Charles Burns

Spooky intensity with the surreal allure of precision brushwork. Charles Burns work feels as calculated and unsympathetic as a nightmarish vision of some parallel dimension, yet irresistible as it demands curiosity like some strange drug. Charles gained initially gained recognition in the pages of Heavy Metal fantasy magazine where he was noticed by Art Spiegelman who invited him to be a part of the RAW magazine phenomenon.


From Raw Vol. 2, number 1. Circa 1992

"Strange Stories for Strange Kids", and anthology of comic book stories for kids, circa 2001

From the "El Borbah" collection of stories.




I think this was used as the cover image of a foreign edition (Korean?) of "Sugar Skull".




This book was more recently reprinted in hardback by Fantagraphics in 2006 under the title "El Borbah" who is the featured character in these stories. Unfortunately it also has a different cover.

The cat from the X'ed out series.

This is an image from Burn's novel length story titled Black Hole. Honestly it's not one of my favorite stories by Burns as it seems to be mostly a horrific account of the tension filled atmosphere involved with having indiscriminate sex during the 1970s when sexually transmitted diseases were taking off, but the story is certainly weird, and the art is excellent.



From "Facetasm", a wacky flip book of face combinations made in collaboration with Gary Panter.

I believe this was a promotional image for for X'ed Out, but I don't know where it first appeared.


I believe this was from the back cover of the original printing of the El Borbah stories, "Hard Boiled Defective Stories" circa 1989.

 
I'm not certain whether this was done by Burns, but if not it is a fitting tribute.





Pantheon books, 2010, the first in a trilogy. The follow up titles are "The Hive" and "Sugar Skull". For whatever reason, foreign editions of this book have different tiles, and even images in some cases.


Typical hauntingly weird imagery from X'ed Out. For all of its horrific elements, I was quite surprised by the relatively tame and almost familiar ending. I was kind of ready for some form of really spectacular conspiracy type of ending, something very cosmic and terrible in scope, but it turns out that most of bizarre-ness is really just inner, psychological reflections of the main character.


I believe this is from "Black Hole", but I'm not for sure on this.


One of the dozens of magazine illustration portraits Burns has done over the years.

A freakish image that appeared in the Little Lit children's comics anthology. I hope the children who saw this were mentally unharmed.

Another terrific image circa 1992. I believe this might be called "Goon Squad" but I don't know if that's a story name or a comic title or just the name of the picture? It's ironic that the least scary of Burn's images are the ones that have "horror" themes.