X’ed Out by Charles Burns
My rating: 4/5 cats
charles burns has got quiiiite a racket going…
i blame comic book nerds for this and for everything. charles burns seems to think that now that graphic novels have “arrived” on the NPR scene, and literate adults with the love of a good pencil line and a more complex storyline than “zap” or “pow” will still somehow retain the same collectivist impulses of pimply comicbook preteens who buy two copies and immediately slip one into a protective mylar cocoon. he is counting on the collector tendencies.
this twenty-dollar hardcover is only the FIRST in an open-ended SERIES which will probably eventually be compiled and given a reasonable price tag, but for now it is like letting charles burns into your pocket to write a blank check. me, i bought this one like some wide-eyed ingenue before i read the fine print. and i will probably have to keep buying the other volumes because i can’t even stop myself, even though i could read it at work in under a half hour. but i have already broken the seal, as it were, and i don’t want this volume to get lonely, do i?? do they even make mylar bags this size??
charles burns, don’t you know how poor i am?? and how quickly i read, especially graphic novels?? don’t tell me about “collector’s markets” and “a lifetime of memories.” i live in a book-crammed studio apartment; the likelihood of this book falling over and getting dented are like 92%. so it isn’t going to be in any kind of condition to pay for my nursing home and morphine drip and robot pet.
but i couldn’t help myself—it looked like something i should have.
this is a still from an awesome movie charles burns was involved with:
oh, right—technology—here is the trailer. do you see the charles burns?
richard mcguire has my favorite segment in that movie, but charles burns is a close second. and richard mcguire never pulled no “collect all four…or more” bullshit on me, so extra points for him.
this book is good. it is titillating. i have a good sense of what is going on, despite all the ambiguities, but i want to see what all he does with it—where he will take his kooky charles burns self. after he goes to the bank with my money, that is…
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