X'ed Out: Charles Burns

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Although she is a queen, she is really little more than a prisoner who must produce eggs presumably for the nearby village. Although in the end Sam is a completely broken man, he still has his dreamworld and a life with Jill. As I reach the climax of his latest work of fiction, Sugar Skull, I’m preoccupied with an interview I’ve read in which he mentions there are autobiographical elements in the book. What follows is a mishmash of present-tensed, out-of-this-world story that involves a hive of sorts, and of flashbacks of 20-somethings and Doug's relationship troubles.

It's strange blend of nightmare imagery and adolescent awkwardness somehow manages to be both alien and intimate. But worse – far worse – is the disproportionate balance between the apocalyptic, messed-up, heightened tragedy of Doug and Sarah’s story, that has been built up now over two volumes, and the bafflingly banal and truly uninspired reveal of the secret at the heart of this series. Charles Burns' earliest works include illustrations for the Sub Pop fanzine, and Another Room Magazine of Oakland, 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. By the time Charles made his way to art college in California he’d consumed all manner of comics, alternative and mainstream, and was ready to try his hand at making his own art.Between 14 and 15 I was starting to be seduced by underground comics and Robert Crumb’s work, and some of that I’d have to tuck under my coat and smuggle into the house because I didn’t want it to be found. It’s an entrancing mystery told expertly by Burns and drawn in an utterly beautiful way - a masterclass in experimental fiction, challenging comics, and imaginative storytelling. We see the highs of Doug and Sarah’s relationship and his performance art as his stage persona Nitnit is becoming well-received. But it is recognizably about adolescence, and sexuality, the dark loneliness and pain of it, filtered through a haze of drugs and alcohol.

In volume three, Doug and Suzy are spending time together in her room in the Hive when her stomach suddenly starts to swell. Sam eventually defeats the samurai, but in a nod to The Empire Strikes Back, discovers that it is his face behind the mask. A gruff but friendly flabby kid wearing a backpack and a pair of white shorts befriends Doug, guiding him through the city.Doug does get Sarah pregnant but she doesn’t have an abortion or a miscarriage, and even her psycho ex, who we discover is named Larry, doesn’t follow through on any of his threats of murder.

An intercom is a recurring image in all three volumes of the X’ed Out trilogy which inspires in Doug a feeling of dread, for reasons that will be discussed later. While the X’ed Out trilogy isn’t the longest of Burns’ works, even at three volumes, it is his most ambitious with regard to storytelling. The protagonist is an artist named Doug whose alter ego 'Nitnit' spits out William Burroughs influenced hipster poetry to the accompaniment of recordings of traffic and TV noises. On his first day in the department of Information Retrieval, Sam naps in his office and dreams about trying to save Jill.But in truth he’s quiet and affable, happy to chat at length about his life and work with a level of introspection that shows he’s long been comfortable in his own skin. Burns is usually such a consummate perfectionist and amazing storyteller that pages like these are a real disappointment. As stated earlier, X’ed Out has two distinct dream states and the first involves Doug floating toward a mysterious bridge. And often repeats "and this is the last thing i'll remember, waking up and not knowing where i am" effectively trying to X out a few things of his own. A true graphic milestone: the epic trilogy that began with X'ed Out, continued in The Hive, and concluded in Sugar Skull, now in a single volume.