Final Cut

(Hardback)

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Description

The beloved and award-winning author of Black Hole returns with an arresting story of an artist's obsessions The beloved and award-winning author of Black Hole returns with an arresting story of an artist's obsessions As a child, Brian and his friend Jimmy would make home movies in their yards, coaxing their friends into starring as victims of grisly murders and smearing lipstick on them to simulate blood. Now an aspiring filmmaker, he and Jimmy, along with Jimmy's friend Laurie - the new girl in town and Brian's reluctant muse - set off to a remote cabin in the woods. Armed with a thrifted 16-millimetre camera, they film a true sci-fi horror movie set in a post-apocalyptic world where humans are born of disembodied alien wombs, a homage to Brian's favourite movie The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. But as Brian's affections for Laurie go seemingly unreciprocated, Brian writes and draws himself into a fantasy where she is the girl of his dreams - somehow both his damsel in distress and his saviour. The beloved and award-winning Charles Burns returns with an arresting story of an artist's obsessions and the cost of pushing the boundaries of creativity in his first standalone work since Black Hole. Final Cut blurs the line between dreams and reality, imagination and perception in this astonishing look at what it truly means to express oneself through art.

Reviews

Black Hole is best graphic novel of the year... One of the most stunning graphic novels yet published * TIME *
Charles Burns' comics are fluid, smooth and as solidly built as a vintage TV set, but they shudder with the chill of the uncanny * New York Times *
The confidence with which Burns positions himself within the larger map of other writing and art is entirely earned * New Statesman *
Sugar Skull is one of the most vividly drawn and painfully and honest expositions of male guilt Ive ever read * Observer *

Author Bio

Charles Burns grew up in Seattle in the 1970s. His work rose to prominence in Art Spiegelman's Raw magazine in the mid-1980s and took off from there, for an extraordinary range of comics and projects, from Iggy Pop album covers to the latest ad campaign for Altoids. In 1992 he designed the sets for Mark Morris's delightful restaging of The Nutcracker. He's illustrated covers for Time, the New Yorker and the New York Times Sunday Magazine. He is the official cover artist for The Believer magazine. Black Hole received Eisner, Harvey and Ignatz awards in 2005. Burns lives in Philadelphia with his wife and two daughters.