Just finished reading this:



Suburban Seattle, the mid-1970s. We learn from the out-set that a strange plague has descended upon the area’s teenagers, transmitted by sexual contact. The disease is manifested in any number of ways - from the hideously grotesque to the subtle (and concealable) - but once you've got it, that's it. There's not turning back.

It took Charles Burns 10 years to finish this book - each year there would be an issue that would come out and although I would pick them up, the lag between issues would make it hard to remember where you were in the story. Plus I think I missed one years’ issue so, it was even difficult to figure what I had missed. It’s great to be able to sit down and read the whole tale though and worth it for both comics and non comics fans alike.

A prolific and highly-sought magazine illustrator, Burns has done covers for such magazines as Time and The New Yorker, and is the regular cover artist for The Believer. He’s designed the sets for a New York production of The Nutcracker called The Hard Nut and produced album covers, including the spectacular fold-out that graced Iggy Pop’s “Brick by Brick.” His advertising gigs include the ill-fated O.K. Cola brand (alongside fellow Fantagraphics cartoonist Daniel Clowes) and a huge campaign for Altoids in 2003 which included several comics pages.