Kommix

From the beguiling imagination of Charles Burns: 80 comic books that never were.

WINNER 2025 Eisner Award for Best Writer/Artist

Master cartoonist Charles Burns has never hidden his passion for comic books and pop culture from the 1950 and 1960s. Inspired by the romance, horror, and sci-fi comics of his youth, as well as the 1960s American underground, the author of Black Hole has created a collection of 80 original comic book covers that, through his own inimitable aesthetic, present an alternate universe of stories that never were, but that you will wish existed.

The covers — some with otherworldly titles in alien letterforms, and others that riff on classic genres (Throbbing Hearts, Unwholesome Love) and eras (Drug Buddy, Huss) — each inspire a multitude of interpretations, build entire worlds, and suggest entire narratives that lie within their non-existent guts. This is Burns at his most playful, imaginative, and suggestive, using the format of the comic book to continue to explore many of the themes that run through all his longer-form work — adolescence, metamorphosis, nightmares, and sexuality — and provide a pretext for the creation of some of the most mysterious and bewitching imagery of Burns’s incredible career. Kommix is like discovering an entire box of comic books you never knew existed.

CHARLES BURNS grew up in Seattle in the 1970s. His work rose to prominence in Art Spiegelman’s RAW magazine in the mid-1980s, and since then he has worked on a wide range of projects including album covers, ad campaigns, and set design. He has illustrated covers for Time, The New Yorker, andThe New York Times Sunday Magazine, and is the cover artist for The Believer. His full-length graphic novel, Black Hole received Eisner, Harvey, and Ignatz awards. He lives in Philadelphia.