Description

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From the beguiling imagination of Charles Burns: 80 comic books that never were.

Master cartoonist Charles Burns has never hidden his passion for comic books and pop culture from the 1950 and 1960s. Inspired by the romance, horror, and sci-fi comics of his youth, as well as the 1960s American underground, the author of Black Hole has created a collection of 80 original comic book covers that, through his own inimitable aesthetic, present an alternate universe of stories that never were, but that you will wish existed.

The covers — some with otherworldly titles in alien letterforms, and others that riff on classic genres (Throbbing Hearts, Unwholesome Love) and eras (Drug Buddy, Huss) — each inspire a multitude of interpretations, build entire worlds, and suggest entire narratives that lie within their non-existent guts. This is Burns at his most playful, imaginative, and suggestive, using the format of the comic book to continue to explore many of the themes that run through all his longer-form work — adolescence, metamorphosis, nightmares, and sexuality — and provide a pretext for the creation of some of the most mysterious and bewitching imagery of Burns’s incredible career. Kommix is like discovering an entire box of comic books you never knew existed.

About the Author

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Charles Burns is the internationally renowned creator of the graphic novels Black Hole and Last Look. Burns grew up in Seattle, rose to prominence in Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly’s RAW magazine, and is one of the most distinctive and original cartoonists of his generation. He lives in Philadelphia, PA.

Praise For…

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 Charles Burns’s comics are fluid, smooth and as solidly built as a vintage TV set, but they shudder with the chill of the uncanny.
— Douglas Wolk - The New York Times

One of the books that first made me fall in love with comics was Burns’s 2005 dystopian creep-fest Black Hole and I have been devoted to his high-contrast weirdness ever since.

— Rachel Cooke - The Guardian

Burns’s stark chiaroscuro and thick, wood-block-esque line work [are] staples of the alternative-comics scene.
— Abraham Riesman - Vulture