A young man is seated in a kitchen, holding a blue felt-tip pen. His reflection is visible in a chrome toaster: messy black hair, Oxford shirt. He begins sketching a strange figure, a human form with a twist of tentacles in place of the neck, and a large cauliflower-like red growth instead of a head. “It takes me some time,” he remarks, “but eventually I realize I’m drawing a self-portrait.”
This is the opening scene of Final Cut, the latest English-language graphic novel by Charles Burns after a decade (combining three previously serialized comics in French). The body-horror toaster self-portrait is quintessentially Burnsian, blending ordinary American teenage life with a monstrous, surreal subconscious. However, it is based on a real event that occurred to Burns fifty years earlier. “I was in that kitchen,” he recalls. “It was 1974, I was very high at a party, drawing my self-portrait in a toaster. Actually, I think I have a copy. Let me grab it quickly.”
Burns, now in his late 60s, leaves to retrieve the drawing, giving me a chance to explore the studio of one of the most celebrated graphic novelists of his time. He made a name for himself in the alternative comics scene of the 1980s, associating with a young Matt Groening, contributing to Art Spiegelman’s esteemed Raw magazine, and creating artwork for early Sub Pop mixtapes – including one featuring Nirvana’s first recording (reportedly a favorite of Kurt Cobain).
In the 1990s, Burns released a series of comics about teens who contract a sexually transmitted disease that transforms them into monsters. Collected in graphic novel form in 2005, Black Hole became a milestone in adult comics, earning Burns a cult following and influencing artists from the Knife to Kristen Stewart.
‘There’s a part of me in every character’ … Charles Burns. Photograph: Sipa/Shutterstock
We meet at his residence in Philadelphia’s Northern Liberties neighborhood, once downtrodden and crime-ridden but now a hub for artists and hipsters. “When we moved here 30 years ago, it was all we could afford. But as there was affordable studio space, other artists eventually settled in,” he explains. His home, like his work, is organized, visually striking, and teeming with monsters. The living room is adorned with eerie papier-mache masks, while bookshelves are filled with rare independent and horror comics. Hundreds of grotesque figurines with saurian features and scales line the top shelves.
I wasn’t interested in Captain America and Iron Man as a kid – I liked psychedelic comics and Robert Crumb
Burns, tall and soft-spoken, returns with the 1974 pencil drawing. It is more rough and playful, but the connection to his new work is evident. Rediscovering it helped him overcome the writer’s block that followed his previous major work a decade ago, the X’ed Out trilogy. “I had three false starts. Each time I started a project, I thought, ‘This is rubbish, I hate doing this.’ I reached a point where I wasn’t sure if I could do comics anymore.”
As a last effort to break the block, he created a seven-page comic about that party. “Suddenly, it clicked,” he says, half-jokingly adding, “I just started thinking, ‘What if this beautiful girl walked in and realized what a magnificent human being I am?’ I liked the idea of revealing myself through my art. Despite my awkward, stumbling personality, I could express something on paper. Someone will see that and understand, ‘Oh, there’s depth here.’ Then you go off and discover things.”
This led to the tale of a young comic artist, Brian, who grapples with depression while living with his alcoholic mother. Brian and his best friend, Jimmy, create Super 8 monster films, using lipstick to simulate blood on their friends’ faces. Brian, prone to mood swings and a short fuse, becomes infatuated with a girl named Laurie, and together they venture into the woods to shoot an 8mm horror film inspired by Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Brian’s vivid fantasies, combined with Burns’s whimsical style and the cinematic flair of the young filmmakers, blur the lines between reality and fiction throughout the book. When Laurie asks Brian about the film’s theme, he exclaims, “It’s about all the messed-up stuff in my head.”
Like much of Burns’s work, the protagonist serves as a clear reflection of himself. He even alternates between “Brian” and “I” during our conversation, noting, “There’s a part of me in every character.” In this story focusing on a group of attractive young people in 1970s America, the boundaries between fiction, memory, and imagination are often blurred.
‘I want to think about passion and intense emotions’ … Final Cut. Illustration: Charles Burns
Burns acknowledges that he is treading familiar ground here. “One issue I faced was thinking, ‘I have to do something different. I can’t focus on young adults again. I should have a middle-aged character.’ But I thought, ‘Damn, I can’t stand him. I don’t want to spend time with him. I want to explore passion and intense emotions instead of toning everything down.’ So I decided, ‘Screw it. I’ll just do what I enjoy.'”
Thankfully, he did. Final Cut stands as one of Burns’s finest works, with its expansive full-page illustrations evoking a sense of unease in the moonlit American wilderness. Despite the youthful characters, they are complex and discomforting – especially in their reactions to Brian’s depression, another aspect of Burns’s own life that he wanted to incorporate. “I went through real depression. It was three, four, five years of struggle. So I included that in the story.”
Burns developed a fascination with monsters at a young age. His father had a variety of hobbies, ensuring the house was always stocked with art supplies and Indian ink. Burns would attempt to recreate the comics he found, but his true awakening came in early 1969 when a classmate introduced him to Zap Comix, spearheaded by underground comix pioneer Robert Crumb. “Suddenly, here was this thing with intense drawings! I wasn’t interested in Captain America and Iron Man – but I would imitate these psychedelic comics.”
Burns steps away once more and returns with some of his early works. They possess a beautiful, frenzied quality – a refined chaos – bearing all the trademarks of his current style, from bizarre monsters to attractive youths. Cartoonist Lynda Barry once remarked on his style and the level of skill he achieves: “You can’t believe a person could create this with regular human hands. It’s the kind of drawing that would have terrified you in grade school, not just because the images are eerie, but because they are too perfectly executed, neither good nor evil enough for you to discern what you are supposed to think about them.”
That eerie perfectionism is evident in his earliest works. This style caught the attention of Spiegelman, who agreed to feature Burns in Raw in the 1980s. It is why The Believer, the cult literary magazine founded by Dave Eggers in 1998, used Burns for every cover until 2014. It was also this style that brought Burns together with his wife, artist Susan Moore, whom he married in 1982 and who passed away two years ago.
“She was a painter,” he recalls. “So we would always be looking over each other’s shoulders. Early on, when I had just moved in with her, I was struggling to letter a comic. I was trying my best to create really tight, good-looking lettering, but my hand felt like a claw. She walked in and said, ‘Oh, that doesn’t look very good.’ So I challenged her, ‘Oh, yeah? Let’s see you try! I’ll set you up at the desk.’ And she produced flawless, perfect lettering. She got the job. She was a painter, so I stretched her canvases and such, and she handled all the lettering for me.” Final Cut is his first book to feature computer-generated lettering, albeit in a font inspired by Moore’s style.
Monsters everywhere … a still from Fear(s) of the Dark. Photograph: Cinematic/Alamy
With such a prolific career in comics, one might expect Burns to have been adapted for film, like fellow graphic novelists Daniel Clowes and Alan Moore. He created an animated short in 2007 for a French horror anthology called Fear(s) of the Dark. Hollywood has expressed interest numerous times, but nothing has materialized.
“There was an option for Black Hole,” he reveals. “I signed the contract fifteen years ago and was well compensated. But I don’t understand how Hollywood operates, and it’s not something I actively pursue. If it happens, I don’t want to be consulted. I don’t want to be involved. With comics, you have complete control over everything. If you mess up, it’s on you. I appreciate that level of control.”
Burns has led a life of boundless creativity: working tirelessly, publishing sparingly, and never compromising. “I know some people think about what will sell. If I were clever, I would do Black Hole 2, Black Hole 3. That’s what sells. That’s what people want. But for me, that would be a dead end. Once I finish a book, it’s in the distant past.”
Final Cut by Charles Burns is published by Jonathan Cape (£30). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply