Crack

Charles Burns’s Crack is a single-issue comic from 1983, published by Tiprod, that stands as an early, raw showcase of his distinctive, obsessive black-and-white style. As both writer and artist, Burns delivers a compact, unsettling vignette that already channels the eerie suburban dread and precise, grotesque linework that would define his later, more celebrated work. It’s a crucial artifact for understanding the genesis of a major alternative-comics voice.