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Charles Burns
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Big Babyby Charles BurnsISBN 1560978007 (1-56097-800-7)
Softcover, Fantagraphics Books
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Black Holeby Charles BurnsISBN 0375714723 (0-375-71472-3)
Softcover, Pantheon Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Black Hole'Book summary:The first issues of Charles Burns's comics series Black Hole began appearing in 1995, and long before it was completed a decade later, readers and fellow artists were speaking of it in tones of awe and comparing it to recent classics of the form like Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan and Daniel Clowes's Ghost World. Burns is the sort of meticulous, uncompromising artist whom other artists speak of with envy and reverence, and we asked Ware and Clowes to comment on their admiration for Black Hole:
"I think I probably learned the most about clarity, composition, and efficiency from looking at Charles's pages spread out on my drawing table than from anyone's; his was always at the level of lucidity of Nancy, but with this odd, metallic tinge to it that left you feeling very unsettled, especially if you were an aspiring cartoonist, because it was clear you'd never be half as good as he was. There's an almost metaphysical intensity to his pinprick-like inkline that catches you somewhere in the back of the throat, a paper-thin blade of a fine jeweler's saw tracing the outline of these thick, clay-like human figures that somehow seem to "move," but are also inevitably oddly frozen in eternal, awkward poses ... it's an unlikely combination of feelings, and it all adds up to something unmistakably his own. "I must have been one of the first customers to arrive at the comic shop when I heard the first issue of Black Hole was out 10 years ago, and my excitement didn't change over the years as he completed it. I don't think I've ever read anything that better captures the details, feelings, anxieties, smells, and cringing horror of my own teenage years better than Black Hole, and I'm 15 years younger than Charles is. Black Hole is so redolently affecting one almost has to put the book down for air every once in a while. By the book's end, one ends up feeling so deeply for the main character it's all one can do not to turn the book over and start reading again." --Chris Ware
"Charles Burns is one of the greats of modern comics. His comics are beautiful on so many levels. Somehow he has managed to capture the essential electricity of comic-book pop-art iconography, dragging it from the clutches of Fine Art back to the service of his perfect, precise-but-elusive narratives in a way that is both universal in its instant appeal and deeply personal." --Dan Clowes 
Questions for Charles Burns
Amazon.com: Cartoonists are about the only people today who are working like Dickens did: writing serials that appear piece-by-piece in public before the whole work is done. What's it like to work in public like that, and for as long as a project like this takes?
Charles Burns: There were a number of reasons for serializing Black Hole. First of all, I wanted to put out a traditional comic book-- I'd never really worked in that comic pamphlet format before and liked the idea of developing a long story in installments. There's something very satisfying to me about a comic book as an object and I enjoyed using that format to slowly build my story. Serializing the story also allowed me to focus on shorter, more manageable portions; if I had to face creating a 368-page book all in one big lump, I don't know if Id have the perseverance and energy to pull it off.
Amazon.com: One thing that stuns me about this book is how consistent it is from start to finish. From the first frames to the last ones that you drew 10 years later, you held the same tone and style. It feels as though you had a complete vision for the book from the very beginning. Is that so? Or did things develop unexpectedly as you worked on it?
Burns: I guess there's a consistency in Black Hole because of the way I work. I write and draw very slowly, always carefully examining every little detail to make sure it all fits together the way I want it to. When I started the story, I had it all charted out as far as the basic structure goes, but what made working on it interesting was finding new ways of telling the story that hadn't occurred to me.
Amazon.com: Some of the very best of the recent graphic novels (I'm thinking of Ghost World and Blankets, along with Black Hole) have been about the lives of teenagers. Do you think there's something about the form that helps to tell those stories so well?
Burns: That's an interesting question, but I don't know the answer. Perhaps it has more to do with the authors--the kind of people who stay indoors for hours on end in total solitude working away on their heartfelt stories... maybe that kind of reflection lends itself to being able to capture the intensity of adolescence.
Amazon.com: In the time you've been working on Black Hole, graphic novels have leapt into the mainstream. (I think--I hope--we're finally seeing the last of those "They're not just for kids anymore!" reviews.) What did you imagine for this project when you started it? What's it been like to see your corner of the world enter the glare of the spotlight?
Burns: When I started Black Hole I really just wanted to tell a long, well-written story. The themes and ideas that run throughout the book had been turning around in my head for years and I wanted to finally get them all out--put them down on paper once and for all. I've published a few other books and while they sold reasonably well, they didn't set the publishing world on fire. I was pretty sure I'd have some kind of an audience for Black Hole, but that was never a motivating factor in writing the book. And my corner of the world is still pretty dark. I guess I'll be stepping into the spotlight for a little while when the book comes out, but I imagine I'll slip back into my dark little studio when it all settles down again so I can settle back into work.
Blood Club/Featuring Big Babyby Charles BurnsISBN 0878161791 (0-87816-179-1)
Softcover, Kitchen Sink Pr
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Calendar of Papal Letters to Scotland of Clement VII of Avignon, 1378-1394by Charles Burns , ClementISBN 0950026085 (0-9500260-8-5)
Hardcover, printed for the Scottish History Society by T. and A. Constable
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Curse of the Molemenby Charles BurnsISBN 0878161341 (0-87816-134-1)
Softcover, Kitchen Sink Pr
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El Borbahby Charles BurnsISBN 1560976934 (1-56097-693-4)
Softcover, Fantagraphics Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'El Borbah'Book summary:An early cult classic graphic novel from the author of the acclaimed Black Hole.
Meet El Borbah, a 400-pound private eye who wears a Mexican wrestler's tights and eerie mask. Subsisting entirely on junk food and beer, El Borbah conducts his investigations with tough talk and a short temper. He smashes through doors and skulls as he stalks a perfectly realized film-noir city filled with punks, geeks, business-suited creeps and mad scientists.
El Borbah features five science-fiction and true-detective episodes: In "Robot Love," rebellious kids in nightclubs replace their "parts" with mechanical substitutes as part of a new fad, only to find that their parents have been automating themselves all along; in "Love in Vein" a mad visionary sperm donor plans a master race and turns "his" kids against their parents; "Bone Voyage" details the exploits of a cult called the Brotherhood of the Bone, a kind of cross between the Masons and the Mansons. The fantastic plots take up the weird fears of a scientific society, but the action is pure pulp. Charles Burns effortlessly spins yarns with gritty punchlines and pictures so perfect they must have existed in some collective memory of junk drama. And through it all crashes El Borbah, trying to make an honest buck from dishonest people.
Burns is the author of Black Hole, the acknowledged masterpiece of the form that Fantagraphics serialized through the 1990s and will be collected into a massive graphic novel in 2005 by Pantheon Books. El Borbah is Burns' earliest work, created in the early 1980s, though the work remains eerily contemporary. Steeped in a "sci-fi-noir" aesthetic informed by Burns' steadily childhood diet of B-movies and comic books, but with a sophisticated sense of humor that is often as disturbing as it is funny, El Borbah is comics as its most entertaining. [via] 
Election of a Popeby Charles BurnsISBN 1860820220 (1-86082-022-0)
Softcover, Catholic Truth Society
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Facetasmby Charles Burns , Gary PanterISBN 1889539058 (1-889539-05-8)
Hardcover, Green Candy Press
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Facetasm'Book summary:Eighteen creepy, icky, and downright weird faces by artists Charles Burns and Gary Panter have been cut up and bound into Facetasm, so you can mix and match to your heart's content, exploring more than 7,000 possible mutations. From robots to monsters to things that look like mutant rejects from some twisted Disney cartoon, the faces are strange enough before you start mixing them up, but once you begin flipping you'll be hooked. There's even a space on the back page for your own photo, so you can see what you'd look like with a new hairdo. Or fangs. Facetasm is good old-fashioned fun with a healthy dose of the avant-garde, and giving it to your kids is like inviting William Burroughs to baby-sit. A good thing. --Simon Leake [via]
Golden Rose and Blessed Sword:Papal Gifts to Scottish Monarchs: Papal Gifts to Scottish Monarchsby Charles BurnsISBN 0900243198 (0-900243-19-8)
Hardcover, Burns
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Hard Boiled Defective Storiesby Charles BurnsISBN 0140127771 (0-14-012777-1)
Softcover, Penguin Books, Limited
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The Jungleby Charles BurnsISBN 014303958X (0-14-303958-X)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Jungle'Book summary:Upton Sinclair's dramatic and deeply moving story exposed the brutal conditions in the Chicago stockyards at the turn of the nineteenth century and brought into sharp moral focus the apalling odds against which immigrants and other working people struggled for their share of the American dream. Denounced by the conservative press as an un-American libel on the meatpacking industry, the book was championed by more progressive thinkers, including then president Theodore Roosevelt, and was a major catalyst to the passing of the Pure Food and Meat Inspection act, which has tremendous impact to this day. [via]
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One Eyeby Charles BurnsISBN 1897299044 (1-897299-04-4)
Softcover, Drawn & Quarterly Pubns
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Private Stash: A Pin-up Girl Portfolio by 20 Cartoonistsby Charles BurnsISBN 0976684845 (0-9766848-4-5)
Softcover, Buenaventura Pr
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Skin Deepby Charles BurnsISBN 1594972680 (1-59497-268-0)
Softcover, Public Square Books
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Spanish
El Borbah/ Borbahby Charles BurnsISBN 1594971110 (1-59497-111-0)
Softcover, Public Square Books
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