Final Cut

The beloved and award-winning author of Black Hole returns with an arresting story of an artist’s obsessions and the cost of pushing the boundaries of creativity

As a child, Brian and his friend Jimmy would make home movies in their yards, coaxing their friends into starring as victims of grisly murders and smearing lipstick on them to simulate blood. Now an aspiring filmmaker, he and Jimmy, along with Jimmy’s friend Laurie – the new girl in town and Brian’s reluctant muse – set off to a remote cabin in the woods. Armed with a thrifted 16-millimetre camera, they film a true sci-fi horror movie set in a post-apocalyptic world where humans are born of disembodied alien wombs, a homage to Brian’s favourite movie The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. But as Brian’s affections for Laurie go seemingly unreciprocated, Brian writes and draws himself into a fantasy where she is the girl of his dreams – somehow both his damsel in distress and his saviour.

The beloved and award-winning Charles Burns returns with an arresting story of an artist’s obsessions and the cost of pushing the boundaries of creativity in his first standalone work since Black Hole. Final Cut blurs the line between dreams and reality, imagination and perception in this astonishing look at what it truly means to express oneself through art.