X´ed Out

Sobre el libro X´ed Out de Charles Burns publicado por Knopf al 2010:

using the unsettling kitsch of EC horror comics, the storytelling sensibility of Euro-classics like Tintin, and the astute observations about young adults that made Black Hole so engrossing, Burns has turned out a haunting first chapter in what promises to be a spellbinder. The opening pages flip among the various realities of Doug, a young man recovering from a head injury of some kind with only a box of pills and some strawberry Pop-Tarts to speed his recovery. Flashbacks and dreams switch among various scenes: Doug and his hypocrite father; a wild party gone awry when Doug´s crush object´s crazy (but unseen) boyfriend goes on a rampage; and, most mysteriously, another world-found behind a hole in a brick wall-where dead cats live, worms weep, and a giant hive rules a grim city of deformed creatures. Burns´s control of the story is masterful-the recurring imagery make it unclear just which is the reality and which is the dream. His sharply delineated art captures a grotesque yet sympathetic view of kids thrust far beyond a world that they can control or even understand. The only disappointment about X´ed Out is its brevity-the first of several installments, it will leave you begging for the rest of the story.