Charles Burns (born September 27, 1955) is an American cartoonist and

illustrator An illustrator is an artist who specializes in enhancing writing or elucidating concepts by providing a visual representation that corresponds to the content of the associated text or idea. The illustration may be intended to clarify complic ...

. His early work was published in a Sub Pop fanzine, and he achieved prominence in the early issues of '' RAW''. His graphic novel '' Black Hole'' won the Harvey Award.

Career

Comics

Charles Burns' earliest works include illustrations for the Sub Pop fanzine, and '' Another Room Magazine'' of

Oakland Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third largest city overall in the Bay ...

, but he came to prominence when his comics were published for the first time in early issues of '' RAW'', the avant-garde comics magazine founded in 1980 by Françoise Mouly and Art Spiegelman. In 1982, Burns did a die-cut cover for RAW #4. Raw Books also published two books of Burns as RAW One-Shots: ''Big Baby'' and ''Hard-Boiled Defective Stories''.El Borbah / ''Hard-Boiled Defective Stories''
at Don Markstein's Toonopedia
Archived
from the original on December 2, 2015. In 1994, he was awarded a

Pew Fellowships in the Arts A pew () is a long bench seat or enclosed box, used for seating members of a congregation or choir in a church, synagogue or sometimes a courtroom. Overview The first backless stone benches began to appear in English churches in the thirt ...

. In 1999, he showed at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Most of Burns' short stories, published in various supports over the decades, were later collected in the three volumes of the "Charles Burns' Library" (hardcovers from Fantagraphics Books): ''El Borbah'' (1999), ''Big Baby'' (2000), and ''Skin Deep'' (2001). (A fourth and last volume, ''Bad Vibes'', has yet to be published, which would have the Library collecting the entirety of his pre-''Black Hole'' comics work. It was later stated that Burns did not feel there was enough material for a complete fourth volume.) From 1993 to 2004, he serialized the 12 chapters of his Harvey Award-winning

graphic novel A graphic novel is a long-form, fictional work of sequential art. The term ''graphic novel'' is often applied broadly, including fiction, non-fiction, and anthologized work, though this practice is highly contested by comic scholars and industry ...

'' Black Hole'' (12 issues from Kitchen Sink Press and Fantagraphics Books). The series was collected into a single volume in 2005. ''Black Hole'' was featured prominently in the film '' Dawn of the Planet of the Apes''. In 2007 Burns contributed material for the French made animated horror anthology '' Fear(s) of the Dark''. In October 2010, Burns released the first part of a new series, ''X'ed Out''. Part two of the new trilogy, ''The Hive'', was released in October 2012. ''Sugar Skull'', the final installment in the trilogy, was released Fall of 2014. The series was collected into a single volume, ''Last Look'', published by Pantheon in 2016.

Illustration

Burns' high-profile illustrations include album cover work for the Iggy Pop album ''

Brick by Brick ''Brick by Brick'' is the ninth studio album by American singer Iggy Pop, released in June 1990 by Virgin Records. Production and content After attracting mixed reviews for much of his 1980s output, Pop hired producer Don Was, who was a long ...

''. His art was also licensed by

The Coca-Cola Company The Coca-Cola Company is an American multinational beverage corporation founded in 1892, best known as the producer of Coca-Cola. The Coca-Cola Company also manufactures, sells, and markets other non-alcoholic beverage concentrates and syrups ...

to illustrate product and advertising material for their failed

OK Soda OK Soda is a discontinued soft drink created by The Coca-Cola Company in 1993 that courted the American Generation X demographic with unusual advertising tactics, including neo-noir design, chain letters and deliberately negative publicity. A ...

product. More recently, he has worked on advertising campaigns for

Altoids Altoids are a brand of mints, sold primarily in distinctive metal tins. The brand was created by the London-based Smith & Company in the 1780s, and became part of the Callard & Bowser company in the 19th century. Their advertising slogan is "The ...

and portrait illustrations for '' The Believer''. In the early 1990s, his '' Dogboy'' stories were adapted by

MTV MTV (Originally an initialism of Music Television) is an American cable channel that launched on August 1, 1981. Based in New York City, it serves as the flagship property of the MTV Entertainment Group, part of Paramount Media Networks, a di ...

as a live-action serial for '' Liquid Television''. In 1991, choreographer Mark Morris commissioned him to create illustrations that were then used as a basis for his version of Tchaikovsky's ''

The Nutcracker ''The Nutcracker'' ( rus, Щелкунчик, Shchelkunchik, links=no ) is an 1892 two-act ballet (""; russian: балет-феерия, link=no, ), originally choreographed by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov with a score by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaik ...

,'' '' The Hard Nut''. Burns's style was a source of inspiration for Martin Ander's artwork for '' Fever Ray'',

Karin Dreijer Andersson Karin Elisabeth Dreijer (born 7 April 1975) is a Swedish singer-songwriter and record producer. Dreijer was one half of the electronic music duo the Knife, formed with their brother Olof Dreijer. Dreijer released their debut solo album unde ...

's solo project.

Publications

Comics and graphic novels

* 1988 ''Hardboiled Defective Stories'' (Pantheon Books) * 1991 ''Curse of the Molemen'' (Kitchen Sink Press) * 1992 front cover of ''The Residents - Freak Show'' (Dark Horse Comics) * 1995 ''Black Hole 1'' (Kitchen Sink Press) * 1995 ''Black Hole 2'' (Kitchen Sink Press) * 1996 ''Black Hole 3'' (Kitchen Sink Press) * 1997 ''Black Hole 4'' (Kitchen Sink Press) * 1998 ''Black Hole 5'' (Fantagraphics Books) * 1998 ''Black Hole 6'' (Fantagraphics Books) * 1999 ''El Borbah'' (Fantagraphics Books) * 2000 ''Big Baby'' (Fantagraphics Books) * 2000 ''Black Hole 7'' (Fantagraphics Books) * 2000 ''Black Hole 8'' (Fantagraphics Books) * 2001 ''Skin Deep: Tales of Doomed Romance'' (Fantagraphics Books) * 2001 ''Black Hole 9'' (Fantagraphics Books) * 2002 ''Black Hole 10'' (Fantagraphics Books) * 2003 ''Black Hole 11'' (Fantagraphics Books) * 2004 ''Black Hole 12'' (Fantagraphics Books) ** 2005 ''Black Hole'' (Pantheon Books) ; collects ''Black Hole 1-12'' * 2010 ''X'ed Out'' (Pantheon Books) * 2012 ''The Hive'' (Pantheon Books) * 2014 '' Sugar Skull'' (Pantheon Books) ** 2016 ''Last Look'' (Pantheon Books) ; collects ''X'ed Out'', ''The Hive'' and ''Sugar Skull'' * 2019 ''Dédales'' (Cornélius, France) * 2021 ''Dédales 2'' (Cornélius, France)

Illustration books

* 1998 ''Facetasm'', Green Candy Press (in collaboration with Gary Panter) * 2007 ''One Eye'' (Pantheon Books) * ''Permagel'', French A3 sized publication in black and white * ''Love Nest'', Éditions Cornélius, hardcover * ''Vortex'', Éditions Cornélius, hardcover, full color * ''Johnny 23'', Le Dernier Cri

References

Sources

Charles Burns page at Fantagraphics
- Books in print from this publisher. *Brian Heater
"Interview: Charles Burns Pt. 1"
''The Daily Cross Hatch'', (November 10, 2008). *"I'm Slowly Learning to Draw Every Human Being in the United States," Interview with Hillary Chute, '' The Believer'', January 2008

External links

Charles Burns
at Lambiek's Comiclopedia * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Burns, Charles American comics artists American graphic novelists Album-cover and concert-poster artists Alternative cartoonists Evergreen State College alumni University of California, Davis alumni Writers from Washington, D.C. Raw (magazine) Living people 1955 births Pew Fellows in the Arts American male novelists Weird fiction writers