Uncanny comics

A retrospective in Leuven reveals the dark visions and artistic virtuosity of a leading US illustrator and comics writer

Charles Burns came to fame in the underground comics world of the 1980s when his work appeared in RAW magazine, then the magnet for edgy, exciting graphic work from all over. (It was published in New York by Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly.)  With his graphic novel Black Hole, an epic which originally took the form of a 12-part series published between 1995 and 2005, Burns has earned his place in history. It’s his magnum opus, and pages from it are present in abundance in his retrospective exhibition at the Museum M in Leuven. They hang on the wall and are placed in display cases alongside original drawings and printing plates from his other comics (Big Baby, El Borbah, Dog Boy) and illustration work: covers for Time, The New Yorker and Rolling Stone, record sleeves (Iggy Pop’s Brick by Brick is his most famous), and illustrations like a crying Monica Lewinsky for Entertainment Weekly.

Burns has a penchant for the morbid and the weird. Black Hole, set in Seattle in the 1970s, is a coming-of-age story in which teenagers are plagued by a sexually transmitted disease that leaves them deformed, with an extra mouth, a long tail, a face full of huge warts, you name it. His character Big Baby discovers worlds full of characters who seem to have escaped from gruesome science-fiction films or horror movies. And the characters in El Borbah are just as alien. Generally, the horror originates in an everyday world, and it’s this contrast that gives Burns’s work its haunting quality. Even when he draws a smiling Neil Young, you have the feeling the singer might jump off the page and plant his teeth in your neck.

Burns, born in 1955 in Washington, DC, grew up in Seattle, where his family moved when he was 10. After a bumpy ride through several colleges, he received a master’s degree in fine arts in 1979 and ventured freely across diverse artistic fields. “I didn’t feel restricted at all.  I knew I was in that unique period in my life where I could try anything,” he tells me as we stroll through the exhibition. “I tried painting and the result was horrible.  I did video performance pieces and I made sculpture. But I always kept my drawing skill alive, and there was a narrative in all the drawings I was doing.”

The excellent trilingual catalogue – not that it contains much text – opens with his school report from first grade: “Charles does very mature crayon work; his concepts and skills far exceed his abilities in other class activities.”

“When I finished my studies, I really liked the idea of working for reproduction. I remember working for two weeks on some huge drawings and I realised that they – if I succeeded in selling them – would get framed and go up on someone’s wall. The audience for it would be the people who came to their house. I like the idea that if you have a few dollars you can buy my work. The other thing was that I wanted to tell stories. So I taught myself how to create comics. I learned it while I was doing it.”

In 2007 Burns was one of six comic book creators and graphic designers who directed part of the animated anthology film Peur(s) de noir (Fear(s) of the Dark). You can watch his contribution at the start of the exhibition. “I took on the project because I wanted to do something collaborative, which I hadn’t tried before. It was an ideal opportunity: the producers wanted each artist to be in charge of getting their vision up there on the screen. But it’s another language, so I had to learn to think differently.” Never say never, but for the moment Burns has no further plans to embark on a new cinema adventure.

How should we refer to him: as an illustrator, a graphic novelist, a comics writer? “A few years ago, in the US anyway, if you said ‘I do comics,’ the first reaction was ‘oh, like Peanuts.’ When they were told ‘No, no, this is more for adults,’ you saw them thinking ‘adult comics equals pornography.’ Luckily, people nowadays actually know what graphic novels are, so it can be a useful term. But if I don’t want to explain anything, I just say I’m an illustrator.

“Black Hole was published at a time when graphic novels were starting to get reviewed in The New York Times and other respectable publications. And that slowly brought about an understanding of what they were. People sometimes think that I made Black Hole to jump on the bandwagon. Not! I just wanted to tell a long story, and it just came out at a very opportune time. I had serialised it first [between 1995 and 2004], but you could find those episodes only at specialist stores. Whereas when it was published as a book, a lot of people came up to me and said, ‘This is the first comic I’ve ever read.’ Suddenly, a new audience was opening up.”

Brussels has a famous museum for comics, but an exhibition of a comics artist in an art museum is still an exceptional event. “It’s nice! And you can see things changing. In the US, Dan Clowes [best known for his graphic novel Ghost World, which was made into a movie in 2001], for instance, is having a show at the Oakland Museum in California and Art Spiegelman will have one at the Centre Pompidou in Paris,” he says.

“But you have to bear in mind that almost all the work is created for publication. I always feel kind of sorry for people visiting these exhibitions. I’ve seen them feeling obliged to read every line of text on every page that’s in the show. You can, of course, but don’t feel obliged. You can also just look at the drawings. Don’t forget those pages were made to be read at your leisure.”

In 2010 Burns published X’ed Out, the first part of a trilogy. It’s full of references to Hergé’s Tintin albums. The cover echoes the cover of The Shooting Star; the main character sports a quiff and his stage name is Nitnit, taken from a comic he likes. Burns is slightly evasive about Hergé’s influence. “X’ed Out isn’t a parody, and the story has nothing to do with Hergé’s creations. But visual elements found their way in, yes.”

The exhibition provides a short, exclusive preview of The Hive, the follow-up to X’ed Out. It gives valuable insight into Burns’s working process, from the wildly drawn, initial rough pencil sketches to the intermediate stages where the lines get clearer, through to the final page. It’s a pity there aren’t more preparatory drawings in the show, but Burns only started to save them a few years ago. It’s the only small drawback in an exhibition that reveals an exceptional artist.

Charles Burns, Museum M, 28Leopold Vanderkelenstraat, Leuven, until March 11, www.mleuven.be