Swiping or Quoting? Charles Burns’s Cut-Ups of “Old” Comics

In Todd Hignite's In the Studio, Charles Burns characterizes a scrapbook put together by his father as one of his “most prized possessions.” The scrapbook contains a collection of various comic strips which his father used for reference when dabbling in cartooning. This scrapbook is a symbol of the close bond between reading, collecting and drawing while underlining the importance of imitation and ‘swiping’ in the production and reception of comics. Burns, whose Tumblr “Johnny 23” could be seen as a digital equivalent to his father's scrapbook, is himself profoundly engaged in ‘swiping’ panels from ‘old’ comics, from American horror and romance comic books to Hergé's Tintin albums. This paper will explore the stakes of ‘swiping’ and quotation in the author's recent production. I will not only focus on his borrowings from Tintin and romance comics for his X'ed Out trilogy, but also on related projects with small-press publishers like Le Dernier Cri, B.ü.l.b. Comix, Cornélius. The way Burns turns to the archive of comics and redeploys it follows the random logic of Burroughs's cut-up technique, which not only recalls the cut-and-paste aesthetics of the scrapbook but is also echoed in the fragmented materiality of the project. However, Burns's cut-ups are not literally ‘cut up’ as much as they are drawn. Elaborating on Philippe Marion's influential concept of “graphiation,” this paper will analyze the citational practice of Charles Burns in medium-specific and historical terms, examining what it means to redraw the past of comics into the contemporary graphic novel. Indeed, how does his work walk the line between ‘individual’ and ‘collective’ graphic styles? How does it play with various conceptions of authorship and how does it negotiate the affects bound up with the appropriated works?