Celebrated Summer

Charles Burns' Celebrated Summer is a single-issue graphic novella published by Cambourakis in 2014, a haunting meditation on adolescence and the toxic legacy of the 1960s counterculture. The story follows two teenage girls in a small Pacific Northwest town, whose summer of punk rock and rebellion is shadowed by a mysterious, contagious plague that transforms its victims. Burns' signature stark, black-and-white artwork amplifies the story's unease, making it a potent, self-contained exploration of innocence, violence, and the ghosts of a generation.