The official CHARLES BURNS thread

[Prince Namor]

I think Charles Burns deserves his own thread.

Hopefully, everyone caught my post on his latest release back last summer

Charles Burns X'ed Out

 

Anyway, I'll dig some other stuff out later, but I just got this in today:

[Ken Aldred]

Great indie creator.

 

I have the Fantagraphics collections - Skin Deep, Big Baby and El Borbah, and the Black Hole GN. I think of him as a modern version of Al Feldstein to some degree, there's a similar tension and creepiness in his artwork.

[Prince Namor]

Great indie creator.

 

I have the Fantagraphics collections - Skin Deep, Big Baby and El Borbah, and the Black Hole GN. I think of him as a modern version of Al Feldstein to some degree, there's a similar tension and creepiness in his artwork.

 

I can see that. I have his Comics Journal interview buried around here somewhere. Now I'm curious to go back and read that to see some of his influences....

 

On another note, at one time David Fincher (Fight Club, Se7en) was talking to him about making Black Hole into a movie....

[Prince Namor]

Here's a British magazine from 1991 called BLAST!

Leave it to the Brits to put my favorite Charles Burns character 'Dog Boy' on the cover. Not sure we ever saw THAT here in the States.

Also has a Concrete story, and a Warren Ellis story. I miss the early 90's..

 

[rjpb]

I'm a big Burns fan, even if his stories tend to meander and not really wrap up, I just hope X-ed Out doesn't take 10 years to complete like Black Hole.

 

Seeing that Defective Stories makes me think I should dig out my copper age Burns comix and reread them.

 

The 80s- early nineties were a great era for underground/alt/new wave comix what with guys like Clowes, Bagge, Burns, Tompkins, Worden and other "new school" artists still fairly prolific, and "old school" greats like Crumb, Dietch, Shelton and Spain still putting out stuff on regular basis as well. Between Raw, Fantagraphics, Last Gasp, Rip Off, D&Q and some companies I'm surely forgetting, seems like there was something new every week. Nowadays months can go by without anything from the artist/writers who defined undergrounds from 1962-1992

[Prince Namor]

I'm a big Burns fan, even if his stories tend to meander and not really wrap up, I just hope X-ed Out doesn't take 10 years to complete like Black Hole.

 

Seeing that Defective Stories makes me think I should dig out my copper age Burns comix and reread them.

 

The 80s- early nineties were a great era for underground/alt/new wave comix what with guys like Clowes, Bagge, Burns, Tompkins, Worden and other "new school" artists still fairly prolific, and "old school" greats like Crumb, Dietch, Shelton and Spain still putting out stuff on regular basis as well. Between Raw, Fantagraphics, Last Gasp, Rip Off, D&Q and some companies I'm surely forgetting, seems like there was something new every week. Nowadays months can go by without anything from the artist/writers who defined undergrounds from 1962-1992

 

+1

 

That was a great time for comics!

 

Clowes Death Ray HC coming out:

DCBS Death Ray

[Prince Namor]

Recent pickups:

 

 

I have the regular versions of both X'ed Out and The Hive, but I recently picked up this little beauty, that I'll copy and paste the description of:

 

Charles Burns' has "remixed" his excellent recent book, X'ed Out, into a new story, Johnny 23. Johnny 23 is written in a monoalphabetic cipher of English, i.e. a single "alien" character has been used to replace each letter / number in the traditional English alphabet. Since we are given a crib (in the form of the title), deciphering the text is not too difficult, although there are a large number of "typos" which can slow the process a little.

 

The text is surreal and filled with non sequiturs. In X'ed Out, the main character Doug performs in a Tintin mask under the name "Johnny 23." His performance involves reading abstract surrealist poetry generated using William S. Burroughs' "cut-up" technique. Visually, Johnny 23 implements this technique with images, and many segments of the text seem to be similarly generated. There are however several moments where distinct pieces of a story connected closely to the visuals emerge.

 

Some of the apparent "misspellings" and "errors" are surely due to whatever mash up technique was used to generate the text. Many, however, are clearly typos of the form generated by quick typing (e.g. "teh" or "adn"). In the following "translation," I have chosen to correct as many of these as possible, and to add appropriate punctuation where obvious. In some cases, however, where apparent ungrammaticalities due to cut ups allow multiple interesting interpretations of the text, I have omitted punctuation.

 

Reading the text of Johnny 23 is a strangely disorienting experience. Deciphering as you go along, typos take on interesting new meanings, and it is difficult to tell how much of this was intentional. Take "Dally forth . . . " on p. 32, surely a typo, yet allowing for an interesting double reading given the sexual content of previous pages . . . or p. 24, is "word" in "from a word away" a misspelling of "world," or a pun on the Burroughs theme of the word virus which pervades the book? Anyone interested in the text at that level of detail should simply decipher it themselves.

 

For those who are impatient, however, here is the full deciphering of Johnny 23. Text is given by page number. Each line denotes a text box or speech balloon. Ordering is the obvious left to right, top to bottom. There were only a couple characters which I was unable to decipher, which I presume to be numerals. These are indicated with a _ when they appear.

 

you can read the translation here:

http://againstthemodernworld.blogspot.it/2011/01/johnny-23-full-translation.html

 

this book was print in circa 1000 copies and it's sold out everywhere!

[Prince Namor]

And this:

Charles Burns 1994 Calender with unpublished art in it!

[Prince Namor]

And this:

Charles Burns EXPO catalog show from a museum in Holland (only 2000 copies printed). Featuring his most detailed biography ever, it has 150 thick pages of hard to find magazine art he did, alternate covers, toy/poster drawings, unpublished art...

It's has a ding on the bottom right corner, but I love it all the same.

 

[Prince Namor]

And finally...

ECHO ECHO - Cut up drawings from Black Hole (signed and numbered with a sketch!) Limited to 400 copies!

Here's a copy and paste of the blurb: A 36 page booklet by Charles Burns of process sketches drawn for his book Black Hole. If you don't like his sketches of beautiful teenagers and pus-ridden mutations, there's something wrong with you. Fascinating for artists interested in process. From the artist: "What is this? I took a bunch of pencil drawings from my comic Black Hole and taped them together and xeroxed them to make this book. When I "pencil" my comics I work in layers on sheets of tracing paper and build the drawings up by slowly refining and fixing them. Sometimes I get what I want in one or two tries, but that's rare..."

Guts printed on an opaque natural paper, cover printed on translucent vellum stock. Hand-bound with black linen thread. All copies signed and numbered. Edition of 400.

 

[seanfingh]

I'm a big Burns fan, even if his stories tend to meander and not really wrap up, I just hope X-ed Out doesn't take 10 years to complete like Black Hole.

 

Seeing that Defective Stories makes me think I should dig out my copper age Burns comix and reread them.

 

The 80s- early nineties were a great era for underground/alt/new wave comix what with guys like Clowes, Bagge, Burns, Tompkins, Worden and other "new school" artists still fairly prolific, and "old school" greats like Crumb, Dietch, Shelton and Spain still putting out stuff on regular basis as well. Between Raw, Fantagraphics, Last Gasp, Rip Off, D&Q and some companies I'm surely forgetting, seems like there was something new every week. Nowadays months can go by without anything from the artist/writers who defined undergrounds from 1962-1992

 

+1

 

That was a great time for comics!

 

Clowes Death Ray HC coming out:

DCBS Death Ray

 

I don't mean to nerd up your Burns thread with fawning over Dan Clowes, Chuck, but I am going to do it anyway. The oversized Death Ray book was the first Eightball book I ever bought and I devoured as much as I could find immediately.

 

I am completely opposed to his worldview, but I am in love with his story telling and characterization (it happens with me a lot :-)). I must have a 9.4+ SS Eightball #1 1st print!!!!!

[Prince Namor]

I'm a big Burns fan, even if his stories tend to meander and not really wrap up, I just hope X-ed Out doesn't take 10 years to complete like Black Hole.

 

Seeing that Defective Stories makes me think I should dig out my copper age Burns comix and reread them.

 

The 80s- early nineties were a great era for underground/alt/new wave comix what with guys like Clowes, Bagge, Burns, Tompkins, Worden and other "new school" artists still fairly prolific, and "old school" greats like Crumb, Dietch, Shelton and Spain still putting out stuff on regular basis as well. Between Raw, Fantagraphics, Last Gasp, Rip Off, D&Q and some companies I'm surely forgetting, seems like there was something new every week. Nowadays months can go by without anything from the artist/writers who defined undergrounds from 1962-1992

 

+1

 

That was a great time for comics!

 

Clowes Death Ray HC coming out:

DCBS Death Ray

 

I don't mean to nerd up your Burns thread with fawning over Dan Clowes, Chuck, but I am going to do it anyway. The oversized Death Ray book was the first Eightball book I ever bought and I devoured as much as I could find immediately.

 

I am completely opposed to his worldview, but I am in love with his story telling and characterization (it happens with me a lot :-)). I must have a 9.4+ SS Eightball #1 1st print!!!!!

 

It's all good.

If you liked that, you really should go buy all of those issues early Eightball issues. Oh my god,, that stuff was so great...

A Clowes SS would be

[troydivision1]

Great collection.

Love seeing a fellow Burns fan.

[rjpb]

Chuck

 

Great pickups all - I'm going to have to find one of those EXPO catalogs.

[Mike's Rack]

If you haven't order this yet, it's a good buy. Signed for less than cover:

 

http://www.midtowncomics.com/store/dp.asp?PRID=1221286

[MisterX]

This book was print in circa 1000 copies and it's sold out everywhere!

 

Wow...I am totally jealous.

 

Where did you find this book?

 

I tried to get the Burns promo t-shirt at the NYCC, but they were already gone by Saturday.