“x’ed out” tintin, burroughs & burns julen azpitarte
Comic book artist Charles Burns’ (Washington, 1955) latest publication has just reached our shores: X’ed Out. Fantastic news for fans everywhere, he is one of the most interesting authors out there at the moment. Just take a look at any of the work he has published since the 80s: Big Baby, Skin Deep, and, above all, Black Hole.
X’ed Out, to a extent is close to his masterpiece Black Hole, as it also includes as protagonist teenagers from the rougher side of life, from the margins. Doug is an art student involved in the punk scene of the 70s. Dressed up as Tintin, he puts on performances built around texts by the writer William Burroughs. At the same time he falls in love with the mysterious photographer Sarah.
You can safely say that Doug is Charles Burns’ alter ego. He has many of the characteristics that belonged to the author in his youth, a love of punk rock music being one of them. Burns illustrates the realism of the narrative with his usual shadowy drawings. The second main storyline is made up of the main character’s nocturnal depressive states and that’s where the author binds together Tintin’s colourful Franco-Belgian comic style and William Burroughs –both of them obsession of the author as a youth– hallucinogenic prose.
In this way the story unfolds on two different levels that totally complement each other and combine in achieving a David-Lynch-esque unsettling dark daily life in comic.
X’ed Out, to a extent is close to his masterpiece Black Hole, as it also includes as protagonist teenagers from the rougher side of life, from the margins. Doug is an art student involved in the punk scene of the 70s. Dressed up as Tintin, he puts on performances built around texts by the writer William Burroughs. At the same time he falls in love with the mysterious photographer Sarah.
You can safely say that Doug is Charles Burns’ alter ego. He has many of the characteristics that belonged to the author in his youth, a love of punk rock music being one of them. Burns illustrates the realism of the narrative with his usual shadowy drawings. The second main storyline is made up of the main character’s nocturnal depressive states and that’s where the author binds together Tintin’s colourful Franco-Belgian comic style and William Burroughs –both of them obsession of the author as a youth– hallucinogenic prose.
In this way the story unfolds on two different levels that totally complement each other and combine in achieving a David-Lynch-esque unsettling dark daily life in comic.
