mostly through flashbacks and alternates with his doppelganger in a parallel story set in a more cartoony and sinister world. Enjoy it as a multi-layered horror story. We’ll focus here on “X’ed Out,” the first graphic novel in the series which came out in 2010. And you can then proceed to a review of “The Hive” in the next post.

“X’ed Out” is as much about the angst of Generation X as it is a horror story. The two themes actually compliment each other rather nicely here. You will find equal amounts of supernatural horror and the self-inflicted horror of disaffected youth. Consider any art school crowd of a generation ago (or any generation, really) and you will find an inner core of self-loathing malcontented rebels ready to set the world on fire. What will it take? Start up a band? How about a magazine? But what will it ultimately take to make the pain go away? What happens when raw idealism and Prozac aren’t enough?

We begin with the cartoony doppelganger. He is sitting up after a restless sleep in an old fold out bed. He has a bandage across the side of his head which can’t be a good sign. He has no idea of where he is. And, once he makes his way out into the outside, we see that this is a very strange place he has found himself in. As we progress through the story, we see that this world is more real in some ways than the hipster world that Doug and his girlfriend, Sarah, are so enthralled by. It’s as if the chickens have come home to roost, as if all those extreme misfits staying up late at night have finally summoned up the Devil. There’s a hint that Sarah may have actually done something like that. And then there’s that strange bandage across the side of Doug’s head.

It really is easy to enjoy both of these installments in either order. Although you can sense the force of the narrative progressing from the first book to the second, the numerous transitions in both books can act as so many elements building up, providing clues. Who is the old man in the creepy cartoon world that Doug’s doppelganger is spying on? Wait, now we have a scene with the old man followed by a scene with Doug and they’re all wearing the same purple bathrobe . Is it a much older Doug in one scene? Maybe. But, in another scene, we know the old man is Doug’s father. “X’ed” will definitely leave you wondering about what will happen next, who is who, and what is what. It’s when the last book in the trilogy, “Sugar Skull,” arrives in 2014 that the sequence will be clear and the resolution unmistakable.

“X’ed Out” and “The Hive” are available in bookstores, comics shops and online. You will find in many shops that both books are neatly displayed side by side. Visit Pantheon Books.

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Filed under Charles Burns, Comics, Generation X, Graphic Novel Reviews, graphic novels, Hipsters, Horror, Pantheon

Tagged as Art School, Charles Burns, Entertainment, Generation X, graphic novels, Hipsters, Horror, Pop Culture, supernatural horror

January 8, 2013 · 5:51 pm

Review: THE HIVE by Charles Burns

If you are interested in seeing comics taken to their outer limits, the world of Charles Burns is the place for you. “The Hive” is the current installment in Mr. Burn’s work. He’s an artist, at the top of his game, not to be taken for granted. If there was a Mount Rushmore dedicated to comics, there he’d be, alongside Chris Ware, Daniel Clowes and Art Spiegelman, who all happen to be published by Pantheon. Once you put the awe aside, the story and art of “The Hive” sweep you away. This is a story within a story, life imitating art and vice versa, the innocuous mixed in with the surreal. In some respects, it is an even more enigmatic work than the previous, “X’ed Out.”

There is one key additional layer added since “X’ed Out.” We now see that Doug is looking back at his youth. So, we have yet another version of Doug, this time, in early middle-age. He hasn’t taken care of himself and looks tired and pudgy. He treats the woman he’s now involved with to endless analysis of what went wrong with Sarah, the love of his life. Those days of youthful angst are over and have been replaced with a deeper anxiety only possible once you’ve lived long enough to have your dreams crushed. There’s no more Sarah. She’s not coming back. Try to deal with that, Doug.

As in “X’ed Out,” we have Doug, the cocky provocateur performance artist compared to his doppelganger in a world stranger and more surreal than anything his art could imply. In “The Hive,” we add to that same young Doug, his older despondent self full of regret, full of his own well-earned horrific nightmares. Doug, you once surly youth, searching for pain, you have arrived.

Meanwhile, we follow Doug’s cartoon version as he toils away at a menial job in The Hive, a place run by lizards that appears to be breeding humans. Ultimately, Doug’s own personal misery pales in comparison to whatever is going on in that evil alternate world. The conclusion to this trilogy is entitled, “Sugar Skull,” and will surely be something to look forward to. Given that “X’ed Out” was published in 2010 and “The Hive” was published in 2012, we can expect “Sugar Skull” to come out in 2014.

“The Hive” is published by Pantheon. Visit them to find where to get your copy and learn more about this leading publisher of graphic novels.