


Dazed & Confusedon a permanent dose of white blotter, like one of those never-coming-down bad trips made real. It’s a classic.The first installment of Burns’s new book,X’ed Out, was just released. Like all of his work before, it juxtaposes the real with the otherworldly. This time, Burns’s own rememberings of his time as a punk rocker/pretentious art-school kid alternate with a surreal complementary story line in which aTintin-ish character wanders through a Burroughs-esque city of monsters, intrigue, and paranoia. Waiting for volume 2 is going to be tough.Sammy Harkham, who interviews Burns here, is one of the most talented and original voices of the comics generation that appeared after Burns and his peers. Sammy’s ongoing book series,Crickets, tells stories that veer from the weird to the historical to the personal and realist, all connected by deep humanity and wit. Harkham is also responsible for the comics anthologyKramers Ergot, which is the best regularly published thing of its type since the glory days ofRAWin the early 80s, which—hey, look at the threads coming together here!—was a showcase for the work of Charles Burns.The independent-comics world is a strange ongoing saga of peers, rivalries, and hierarchies. It would make a great soap opera if the players were a little less pale and slumped. But Sammy and Charles are, luckily, friends and mutual admirers. Here is what they had to say to each other over the phone last month.
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