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Charles Burns (born September 27, 1955 in Washington, D.C.) is an award-winning U.S. cartoonist and illustrator. He is renowned for his meticulous, high-contrast and creepy artwork and stories. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife, painter Susan Moore, and their two young daughters.

His father was an oceanographer for the government. They moved around a lot, including Boulder, Colorado, Maryland and Missouri before settling in Seattle when Burns was in grade five.

Comics works

Charles Burns' earliest prominent works include illustrations for the Sub Pop fanzine and contributions to Art Spiegelman's comic magazine RAW.

Most of his short stories, published in various supports over the decades, have been collected in the three volumes of the "Charles Burns' Library" (hardcovers from Fantagraphics Books): El Borbah (1999), Big Baby (2000), and Skin Deep (2001). (A fourth and last volume, Bad Vibes, has yet to be published, which would have the Library collecting the entirety of his pre-Black Hole comics work.)

From 1993 to 2004, he serialized the 12 chapters of his Harvey Award-winning graphic novel Black Hole (12 issues from Fantagraphics Books). In October 2005, he released a slightly remastered collection of Black Hole (hardcover from Pantheon Books).