It was this same idea that Burns would explore with greater detail and maturity in his first long-form series, serialized from 1993 to 2004, the aforementioned Black Hole. While these shorts are simple in their execution, they turn the pleasurable act of sex into a physical source of fear, drawing upon the AIDs epidemic that ran rampant through the decade. Both stories broach the idea of an STD spreading among teenagers, one that manifests through physical mutations. In particular, his late '80s short comics "Contagion" from Taboo #1 and the Big Baby chapter "Teen Plague" from RAW vol. ![]() These themes and motifs present in Burns' early work more than foreshadowed what was to come. A mere glance at any one of those covers shows that even his earliest comics displayed a clear fascination with skewed features, the grotesque, surrealism, and sexuality. By the '90s, he released just a few more extended collections, including Big Baby, Skin Deep, and Misterios de la Carne (all out of print at the time of writing). ![]() Burns' output consisted mostly of short comics and illustrations at the time (even drawing the album cover for Iggy Pop's Brick by Brick), dealing with subject matter that attempted to marry his affinity for monster movies and romance comics with mid-century cynicism, and his fear of the physical world. However, his most notable contributions were to RAW, an experimental magazine co-edited by Maus creator Art Spiegelman. Sadly, much of his older work remains out of print or untranslated, but if we dig into his past, it shows that Burns has been forcing readers to confront their flesh-bound selves for most of his career.īurns came onto the alternative comics scene in the 1980s, rising to minor prominence through his work in various respected publications like BLAB!, Taboo, Heavy Metal, and Sub Pop. While Black Hole is widely regarded as his magnum opus, it is but a single work in Burns' vast yet hard-to-come-by catalog. It remains Burns' most popular work, now sold in all major bookstores, taught in schools, and even referenced directly in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. There have even been numerous stabs at a film adaptation with big names attached like Neil Gaiman, Alexandre Aja, David Fincher, and as of last year, Rick Famuyiwa. It's influenced everyone from Kristen Stewart to It Follows' David Robert Mitchell. I'm not alone in Black Hole serving as a right of passage. In many ways, discovering Black Hole set me on the path to becoming a comic book creator. The visuals were on par with the grotesqueries of The Fly or Eraserhead, yet there was an innocence in those pages that made the book stand on its own. It was body horror, but not any kind I'd seen before. I flipped through the pages to skim the interior art, and it hit me hard – the perfectionist black and white inking, the simmering dream sequences, and most of all, the mutated teenage faces carrying the weight of the world in their eyes. Then a thick red spine looked back at me with bold white letters spelling out its title, Black Hole. As a kid who grew up reading superhero comics, I felt lost. ![]() It happened the first time I went to my university library's graphic novel section, which consisted of two shelves half-full of comics I'd never heard of before. Popping my Charles Burns cherry was as powerful an experience as discovering any one of those filmmakers listed above. One of those people is graphic novelist Charles Burns. More importantly, artists outside of film have significantly contributed to its influence and rise in popularity over the years, some of which are unsung yet equally deserving of being called masters. While cinema may be body horror's hearth, the subgenre has blossomed in a variety of mediums. As Cronenberg himself said, "You have to realize that almost all of filmmaking is body." In many ways, film being a larger-than-life visual medium offers the perfect vessel for provocative, gut-churning explorations of the human form. This isn't a surprise given that the term "body horror" was first used in 1983 by Phillip Brophy in an article describing a revelatory period for contemporary horror films. It's names like David Cronenberg, Stuart Gordon, Brian Yuzna, and most recently, Julia Ducournau. So much so that when we discuss masters of the subgenre, the list is usually composed entirely of filmmakers. Although it has roots in Gothic fiction, body horror is most readily associated with cinema.
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