Monsterhead Books Co-creator passes R.I.P. Charlie Burgoon

R.I.P. Charlie Burgoon - cartoonist and co-creator of Monsterhead Books. On February 14th 2010 Charlie Burgoon passed away at approximately 4pm EST.

Monsterhead at Green Brain's SNAP! The Comic Arts Festival 2005 Left: Marc Palm and Right: Charlie Burgoon

Charlie was a cartoonist and suffered from a rare skin disease called Epidermolysis bullosa. He created comics for most of his life and also self-published mini-comics under the name Ghost Train Press. Under that label he put out several issues of Odd, Fizzenpop, Schlock, as well as one of his auto-biographical comic E.B.N. (Epidermolysis Bullosa Narcissus) which was planned to be six issues. He continued drawing comics through 2007 when he created Nucking Futz! a four page fold-up comic.

Charlie Burgoon and Marc Palm started doing comics together in the early 2000's. Having both created several mini and digest sized comics themselves they collaborated on what would become Monsterhead Books.

Their plan started with wanting to do a jam comic. Trading off on writing and drawing each page. There was no script or idea of what the book would be about. Charlie started the comic Quasioctix with a page were a man answered a randomly ringing payphone and then is clobbered and dragged out of sight. This page was then given to Marc who had to followed it up not knowing anything more than what was put on the page. Each page was created like this. Much like an Exquisite Corpse exercise. They were very good about not letting the other know what they were planning or letting them see what they had been drawing. Organically, Quasioctix was finished after 5 years of working on it back and forth. This process was delayed may times by the creator's own procrastination and laziness. Once they got rolling near the middle of the book they began drawing another jam comic that ended up being called the Reclusives. They were inspired and productive during this time. A third and fourth book got started but were never finished before Charlie passed.

Quasioctix was a name that they created from shuffling a couple of words together that they found appealing in a copy of the Daily Reporter, a Coldwater Michigan newspaper. The story, which was not prefigured or thought of in advance, is set in a futuristic world where the heads of humans are used to project their memories onto the wall for the personal amusement of the rich and trendy. A group of activists terrorize a gallery where some heads are being sold and they free as steal as many as they can in the raid. From there it climaxes at a home where the group is cornered and there's a dramatic finish. The style of the book is very chaotic and experimental at times, so this can make it hard to read. This could be because it would be a year or more when one of them would hand off a page to the other, so their personal story telling abilities and art styles would changed over time.

The Reclusives book is much more cohesive. It was finished in roughly a years time. This book was approached differently than the Quasioctix. They freely discussed what they were going to do when it came up. No over-all plot was ever figured out before hand, so it was still written page by page. The Reclusives is a trio of hermits who live on a ring of islands made up of three volcanoes. There's a signal and then three giant robots fly into space to defeat a horde of Moon aliens. Very much a homage and spoof of 80's cartoons.

The other two books that were in the works were even yet more different than these two. One was going to be digest sizes book with no collaboration actually, it would have been just one or the other artist on every page. They proposed to do it in color, but none of pages got any farther than pencils. The other one is called Costive. It's laid out in a mini-comic format and they way they treated this one was like the Quasioctix where they did what they wanted without letting the other know, but they were able to write and draw as many pages in a row as they wanted. This book would have been 80 pages. They were able to pencil 60 total and Charlie was the last to do anything. Marc is going to work on his next pages soon, which might end up being the final 20. Afterward he would like to ink and possibly color the whole book.

Monsterhead's future is still bright. While Marc finishes what he would like to do, the existing comics Quasioctix and the Reclusives will still be available as free downloads on Lulu.com. If you want a one-of-a-kind hand made version of either of the books contact Marc at swellzombie@hotmail.com