Harvard Book Store; WGBH Forum Network; Charles Burns: X'ed Out

As many of you know Charles Burns work rose to prominence in Art Spiegelman's RAW magazine in mid 80s and went on from there. His Illustrated covers for time The New Yorker in the New York Times Magazine among many other publications. He regularly creates covers important illustrations for the Believer magazine doesn't work for Iggy Pop's album brick by brick. It was also a commission to create illustrations that were used as a basis for a new version of Nutcracker calling it the hard nut in 2005 Charles Burns published his most widely acclaimed book Black Hole which was a recipient of the Eisner Harvey and ignorance awards. So very thrilled that he's here with us tonight but not for their June. Please join me in welcoming Charles Burns. So we're going to show a bunch of slides. Now answer some questions usually start out by discussing some of my influences. I was born in 55 so when I was very very young my dad had an interest in comics and we had a lot of books around the

house. You could bring in classic collections of American comic strips in one of the kind of odd things that he had was a recent black and white reprints of Valentine books put out like what reprints of Harvey Kurtzman Zz mad comics before there WAS MAD magazine there was in the early 50s there was mad comics which were conventional conventional color comics that were put up by E.C. comics. And they were parodies of sort of movies books popular American culture. And these are things I look at a lot when I was a kid and it was there were years before I could actually read. So I was spending a lot of time inordinate amount of time looking at all these images and not really knowing what the cultural or the significance of any of the stories I didn't know who I didn't know who Wonder Woman was for example and keeping in mind that these

were originally published and in color when I was looking at this these guys on the one they're actually wearing skin tight suits but to me they look like they're just naked. NEARY scary looking guys with machine guns. And I don't know who Sherlock Holmes was but I knew that this was a very kind of dark atmosphere it's Garry looking and still these were done by Will Elder who worked with Harvey Kurtzman Richmond did the writing. And he had a number of artists that were doing the drawing for him. Even when he was doing something it was very sunny that was still deeply disturbing. The little drop little drop seat with a law that's been broken has been discussed and so this is what I mean this coming look the kind of very deep shadows the kind of war she look to some of the the kind of inky line something that I

really loved looking at and started emulating and trying to trying to imitate early on. But another side of another series of comics I looked at very early on were the series Tintin players in the early 60s there were I think there were six books that were published by Golden press and they were they were translated they were American translations as opposed to the British translations and I guess they never really caught on here. I'm really on what my dad was interested enough in comics a lot to bookstores and brought me home. Well the first in the series and I was really flipped early on so there was a very there's kind of a polarity here you've got this very kind of the the work that I'm attracted to that I was more typical of what my drawing looks like it's kind of big thick dark incline and this much is what's called clear line of the this line that there's a came up with in this beautiful

full of books. So again I was reading these are looking at these before I could actually read. So I would spend countless hours just staring at all the you know every every inch of the books. When you open them up you have these in papers and even though I had a couple of books like I realized that there was a whole series of books there were obviously there were episodes stories characters that I didn't recognize. So that you know really piqued my curiosity on the back cover as you would have seen this is actually a French a French edition but the American edition is that very similar where we would say stay tuned or look for new titles and you look around the back of this cover and there are all kinds of against little clues about the other stories that I hadn't read. For example the right here you've got this the crumbling Castle last

waltz in the distance and that was incredibly intriguing to me I think that probably the whole of the stew the stories I was making up my mind thinking about that setting reply more intriguing than the actual story when I eventually saw it many years later. And on the on the other side you've got this like odd things that I didn't know had no idea what they were this was like this kind of mushroom shaped Newtons response on it. Eventually I figured out I think I figured out that these were books that were published in another country another new foreign language. There was it was a kid at school and I was in second grade whose spirits were French and he had a couple of very books that were in French and I was able to borrow them from him. And so there was something that was very frustrating about the fact that you use this foreign language that I couldn't decipher but but I also he knew that in all these books out there that I hadn't seen.

So this is this is a little sequence from the secret of the unicorn when the first book's like on line in this scene you can definitely tell that Tintin scared doesn't look scared very often gets drops lying awful hahaha. One minute you're scared come closer to the door come closer. Closer good. Now look there's an inner calm. Now you have to keep in mind that I'm about five years old and I'm looking at this and I have no idea what an intercom is and I can't read. And so to me this really had my impression is that this is kind of this this malice that was imbedded in this wall that was that was talking to Tinton. So there's something really strong about some of the imagery in my imagination at that point my life these kinds of images really were embedded in a very early age a tender age. One of things I did was was with steel steel some big

this is this is like some in papers from a collection of stories I did with this character L. Borba. Taking a straight shot that goes and papers. And this was this is stealing the idea of this book cover this is a book called Blood club. And I again I think when I when I did the text for it as well this was was taken directly off of the American edition. So I'll try to read it I don't know whether I can actually do it all and says what you should know about Plug plug plug plug is the newest addition in a brilliant series of picture storybooks loved by children and praised by parents and teachers all over the world. Each book in the series tells a complete exciting story featuring big baby a slightly abnormal American kid whose exploits taken from his own backyard to the darkest recesses of his small plane where a big baby devote big devoted readers number in the thousands and include not only children but a handful of people minded adults.

Here are some of the reasons why and I go on to do some quotes of the day quotes from the London Times Literary Supplement junior bookshelves and at the bottom I have Dr. Jerry sink pictures and fictions with children want what share with them. So when I started working on a new book I really want to. I like this idea of this this strong polarity of this of using a character in a style that was similar to not similar but was but was certainly came out of that world of Tintin that I grew up with and then on the on the. So the left you've got this character who's unnamed in the story but who call and knit knit Tinton backwards and on the right we have Doug the protectionist he's much more in the kind of typical world that I draw. So you've got he's got shadows on his face is kind of more he's rendered in shadow whereas with the Nittany character is much more open line much more cartooning.

And here's the partial cast of characters a guy named in his bathrobe with instead of snowy the dog you got into the cat and his little his little pal. Not sure if he's a pal yet but he's and named him either but I was even calling a hoodie so. OK there's no no booties in the audience and sold. So this is where we first meet is is the whole street urchins friend. I'm not going to try to imitate the the sixth form text here. Pardon English you speak English. Eat. Hey mister you know what he

is the only part I remember the part where I wake up and don't know where I am. So you see this the first time or introduced to Doug using this kind of circa 7 early 70s Sears solo with all the Colorado colors. Captain Crunch various books. And this is the from his point of view we're looking down on his bed and some of the more books and scenes in the center records right. There's a number of 70s. So the pull of the Polaroid camera I mean before digital photography there was this is the this is your choice for a for instant

instant pictures. This was introduced in the in the 70s and it was really a pretty amazing camera it was a it was a kind of reflex lens you could say to look through the lens. It took me that the film was very kind of was very interesting is VERY that the color was very you could get very saturated colors and it was a camera that I used a lot. I was in art school at the time and so my character Doug is you know is a photog the student and he's using this camera. It's so amazing I love watching the colors come up you know I I've been taking Polaroids for a couple years now. So basically you take pictures and you think shoot out and they would slowly the color would slowly come bizzle And you know there really wasn't a kind of magic about it. And what was interesting too is the emotion remained soft for a while so you could

actually you can actually push them around. One of the artists that Doug talks about is Lucas and Maurice who I guess is primarily a sculptor who started out as a sculptor but then he started using doing photographs and using SFC 70s to do self portraits and here is where he says you know we can pushing around the motion and it's very kind of portraits of portraits and I'm showing these these are these are kind of what I would say from what I was like looking at doing that period of my life and I try to kind of I try to imitate these and pushed the emotion around them I always look kind of like a big mess. You didn't have this kind of beautiful supporters that he had and these are some these are portraits I did double portraits of friends of mine in this era in the late 70s by 70 77 using my own friends when we were young and young and old. So this is the first. This is the first concert I went to the first punk concert I went to in

San Francisco in the fall of 77 and I'm out there you can. I mean that photograph. You know basically here and here it is. He went and got stupid clothes. But anyway I was sold it was it was an amazing sun concert. You can you can see it was the. One thing that I really like I mean one thing that I wanted to talk about in the book was I mean originally the original story kind of came out the idea of wanting to talk about that era and some of things that. That was nice on really intriguing. We're just a sack that these are bands kids from our school kind of kids have probably been beat up in school who are now so you know and found their voice at and starting bands and they were just kind

of there was added to that that you could turn your back on the kind of mainstream corporate music world and you could you could do it yourself you could record your own music. You could put out your own 40s lives and you could do your own graphics as you see here which is kind of like this very primitive. First forty four story fly by taxi the moon we get little stickers that actually close the package up there. So there's a first 45 by a band from L.A. callbacks to long gone but there are young here the deadbeats still the hippies are a promise they won't lose sight the lyrics but I do know them. One of the other influences in this book and a big influence at that time for me was William Burroughs and his his writing and I don't know just his his his viewpoint his world his worldview really

kind of clicked with me at a certain point. There's you know this kind of dark vision of the world but a very humorous one too. So my character Doug kind of takes on trying to do a couple writing and performances that are based on Burroughs widens. Well that was these are some quarters that I've done for a couple different publications. So Doug was this knit knit masses and was in mask that he created he was before and he says I was scared shitless I done a couple performances before but never in front of a real audience. I'm also known as John 23 by the tape I made of random sounds. Guitar feedback television commercials white noise. Don't worry this won't take and the idea was to blast the tape as loud as possible and then read a few my cups on top of that this is the only part where wake a distant flicker about the flood swollen river

just a ghost in the vast modern colors blooming. Send pink blanket old photos fading in floating down the rotten dawn when healing eggs flesh cool idiot smiles. Boys with you I want to look dreamy and with our eyes open shuffling images a mosaic of. OK OK that's enough staffers music. Or wait maybe you guys are really into hippie poetry. Maybe you want to keep listening to this stuff all night. I mean would you call that Anyway I guess it was art anyway. Were the microbes in this called happiness. Other though the quote there I mean what you call it anyway I guess it was or was it was literally a quote from some live performance that I saw that I heard later on tape. Snotty a snotty punk girl. One of the side projects I've done in addition to the book that was just published was kind of gathering ideas. I did this kind of stand alone pieces or standalone

pages that were really more like sketchbook ideas kind of gathering of images photographs and ideas that kind of pop up in the story but no real no real sequence to them. I've been I've had a few published in the believer but there's a comics section of LIBOR that I've had a number of these published in. It was like watching those films in science class where the snake eats the egg only in reverse. This will come into play later and one of the systems I keep drawing these images over and over again. The walking fetal pig dragging his umbilical cord and away splayed dumping Well a sewage into a huge river. Why where they come from. She was in the romance comics. She had a little stuck in that she'd pull out and read before going and this one is self-explanatory sort of McKinnon's. So those

earlier slides. Another thing that I was looking at I've discovered as I've been working on this book were some pirated editions of Tintin So the this is from China and they didn't have the rights to to publish the books and the books originally in color so that the way they figured out how to publish them was literally redrawing the entire book so tracing the entire book and reconfiguring the panels had bought a couple of these. And at first glance you kind of I was flipping through and it looks exactly like the original art. Because a printed fairly small but then eventually look closely and you eyes that they were completely redrawn the traced and it was all in mind. Mind boggling and for me looking at these kind of brought up that feeling that I had when I was younger of first of all looking at foreign editions of Tintin that I couldn't read and

predating that looking at books before I could literally read so it had the kind of the kind of mystery of looking you know I love the graphics as well. Intriguing So these are some other Chinese editions you know this very I don't know how many of you are familiar with Hinton But these characters in there they're just very odd representations of 10:10 and Captain Haddock with machine of the gleeful look holding a big submachine gun is very nice. So one of things I've done in addition to the book is a series of a series of principal plants and here I've taken one of the classic Tintin book covers and done my take foreign EDITION. And all the image all the images kind of key into the story as well but they don't necessarily appear in any form in the story. And this is based off of the early Belgian Tintin magazine was a weekly

weekly magazine that appeared in Britain was originally serialized. I love the kind of graphics there but of course I used his fake formed text. And I couldn't stop there. So I did a series of fake comic books fake knit knit comics and I used the one text but the but some of the graphics are based on kind of early American comics as a love the look of the very very simplified bright color graphics. Other the the image of the woman the naked woman with the house surrounding her is taken from Louise Bourgeois who's a sculptor known for sculptures. But when she did that she's done pieces based on something I've seen years and years ago and I'd kept a photocopy of it. And this idea of this anonymous woman who's in the house again this is a there's an image or that will that will that will be in a later book.

Well this idea of looking at artists being influenced by them this kind of imagery popping up and it's another little care. So these are just like a series of playing with ideas of these these foreign editions and what I actually mean a book that's being published as as I speak there's a there's a French publisher is doing this. It's kind of a cut up version of a kind of fake pirate version of my story. So they actually the title is Johnny 23 the snake with a fake lettering there you can see the the castle on the left or the castle on the horizon there. So these are just the cut ups that I used to use as fake foreign text that I did I came up with. And so you know there's there's plenty of foreign

editions I've seen as kind of odd colors that I was trying to end it here so kind of a warmer paper pewter paper and the purple ink. But taking existing images and and and shuffling together doing a cut up. Will be like this forever. I'll never find a way. There's a river flowing under me dragging me downstream. I want to raft I'm drifting away swept up in the flood load up with all my craft all the things I can't seem to let go of yet. We were happy we really were at least for a little while. I try to control it try to focus in on the good things. Waking up with Sarah on a clear beautiful day walking with her through Chinatown the sky impossibly blue.

Everything bright and clean and new but my eyes always drift I was looking. That there's a there's something in my legs. What that that's nothing. Sometimes you get fertilized by accident but it's no big deal. It's all protein. You don't want to tell you that. Come on get over the nice clean place you got nothing to worry about that that's an even doing here in a very controlled sort of way not a random way a very controlled way is

kind of emulating what William Burroughs was doing or trying to do something as a seal of cut ups in the chemical large seal to it and in what he was trying to do in his writing or what it said on the dean's board was to use a collage technique which is little sometimes. And so that's what I'm doing. His idea was was having this random random quality in mind is having a look of something that's random but as a burden tool. So even in the piece that we're showing you there with the look on the foreign pirated edition there's still some logic at least in my mind of how the story is unfolding. It's it's it's cutting in images that come back again and we cycle through. So yeah I mean that was more my I mean it was kind of after the fact so he was he was aware of no cause in that idea

and it was so this is more based on the idea that well the what I was trying to show a little bit at first there is if I was going to kind of distill it down if I was going to point to one source it was really those early images that I showed you. So that was something that really kind of seeped into my subconscious early on that look you know especially the fact that these are black and white reprints instead of color had that you know that really meant something mean to me too. And then for whatever reason I was just attracted to that law and you got this very sick and thin line to show that kind of the show to show shadow. So you know I try a lot of different things growing up when I was drawing I would do you know just kind of goofy things that kids are using a ballpoint pen and everything else but eventually I started trying to you create a line that kind of that imitated that first I was I was using like I knew you had to you I

knew that cartoonists use pens and ink something like I'd looked at a few books so I got some crow quill pens and I was trying that. I would literally draw one side of the law and another side of it and still it in. And eventually there was I met somebody fairly late it was like in high school. Who was this cartoonist he was a good cartoonist but he but he told me that I think he did cartoons but anyway really bad stuff but he used a brush and that was where I kind of realize that oh that's how it's done and I've I probably could've figured that up by reading books more or paying attention more but then I just I just slowly tried to you know I figured out that that's how that's creating you know that's there's no logic and so it was really a very very slow process of just kind of imitating that look that I really like this very kind of fluid line and you know something that you know as for tapering and it's in line. It's not not that many people use a bush anymore. It's not that typical but it used to

be the tool of the trade. It was it was it was very prevalent in comic books and a lot of a lot of you know mainstream comics to some. As we mentioned I was a kid I was like a high school kid that couldn't draw so it was like the one thing I knew that I could do and thoughts I felt comps I felt confident about you know the fact I could kill and I went and I knew that OK I guess I'm going to die. I was clueless I went you know I'm going to go to art school some hell come out I'll be an artist on the other end. I really had no idea what that was and no idea what that world was I looked at a lot of books and you know I was you know there's things I liked I really didn't have any sense of what that world was. So I started out doing printmaking and I was terrible at printmaking and just there was there's about that process that was just wasn't direct enough for me. And during the time that I was in art school I bounced around to a bunch of different schools and tried a lot of things which was probably ultimately good for me. But during the whole time I would always I would have my work that I would do on the side so it almost felt like my

personal work and the work that I was doing in school. I didn't really put those things together very often so I was doing. I would casually bring my comics into a teacher and show them and they were kind of their odd non narrative comics they were more abstract images but using the kind of panels and framing that you see in the in my work. But eventually eventually I tried a lot of things like photography which I which was actually very helpful for me to kind of think about composition and and I tried painting sculpture but then eventually really realized that I wanted to tell narratives. And I also wanted to work in a medium that was accessible meaning that it was there was you know that was you could publish it. Even if I was going down to the you know to to get pieces photocopied and stapling them up and giving to friends is still something that had that kind of accessibility to it so. When I was done with school I really was pretty much when I started slowly teaching

myself to do comics again. To actually tell narratives and that process was a waltz. It took a while to. I think most cartoonists most cartoonists either come from you know that their focus is on writing or on visuals and the best cartoonists will are able to mesh those thoughts to two parts equally or find a way to put them together. Well and you know it took me a while to to find a way to tell stories that I want to tell. And the dual side than you. But anyway I went to school with Matt Groening in the bury. So they were we worked on the page in the newspaper together at the state school and in Washington the everything State College. So I just found out a couple days ago Negron Flanagan says that Charles Montgomery Burns his name out to me.

That was that was the aside but I mean if there was I had I been in the audience before where Since that did you need child was going to be the child learns and he said you have to talk my lawyers and all that. But anyway my friend was was out in Ohio and he and he said that that was actually something that came out of his mouth so I just thought I'd share that we but so I had a few things I mean I had strips in school and you know things like that which is usually people start and then somewhere around the time they were showing you some of the punk images my friends and I was living in that was around the Bay Area at that time San Francisco and Oakland right around then I started being in you know a couple fanzines and things like that some newspapers. But the first the first real and first important magazine I was in was Art Spiegelman and Francoise Milly's RAW magazine out of New York City. At that time there was not. There were not a lot of not a lot of

choices or places. Then used to have your work published. There was a mainstream superhero stuff that I just wasn't interested in. There were underground comics that were pretty much I mean they were really dead by that point. This is this is the early 80s one thousand nine hundred eighty or so and that was right around the time that that the first issue Iraq came out I was I was up in New York showing my pathetic illustration portfolio around to various magazines trying to get work. And I remember seeing them it out on the stands there. And it really it really reflected much more what I was interested in it was kind of the the the college magazine that I'd always imagined would exist it was oversize is about this big. There was a real focus on on the graphic quality the quality of reproduction. There were there was oddball little magazines that were stapled inside the magazine it just had that had this really interesting feel to it. And there were a number of one thing that he did as well as introduce a lot of European

cartoonists the United States publish them here for the first time. So that whole mix was really important. And. And I think that you know I think by I slowly start getting published and roll in a few other places. But again that's there were not that many venues early on and that slowly slowly changed I started doing collections of my comics. Those are published by A.N. books and Penguin Books but you know they did relatively well but there was still kind of before this kind of a much more mainstream acceptance or understanding what Graphic Novels are and that's the kind of catchphrase now but that's fairly a recent term. But yeah that's it was just a certain slow gradual process. Yeah I get it I just read this where's new a lot of them. They tend to be the books that

my friends made to swear them. Wells Joe Sacco most people saw. I'm always bad at naming names. I kind of have to have to come up with a list sometimes I can and. Yeah I mean it certainly mapped out I really have everything I have everything. This the structure is there but it's also open ended enough that that allows for ideas to come in as I'm working the way I work generally is I mean I just have a mountain of notebooks and I I do my best not to edit myself in any way or censor myself in any way and I'm putting together any and all ideas and it slowly gets distilled down to you know of the story. When I was starting out with Nextel like I think I mentioned I was trying to do a story set in that world that I that I experience and grew up in.

And I had about two or three false attempts and I think what the what the problem was is I was I was seen as black hole and I was I was still doing a I was still in that mode I was telling a story in that way and I needed to be able to step away from that so partly working in color and partly taking on this you know this means different way of of storytelling was it was fun for me in a departure. So it's the best I can. Explain that process. There's not not much I mean I Paramount Pictures has you know they're holding onto that at the moment. They've I mean I've signed an option with them and I think it's like turned over a few times. David Fincher sure. Who did fight club and the ones of all the movies. Was that was named as the director for a while but now he's just he's doing other things so it's Hollywood so I occasionally get this

update oh here's so-and-so is interested so I was interested in it and then get someone's signed on and you know signs off of it so for me it's like I knew when I went in when I got involved with you know seeing about the possibilities of having a movie made I knew that it would be a very frustrating process if I tried to maintain control. I mean I know that I I know they could have tried to write a screenplay for example but I know the chances of that ever you know getting on the screen would be next to zero so I really my attitude was just I just really want to move on and you know hopefully a good movie will be made. We'll see. But that's about all I can say I get occasional updates as far as I know there's a script that's been written a second script there was an initial script was written by a new game and another with a guy whose name I'm not remembering. There's a new. Script I didn't read either of the scripts so I don't want to see what's up.

I could say you know there is a contract I have is about 100 pages and it can be anything they want it to be pretty much I mean I'm being facetious but I mean it doesn't rule out anything. So there was some talk about using some sort of computer generated techniques to simulate this very different looking world but who knows on a suitable Originally there was a director who just did kind of use a French director that was involved and he's good at doing kind of American 70s slasher movies but we're really glad he's not watching. So you know it's about as much as I thought that was really unusual when I was down a black hole. There were a work of the French production company to do this and it's film called here and there didn't seem like that son. But it's it was very unique in the sense that these were it was almost a

husband wife team and they had done. They've actually made a couple of movies that were critical if not plain actual successes that they their idea was to let each director involved in the project do everything will be involved in every aspect of the movie which is unusual itself so there were things that I sought comfortable with going in. Well first of all I was I was attracted to project because I live respected unlike the other the other people involved in the other artists. But when I started out I wrote a screenplay that seemed kind of normal for me and I did I did the storyboards which felt almost like comics in a certain way you didn't see. Unces and and hell scenes. Segue into each other. But the minute we did let's call animatic which is literally doing a very crude animation and timing timing of your storyboard. Then I was suddenly realize that the

learning curve was an extremely difficult and luckily I was working with people who were very good editors and were nice to me. So that is so as far as like me there were things that you know I was I was I was doing I was working with actors and actresses and you know having the in the translations worked for me and directing that I was working with the the soundtrack and the sound effects and every aspect of it which would seem very unusual to me I think it is very unusual to have that amount of control. And even so there's something about the process that's very When you're dealing with it we're in a collaboration like that there are so many things that get taken away from the one I was so used to work with comics where I can where you really enjoy every single facet of it down to the down to the choosing what kind of paper stopped and the design on the books and.

There were things he really didn't mean to hurt women and soul as you well know and I had people saying oh I hate actors and it sounds good to me. French is a little bit this sentence accent so those things that I just you know I wasn't aware of or couldn't control options or situations to where it was a limited budget so to say OK all of these all of these 60 shots you can you can we can retake or work on 10 of those and I'm looking at this Will his he doesn't have an ear in the shot yet you know we have to make sure he has an ear on all we can see so those things like that that you know I didn't have a unlimited budget. All those things but I guess it was also in English so I was I was happy to do work in that way. It was interesting. Yeah it's a it's a voice in this kind of balancing act where especially in the past my my comic work was more my kind of my

personal work and it works very slowly. And and the young I regard that as just as my personal work and I've never I've never had any better ters and never had any editing in my work other than you know checking on my bad spelling or something like that but there's no I've never had someone say you know you can't show this you can't do this or can't do that. It really is my worker feels you know a few what that line on the other hand. It's the it was never really a paying job or early on. So I always took on commercial work. We were illustration or commercial work. In that case it is a collaboration again in the sense that someone's providing the idea or the subject matter or we're kind of renting renting your style for their for their piece. So I've done some of some odd jobs. I don't there's not. Thing I've ever really regretted as far as like taking on a a product or something like that. I mean I've

done the you know commercials for Levi's and different beers and. OK so to that I did way back when he was this odd 20 something ironic humor you know attempted ironic humor for the window there to a target audience that failed to respond. Cameron That was a Coca-Cola put that out as a really odd project. But I mean those are those were jobs that you know there's nothing I regret. You know I don't I don't regret doing that work. It's just it's more like a street job I guess but it's still still my work. But I'm not the I don't feel like I'm the author of those you know. It's illustrating some else's work for ideas. So again it's it was always a a balancing act so when I was when I was working on black hole which took a long time it was kind of starting and stopping. I would have you know I'd buy myself some time to work and then go back to doing commercial pieces in a way it was in a way I think it was probably

you know is frustrating and took a long time it was probably beneficial in the long run. It gave me a chance to step back and examine why I was working on with with clear eyes instead of pushing states through. At least that's my that's my excuse anyway. Where you would probably think I'd find on the Internet. No actually so occasionally you can find things you know either especially stories or have odd things especially like we have travel to Belgium where they're totally obsessed with 10 10 They're very strange. There's like some there's some Turkish edition and I guess what I find interesting is seeing that seeing this kind of redrawn foreign editions that look very exotic and again they're going to call up those memories of looking at that work when I was a kid. So that's what's on the scene sheets. So. Anyway I guess I'm going to be saying to me.