P2

CHARLES BURNS CASE STUDY 

ROBOT LOVE GENRE VARIETY 

A) Genre 

B) Content/Style 

The style of Charles Burns is very distinct. He uses very detailed artwork to back his Horror centred content. Charles Burns has created an iconic style by keeping the majority of his work in Black and White yet managing to create questionably large amounts of detail in every one of his comic panels, specifically the Horror based ones. 

With his genres revolving around Horror and Science Fiction, there is only so much one can write and maintain originality. Burns has created more innovative stories than anyone has the right to, with stories like Robot Love. Every story Burns writes and creates contains gruesome and horrific content that is a pleasure to read. 

Charles Burns takes a huge amount of inspiration from Chester Gould, as seen in this panel from Robot Love compared to another panel from a Dick Tracey comic. 

C) Meaning 

Charles Burns often uses Dark Humour in his comics as another way of getting his point across or as something to humour and entertain the reader as the story progresses. This can be seen best in his Black Comedy Comic, Big Baby.

D) Target Audience 

Charles Burns wrote many comics to be published in RAW, the weekly magazine anthology that ran for over a decade. The two editors of RAW, Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly, said that neither of them expected or wanted their Magazine to reach the mainstream audience as they were happy with their fans and Niche comics. Spiegelman and Mouly both talked about how they know that comic books and magazines of that sort were never going to mass culture to they persevered and made the magazine the way they wanted it to be. 

E) Characters 

El Borbah is a character with huge amounts of influence in Charles Burns' Comics. Charles Burns first found El Borbah through his love of Mexican wrestling, Lucha Libre. The characters from wrestling in Mexico and comic book characters both told the story of Good vs Evil through a series of masked men fighting each other. 

By the time Charles was drawing comics as a profession instead of a hobby, he had found his central protagonist: EL BORBAH. Huge physique, tiny mask, tattoo covered. This was in honor of his favourite Lucha Libre star fighter called John Borba. El Borbah was an immortalisation of John Borba. 

After Burns' Robot Love became a big hit, El Borbah had three more comics to feature in soon after. 

(Above) el Borbah: comic star.
(Below) el Generico: Late, Great professional wrestling star.