Books The X man The author of the classic Black Hole, Charles Burns tells Henry Northmore how Hergé’s adventures of Tintin inspired his latest comics collection
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✽✽ HITLIST
THE BEST BOOKS, COMICS & EVENTS
✽✽ Iain M Banks He’s giving it the big M these days, so we must be into Banks’ sci-fi territory. And sure enough, he’s here to promote Surface Detail, his shiny new Culture series novel about futuristic ‘utopian’ societies. Waterstone’s, Edinburgh, Tue 12 Oct; Waterstone’s, Glasgow, Wed 13 Oct. ✽✽ A Night in the Gutter Louise Welsh hosts this all- female night of readings and performance with a bar and DJ to follow. National Library of Scotland, Thu 7 Oct. ✽✽ Simon Pegg The star of Spaced, Shaun of the Dead and Star Trek (and the likes of Burke and Hare that don’t begin with an S) signs copies of his autobiography. See picture caption, page 38. Waterstone’s, Glasgow & Edinburgh, Wed 20 Oct. ✽✽ Words 2010 Among those appearing over the course of the month are Edwyn Collins, Denise Mina, Liz Jensen and Richard Holloway. Various venues, North Lanarkshire, until Sat 30 Oct. ✽✽ Felix Dennis The iconic publisher, poet and tree-planter launches his latest book of verse, Tales from the Woods. The event itself is called ‘Did I Mention the Free Wine?’ Which is all you probably need to know. Oran Mor, Glasgow, Wed 20 Oct; The Hub, Edinburgh, Thu 21 Oct. ✽✽ Charles Burns See preview, left. Jonathan Cape. ✽✽ Roberto Bolaño A posthumous treat with The Skating Rink, a multi-narrative murder mystery with more levels than a building which goes really high up into the sky. See review, page 37. Picador.
‘THOSE STORIES
ENTERED MY MIND IN A DEEP
WAY’
C harles Burns’ heavy black lines and retro 50s style first made their mark during the 80s, working on the Sub Pop fanzine and leftfield comics anthology RAW. But it was his Harvey Award- winning masterpiece Black Hole (released in 12 parts over 11 years) that really showed his twisted brilliance. A coming-of-age story packed with disease, mutation and poignant teenage realities set in the suburbs of Seattle during the mid-70s, Black Hole had a weight far beyond its B-movie premise thanks to Burns’ deft touch in the characterisation of his teenage protagonists.
‘I really wanted to tell a story where I wasn’t censoring myself in any way, to try and be as honest with myself as I could,’ says Burns from his Philadelphia home. ‘There was imagery and ideas that came up and I was saying to myself, “I don’t know if I can or should draw this,” but I really pushed myself and I’m doing the same with this book.’
He is referring to the first of three instalments of his latest project X’ed Out. ‘As the book progresses there are portions that I feel very uncomfortable with, it’s not so much revealing too much of myself but digging deep into who I am.’ X’ed Out also pays homage to Burns’ love of Tintin, the cover being a play on Hergé’s own jacket for The Shooting Star while the lead character goes by the alter-ego Nitnit. ‘I started looking at those [Tintin] books before I could actually read and there was something about the clarity of the storytelling and the characters that really drew you into this whole world,’
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says Burns. ‘I found that those stories really entered my mind in a very deep way that stuck with me.’ Which seems all the more fitting, as X’ed Out is as much based in the subconscious mind as reality, with our protagonist drifting in and out of consciousness as he recovers from a mysterious accident. ‘I started out wanting to write a story that took place in the late-70s in the US, as I was living in the Bay Area around San Francisco at that time and wanted to write a story that dealt with that period in my life and the world of punk music. I had a lot of false starts and at a certain point I just allowed myself to do more free association and for my main character to tell this elliptical story about himself.’
Burns’ work has been seen in adverts, on CD covers (such as Iggy Pop’s Brick by Brick) and he even designed the sets for choreographer Mark Morris’ restaging of The Nutcracker (renamed The Hard Nut) but this is his first colour comics project. ‘I didn’t just want to do a colourised version of my black and white work; it really opened up another tool to use for storytelling that has been a lot of fun to explore.’ And the result is a visually stunning, complex, multi-layered mystery. ‘X’ed Out is a difficult book to talk about. I could explain what I’m doing on every page but that ruins the whole process of reading it. There are no random elements just as titillation, everything is there for a purpose.’
X’ed Out is published by Jonathan Cape on Thu 7 Oct.