X'ed Out: Charles Burns

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It’s positive in the sense that I’m not just dropping into things that feel comfortable and safe but it’s frustrating in that you’ve got to struggle through that period. For my part, I think there is something delightful about delayed gratification and this is a very beautiful book in its own right. As he describes for the first time the end of his relationship with Sarah, a separation that was the result of nothing more than his own gutlessness, a light bulb suddenly comes on in the mind of the reader. I'm still not sure where its all leading, but its compelling enough that I look forward to the next volume. And does largely nothing in terms of telling us what it is about really, but one can tell its not about anything insignificant.

Burns is working in colour this time and in a format that brings to mind nothing so much as Hergé's Tintin; the cover is an obvious homage to Herge's adventure The Shooting Star. Charles Burns explains everything in this final volume of his X’ed Out Trilogy, which is something you’ll either appreciate, because you hate any ambiguity at the end of a story, or dislike because that’s not consistent with the way this has been written thus far. There are scenes in the recent book where I’m thinking, ‘God, I don’t know if this needs to exist in the world,’ but I guess I’m gonna put it out there anyway.I look forward to reading the second episode, The Hive, to see where this strange-adventure-down-the-rabbit-hole leads me. Sam goes on a quest to save her from the forces of darkness and also from a metallic samurai warrior that, as Matt Conn says “represents the technological colossus, the totalitarian state, as vast and unconquerable as it is impossible to pin down and hurt. In the second dream state, Doug is slightly abstracted and goes by the name of Johnny 23/Nitnit (which is the name he performs under) and he finds himself in a world reminiscent of The Land of Ooo from Pendleton Ward’s Adventure Time series and Interzone from Naked Lunch.

The only X'ed Out residue that's managed to stick to my brain is my curiosity as to what the deal is with the eggs. In 2007 Burns contributed material for the French made animated horror anthology Fear(s) of the Dark. He takes a few pills, goes back to bed, looks through a photo album – and falls into a memory of himself, with hair, at an art gallery. In the dream, when Doug sees Sarah as a “chosen” breeder, taken to a distant factory/hive, he feels the need to save her from her fate as much as he did the night he met her (just as Tintin would). The characters are as one-dimensional and lifeless as the ones in Black Hole and nothing really exciting happens plot-wise (which would have been fair if the author was building up suspense but he wasn't).There’s a scene earlier when Sarah took some photos of Doug that he hated because he wasn’t wearing his Nitnit mask (his protection or real self? It’s a specific kind of creepiness too — that of the messy, grotesque imperfection of being trapped in these flabby, sweaty, bloody, runny, wrinkled, ultimately failing bodies of ours. Last Look is the collected edition of Charles Burns’ X’ed Out Trilogy comprising X’ed Out, The Hive, and Sugar Skull.