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Blood Club
Back issue comic.
- GenresComicsGraphic Novels
36 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1992
44 people want to read
About the author
Charles Burns
100 books1,107 followersCharles Burns is an American cartoonist and illustrator.
Burns grew up in Seattle in the 1970s. His comic book work rose to prominence in Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly magazine 'RAW' in the mid-1980s. Nowadays, Burns is best known for the horror/coming of age graphic novel Black Hole, originally serialised in twelve issues between 1995 and 2004. The story was eventually collected in one volume by Pantheon Books and received Eisner, Harvey, and Ignatz awards in 2005. His following works X'ed Out (2010), The Hive (2012), Sugar Skull (2014), Last Look (2016) and Last Cut (2024) have also been published by Pantheon Books, although the latter was first released in France as a series of three French comic albums.
As an illustrator, Charles Burns has been involved in a wide range of projects, from Iggy Pop album covers to an ad campaign for Altoids. In 1992 he designed the sets for Mark Morris's restaging of The Nutcracker (renamed The Hard Nut) at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. He illustrated covers for Time, The New Yorker, and The New York Times Magazine. He was also tapped as the official cover artist for The Believer magazine at its inception in 2003.
Burns lives in Philadelphia with his wife and daughters.
Burns grew up in Seattle in the 1970s. His comic book work rose to prominence in Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly magazine 'RAW' in the mid-1980s. Nowadays, Burns is best known for the horror/coming of age graphic novel Black Hole, originally serialised in twelve issues between 1995 and 2004. The story was eventually collected in one volume by Pantheon Books and received Eisner, Harvey, and Ignatz awards in 2005. His following works X'ed Out (2010), The Hive (2012), Sugar Skull (2014), Last Look (2016) and Last Cut (2024) have also been published by Pantheon Books, although the latter was first released in France as a series of three French comic albums.
As an illustrator, Charles Burns has been involved in a wide range of projects, from Iggy Pop album covers to an ad campaign for Altoids. In 1992 he designed the sets for Mark Morris's restaging of The Nutcracker (renamed The Hard Nut) at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. He illustrated covers for Time, The New Yorker, and The New York Times Magazine. He was also tapped as the official cover artist for The Believer magazine at its inception in 2003.
Burns lives in Philadelphia with his wife and daughters.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
February 4, 2016
Charles Burns is a comics icon for Black Hole and his recent X-Ed Out Trilogy. A mix of fifties/sixties horror nostalgia and humor. Blood Club is a late eighties comic Burns did that was later one of three stories in a 2007 volume released as Big Baby. Blood Club is a 1992 Kitchen Press hardcover with a garish cover and garish summer camp ghost/murder story. It features Tony Delmonte, a little troublemaker whose parents send him to camp to get "values". Having been to camp several times as a teenager, I know boys summer camp may not be the best place to develop strong moral principles. But camp was invaluable to shaping my particular troublemaker character, just wonderful.
Tony gets the nickname "Big Baby" because he wakes everyone in his cabin up crying after having been visited by a scary ghost we have already heard about from the Camp Leader's moralistic fireside story: Obey all the Camp Rules or you will be HAUNTED by the CAMP GHOST!! So put fine upstanding young boys together in a cabin and they will be good, right? And when you put an island with a ghost on it at a summer camp you would NEVER go there, right?
A girls camp is across the lake, as was the case when I was a camper. For hormonally crazed teens, just knowing girls were there out of reach was a restless challenge. So that sort of thing figures in here, and of course someone has a "Skin" magazine to fuel those particular fires. Magazines, kids, pre-internet? Anyway, forbidden lust, island getaway, you get the picture. Feels like Burns recalling light horror comics he would have read growing up. Since we are about the same age, early sixties, we probably read the same Comics Code era comics.
This is classic Burns art and storytelling, though not so bizarre and surreal as some of his later stuff. I liked it a lot. I think it is hard to find in this format, though. Find it in Big Baby.
Tony gets the nickname "Big Baby" because he wakes everyone in his cabin up crying after having been visited by a scary ghost we have already heard about from the Camp Leader's moralistic fireside story: Obey all the Camp Rules or you will be HAUNTED by the CAMP GHOST!! So put fine upstanding young boys together in a cabin and they will be good, right? And when you put an island with a ghost on it at a summer camp you would NEVER go there, right?
A girls camp is across the lake, as was the case when I was a camper. For hormonally crazed teens, just knowing girls were there out of reach was a restless challenge. So that sort of thing figures in here, and of course someone has a "Skin" magazine to fuel those particular fires. Magazines, kids, pre-internet? Anyway, forbidden lust, island getaway, you get the picture. Feels like Burns recalling light horror comics he would have read growing up. Since we are about the same age, early sixties, we probably read the same Comics Code era comics.
This is classic Burns art and storytelling, though not so bizarre and surreal as some of his later stuff. I liked it a lot. I think it is hard to find in this format, though. Find it in Big Baby.
February 9, 2023
Una buena historia de terror de campamento veraniego. Me encanta el dibujo rollo underground de Burns.
August 25, 2013
UGH I LOVE CHARLES BURNS SO MUCH ITS INSANE
November 1, 2024
Blood Club is an episodic chapter in the adventures of Tony "Big Baby" Delmonto, a kid with a hyper-imaginative mind amidst the drab but idyllic 1950s suburban setting. Adult musings are filtered through his rather innocent gaze, but Burns inverts the concept quickly by having Big Baby observe some rather surreal and at times, horrifying, events. In Blood Club, Tony attends summer camp where he and the other boys find some magazines that belonged to previous camp goers, many of whom died at the same camp.
Compared to previous Big Baby entries, this one is a fair bit more straightforward and classic horror camp, but Burns illustrates it to perfection. This edition from Kitchen Sink Press features colors that you won't get from the Big Baby collection released by Fantagraphics.
Compared to previous Big Baby entries, this one is a fair bit more straightforward and classic horror camp, but Burns illustrates it to perfection. This edition from Kitchen Sink Press features colors that you won't get from the Big Baby collection released by Fantagraphics.
March 22, 2022
Carina mini-storia, ben articolata nella sua piccolezza, eppure si vede che è ancora un inizio, perché manca il coinvolgimento nella parte più orrorifica e gli eccessivi dialoghi, che spiegano anche ciò che non serve e si intuisce, smorzano completamente l'atmosfera.
July 20, 2020
Charles Burns is so good
July 10, 2025
summer camp nightmare
big baby's bad blood brothers
leave him with a ghost
big baby's bad blood brothers
leave him with a ghost
August 9, 2010
Charles Burns gets his R.L. Stein on.
August 3, 2014
Te veré en tus sueños
January 25, 2015
Cada vez me gusta más Charles Burns. Sus cómics son como ver películas ochenteras de bajo presupuesto, pero buenas.
March 10, 2022
"Te veré en tus sueños..."
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews