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Black Hole

by Charles Burns

3.85 · rating details · 7,142 ratings · 729 reviews

Winner of the Eisner, Harvey, and Ignatz Awards

The setting: suburban Seattle, the mid-1970s. We learn from the outset that a strange plague has descended upon the area’s teenagers, transmitted by sexual contact. The disease is manifested in any number of ways — from the hideously grotesque to the subtle (and concealable) — but once you’ve got it, that’s it. There’s no t...more

Paperback, 368 pages

Published March 25th 2009 by Pantheon (first published January 1st 2000)

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Sep 07, 2008

Jessica rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: bad teenagers

Shelves: leetle-boys, love-and-other-indoor-sports, kind-of-depressing, people-turn-to-creatures, wee-ones-and-bored-teenagers

Well, the art was very lovely, and there were a lot of points at which I was like, "How does his brain manufacture this shit??" which is kind of the ultimate for art in one way, isn't it? But I do wish this had been around when I myself was a bad teenager, because I'm sure it would've affected me a lot more then. Burns does get at some extremely dark and real stuff about the horrific experience of adolescence, particularly that bizarre combo of fear, curiosity, and nihilism that drives...more

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Jessica So, I think I figured out one of the main things that didn't work for me about this. I really think it was a mistake how he told so much of the story ...more
Sep 07, 2008 07:07pm

deleted user I gave it three stars, too. I felt it lacked something, but I had a hard time putting my finger on it. I think you might be onto something.

T...more
Sep 07, 2008 10:26pm

Garrie I agree Jessica. Like you I found the tale compelling but with no emotional resonance, I really didn't care at all about the characters.
Jan 04, 2012 01:20am

Jan 28, 2008

Darcy rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: graphic-fiction-and-non-fiction

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. The "high school" story is pretty well established, and in many ways Black Hole doesn't deviate from the genre standards. Pair of star-crossed lovers? Check. The Nerdy vs. the Cool? Check. Drugs, alcohol, and awkward sex? Check. Teen angst directed mostly at the parents who ruin their lives? Well, that one would work if any adults lasted in this book for more than four panels. But the thing is, if you are going to have a teen plague that distorts infected bodies so that kids grow tails...moreThe "high school" story is pretty well established, and in many ways Black Hole doesn't deviate from the genre standards. Pair of star-crossed lovers? Check. The Nerdy vs. the Cool? Check. Drugs, alcohol, and awkward sex? Check. Teen angst directed mostly at the parents who ruin their lives? Well, that one would work if any adults lasted in this book for more than four panels. But the thing is, if you are going to have a teen plague that distorts infected bodies so that kids grow tails, bumps, horns, or webbing, then having adults in your story kind of gets in the way of . . . everything. This is a story that persistently resists any kind of resolution, and it seems to suggest that adults are simply that--resolution. Adults are what teens become when they settle down into a life that attempts to eliminate through acceptance or rejection the odd and the grotesque and no one in this book is quite there yet; Chris ambiguously ends up floating in the Sound, and while Eliza and Keith have "escaped," their dream of finding a safe place is brittle at best. Sure, the desert is bright, suffused with the kind of white spaces that are noticeably absent in the panels depicting Seattle, but it is a brightness that is fairly empty. And besides, Keith and Eliza's hotel room is disturbingly dark. Sure, they've found each other, but Chris's mantra that Rob could be everything for her isn't guaranteed to work for Keith and Eliza.

I used to teach this in my freshman composition class--I thought it would be a good way to talk about the transition from being a high school teenager to being a college adult. I was very surprised by the reactions to this text: 1.) disgust/dismissal and 2.) the majority of the students read this as a warning against teen sex and drug abuse. Huh? Part of me thinks that the average middle class kid is so conditioned to think that drugs, sex, and alcohol are bad, bad, bad (in and of themselves), that this was mostly a knee-jerk reaction. But the oddity of the book seems to be that you can only really appreciate the idea of transition in the novel (the movement from narrator to narrator, the shift from cool kid to outcast, the amphibians littered throughout the text, or going from "normal" to "mutant") if you've already experienced that transition. Or, alternatively, if you are at the fringes of the social structure described in the novel--if you are the "weirdo" kid in high school, rather than a Chris, Keith, or Rob type. That said, I think it was really worthwhile teaching this text to my freshmen--I think it is the kind of novel that will stay with them (not to mention get passed around in a "I had to read this for college" sort of way). Eventually quite a few of them will have a headslap moment in which they finally figure out that the book is a lot less about the consequences of teen sex, and a lot more about the consequences of growing up. (less)

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Jun 21, 2007

Marissa rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: comix

In truth, Black Hole should probably only rate three stars, but it's such an impressive effort and intriguing concept I'm giving it four. Stylistically, Burns' art is extremely intricate and has a very nice noir quality to it. I have a soft spot for any really well-done horror comic book. Like Adrian Tomine, Burns has obviously taken plenty of tricks from Clowes and Crumb. The strange thing about his art style is that even though it is very slick and eye-catching at first, the more you look at i...more

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Apr 09, 2008

Jason Pettus rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: contemporary, comics, hipster, smart-nerdy, weird, dark, personal-favorite

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally.)

It's definitely true, that although I personally am a big fan of so-called "comic books for grown-ups," I rarely review such projects here at CCLaP, for a variety of deliberate reasons: because of the medium's sketchy reputation with the public at large, for example, because of C...more(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally.)

It's definitely true, that although I personally am a big fan of so-called "comic books for grown-ups," I rarely review such projects here at CCLaP, for a variety of deliberate reasons: because of the medium's sketchy reputation with the public at large, for example, because of CCLaP's emphasis on being a destination truly for adults (as opposed to a destination for extra-smart adolescents), because of so many such "graphic novels" barely qualifying as reviewable literature in the first place. (So in other words, many of these projects are not bad per se, but are merely not substantial enough to have a lengthy analytical essay written about them.) Ah, but I'm making an exception today for writer and illustrator Charles Burns, again for a variety of deliberate reasons -- because I've been following his work since the early 1980s (originally through the pages of RAW magazine while in college), because he does lots of other interesting things besides just comic books (he was the set designer, for example, of the Brooklyn Academy of Music's controversial 1992 production of The Nutcracker, and is also the full-time cover artist for lit-crit magazine "The Believer"). Most importantly, though, Burns' creations over the decades have mostly been a far cry from the usual navel-gazing whining and postmodern superhero discourses of most "alternative comics;" he is instead a master of the grotesque and macabre, the unsettling and weird, a bastard love-child of David Lynch and Walt Disney, with a little Robert Crumb and Hieronymus Bosch thrown in for good measure.

And thus do we come to Burns' magnum opus, 2005's Black Hole, actually written over the course of a decade and originally published serially through hipster comics outfit Fantagraphics. (DISCLOSURE: As is the case with many small presses mentioned here, I am personal friends with several people associated with Fantagraphics; it makes me pre-inclined to like their projects more than other critics do, something you should be aware of when reading this review.) Like many of his other projects, Black Hole is a "body horror" tale, in which otherwise normal people slowly mutate into horrible freaks over the course of the plot; instead of the pulpy noir tales of many of his most well-known past projects, however, Burns here tackles a much more complex and down-to-earth story, using his creepy visual style to metaphorically evoke terrors which are usually only psychological in nature. And indeed, I don't think it's any coincidence that the dust jacket of this book features dual illustrations of Burns himself, one from the 1970s and one from our times; although not literally an autobiographical tale, you do get the sense that Burns is working out at least a few personal issues from his own youth here, using an otherwise fantastical tale to intimately explore many of the emotional subjects that come with being a teen.

The story is simple enough -- it is the late '70s, and a mysterious new sexually-transmitted disease is starting to affect the high-schoolers of suburban Seattle; but instead of being an AIDS-style killer that eats away from the inside out, this virus actually attacks a person's exterior, manifesting as a series of random genetic mutations depending on who you are but otherwise leaving the inside of the body healthy. And since these are very prominent mutations for the most part (mysterious tiny mouths appearing on people's throats, bodies covered in rotting boils), it soon becomes quite apparent to all which teens are sexually active ones and which aren't, leading not only to a moral panic among the parents but a whole new system of class stratification among the high-schoolers themselves. Burns' 400-page tome, then, is a detailed and complicated look at the lives of half a dozen of these suburban teens, as well as the dark milieu they inhabit -- including a dangerous shantytown in the outlying woods where many of the teens relocate after becoming family outcasts, as well as the various complicated relationships these post-outbreak kids all have with each other in their little self-contained new society.

That's probably what's most interesting about Black Hole, to tell you the truth; because when all is said and done, what this book is mostly about is the natural awkwardness and alienation that most people go through during their teen years, and especially about the endless ways such teens hurt and disappoint all the people around them because of a whole series of romantic misunderstandings and miscalculations. And the reason this is so interesting, I think, is because Burns shows how it's almost more efficient to tackle such a subject through the bizarre metaphor of sexually transmitted genetic mutations, rather than a traditional plot; to cite just one great example, there's a sex scene in this book involving a vestigial tail that explains the erotic-awfulness / awful-eroticism of young sex in a better way than a thousand John Hughes movies added together. This is what I mean when I say that Black Hole is both autobiographical and not, and why I think it's one of the rare graphic novels worth reviewing here; because although the story is definitely one that can only be told in comic-book form, it still rings emotionally true from the very core of the plot, in a way that straight-ahead dramas about teen angst often fail to do. It's a big book, one that takes a surprisingly long time to actually get through (welcome news for regular comics readers, I know), but certainly one that is worth the effort, and one I highly recommend to those who only tackle one or two graphic novels a year.

Out of 10: 9.3 (less)

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Feb 04, 2008

Cathy rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: Adventurous readers; not for the squeamish

Recommended to Cathy by: Thompson

Shelves: horror

I don't usually read graphic novels -- especially not gruesome graphic novels about teenagers with bizarre sexually transmitted deformities. But I loved this! Well, "loved" might be the wrong term, but I thought it was incredibly compelling.

With some graphic novels, I've found that the text distracts from the art, or vice versa, but Black Hole is seamless. The art and words equally carry the story. And that art is stunning -- the book looks like one long, detailed woodcut....more

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Aug 20, 2007

Punk rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: graphic-novel

Graphic Novel. It's called the bug. It's a plague, transmitted by bodily fluids, and seemingly ignored by the world at large. In fact, the world of Black Hole is a world almost entirely populated by teenagers, who are the only ones affected by the disease. As in Peanuts, parents are distant figures, rarely seen, and speaking another language when they do appear. Kids get sick, start to mutate, and run away from home. Many of them end up in the woods where a small camp of mutants has formed. No o...moreGraphic Novel. It's called the bug. It's a plague, transmitted by bodily fluids, and seemingly ignored by the world at large. In fact, the world of Black Hole is a world almost entirely populated by teenagers, who are the only ones affected by the disease. As in Peanuts, parents are distant figures, rarely seen, and speaking another language when they do appear. Kids get sick, start to mutate, and run away from home. Many of them end up in the woods where a small camp of mutants has formed. No one seems to miss them or try to help them.

Obviously a metaphor for AIDS -- less obviously one for simple adolescence -- when it comes down to it, these are just stories about kids who are growing up scared and alone, and can't see far enough ahead in their lives to think to protect themselves against something that could kill them. Every minor disaster in a teenager's life can seem like the end of their world so they've got no perspective when they meet the real thing. This is normally where parents or other authority figures would step in and offer guidance, but there's no such thing in Black Hole, which is maybe the most depressing part of it.

In keeping with the story, the artwork is flat, black, and razor sharp, with repeating visual themes and enough vagina imagery to make Freud spin in his grave -- the first page is nothing but a white slit surrounded by black. That'll happen again and again. The book is strictly black and white, working in the negative, with most panels white on black instead of the reverse, as if Burns carved out each figure from the nothingness that surrounded it. It's beautiful and awful, like Mexican folk art filled with devils and death. My one complaint about the book is that neither the text nor the art gave me enough information to easily distinguish the male characters, and I often had a hard time recognizing them. The two main boys were Rob and Kevin, and thanks to their similar haircuts, I didn't realize they were two different kids until I was halfway through. They were both after the same two girls, how was I supposed to know they weren't the same guy? So maybe a little character development was in order, still, it was marvelous and horrible to read, with my favorite character getting a happy, if not entirely believable, ending.

Four stars, not because I "really liked it" -- it's too painful to enjoy on that level -- but it's an amazing work of art with a story that stands up to it.(less)

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Mar 22, 2009

Mike rated it

· review of another edition

I learned: don't sleep with people who have tails or throat-vaginas that whisper truths in the night.

That's pretty unfair--but I half-expected to find this book falling down one of two critical paths: a) the literalization of body/sex angst would become outright silly or b) the body/sex angst would be altogether too adolescent. (My trusted goodreads commadres Montambo and Jessica not-T situated the book in the "b" pile, here and here, respectively.) Yet I found myself pr...more

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Apr 02, 2008

Imogen rated it

· review of another edition

This reminds me so much, in so many superficial ways, of Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron, except with a slightly less amorphous (more morphous!) plot. I read it in a night, which was nice, and it made me feel like I was on acid a bunch of times, but overall I don't feel a hundred percent fulfilled with it as a story.

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May 16, 2008

J rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: comics

When I read a short review of Charles Burns’ new graphic novel, Black Hole, the description of the work it proffered (quoting from the book’s jacket: “the mid-1970’s…a strange plague has descended upon the area’s teenagers, transmitted by sexual contact.”) made me wonder if the man ever wrote about anything else. When I later read that he’d spend the better part of the last ten years writing and publishing this work in a serial format, I realized that I’d probably read portions of it over that p...moreWhen I read a short review of Charles Burns’ new graphic novel, Black Hole, the description of the work it proffered (quoting from the book’s jacket: “the mid-1970’s…a strange plague has descended upon the area’s teenagers, transmitted by sexual contact.”) made me wonder if the man ever wrote about anything else. When I later read that he’d spend the better part of the last ten years writing and publishing this work in a serial format, I realized that I’d probably read portions of it over that period.

Which is not to say that apocalyptic scenarios involving teenagers and sex isn’t something of a theme that runs through Burns’ work. In a world in which authors routinely retell the same story, this is not a particularly distressing thing. It only means that unless you share the author’s particular obsession or bent, a little can go a long way.

Nevertheless, when I happened to walk past Black Hole at the library with the bright yellow “NEW” sticker on the cover and realized that it was just sitting there, no one was snatching it up, I did exactly that. Clocking in at 368 hard back novel-sized pages, Black Hole continues to demonstrate that the graphic novel field is a rich field in which only the topsoil is regularly tilled by leotard clad fanboy books of the Marvel sort. New Yorker art critic Peter Schjeldahl is all full of hot air in declaiming that this art form will stagnate and slide down hill in the aftermath of the blistering comet that was (and is) Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan.

(As a side note, Ware’s Acme Novelty Library, while it appears at first to be a disconnected collection of random pieces from his own comic, is in fact further proof of exactly how much open space there is in the realm of graphic novels. They have as much room to grow as novels have, but have only stuck about one foot into that particular hokey-pokey. Ware’s collectibles collectors in that latest work are presented to us in mostly unconnected vignettes, the sum definitely larger than the parts, as we watch a friendship, and one collector’s mind, disintegrate completely. As loathsome as one character is, flashbacks to his childhood often have that bitter tang of sympathy you sometimes feel for monsters.)

As the jacket quote goes from above, Black Hole takes us back to the 1970s in suburban Seattle. For some time at the book’s beginning, a plague has been working through the local teenagers, passed through sexual contact, which mutates their bodies in peculiar and different ways. One girl grows a tail, a boy’s face melts into just a skull shape with eyes sunken back into the sockets, bulbous growths develop, tentacles, and other such mutations.

We follow through this story mainly a quartet of teenagers. Keith is a young boy who falls in love with a girl named Chris in his biology class. Chris is in love with Rob who she meets at a party. Rob is in love with Chris. Keith later falls for Eliza (the girl with the tail). Rob, of all the characters, has the most haunting of deformities, and perhaps one of the easiest to hide. Just at the base of his throat is a small mouth, with teeth, tongue, and a tiny, tiny voice. We find, through the course of this book that the mouth speaks as if in prophecy, the various little things it says being repeated much later on in the story, at moments where those words become clear.

And there are moments like that all through the work, little phrases said by one character that turn up again in unrelated places, the book echoing constantly. We start about halfway into the tale and then fill in the rest through flashback and as we do, things said, lines that appeared just filler dialogue take on deeper, darker meanings.

While the clear metaphor for AIDS runs through the story, Burns’ interests aren’t simply for drawing clear parallels to our own society in such a specific way, but focuses more on the idea of infection as a kind of social ostracism. Once infected, the teenagers aren’t rushed by their parents to the hospital and no one at any point in the story speaks of a cure. The one sadly amusing parallel that does turn up is when Chris, after having become infected and gone to live out in the woods where others like her live, wakes an old school friend at home to use her shower. As they sit and catch up, Chris is repulsed by a Halloween photo of her friend and her boyfriend with Bowie make up on, Bowie being too strange and transgressive for some at that point, even for a girl who molts and sheds her entire skin.

Burns’ story then is a nightmarish vision of high school and early college, on conformity and deliberate isolation, and a sideways exploration of the pain we all suffer in growing up and growing apart. It is also a tail of doomed love, of psychotic obsession, and a recollection of that heady drug induced decade where all the promises of the sixties’ flower children turned twisted and repulsive.

Relying heavily on dark lines and shadows, Burns’ art has a kind of expressive broody quality that quickly moves into phantasmagoric. There is a purity in his lines and his framing though that grips you whether it’s mere outlines in shadow or fully detailed renditions of a tent in the deep woods or the caverns the plague has carved through one boy’s face. There are pictures exuding an intense realism (the endpapers’ run of yearbook style pictures is one instantly recognizable page) and others that seemed carved on a chimerical woodblock of nightmare and bad acid. It is indeed a talented man that can pose a naked tailed woman in just such postures as to be still arousing, then turn around and draw a mutant hand holding a chicken bone bit in two with such a revolting degree of specificity.

Burns’ earlier work may indeed be prone to the ridiculous and the absurd. Black Hole, on the other hand, is a work of mordant sympathy that hooks our hearts rather piercingly, alternating between the grotesque and the tragically commonplace. From its opening pages of a frog dissection to its desperately quiet and strangely beautiful yet suicidal conclusion, Burns captures the distilled essence of teenage heartbreak and fear and renders up a work that demands to be read and reread and reread again. Black Hole will suck you in.(less)

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May 04, 2008

Stephen rated it

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While I am usually a sucker for underground graphic novels and indie comics, this one, for many reasons, is not one of my favorites.

For starters, Burns gets a lot of the power for this book from his grotesque, clinical illustrations of the disease that affects the young population in this town. His graphic depictions of ripping skin, boil-covered faces, and disfigured teenagers are meant to underscore the horror of the disease, but they really only served as distractions from his po...more

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Mar 18, 2008

Gphatty rated it

Burns is an amazing artist. His ability to convey time and emotion with his art in unbelievably good. I would almost recommend this book to anyone that needs proof of the power graphic novels can have . . .

but this story will probably be too disturbing for many people. A virus that gives people disfiguring mutations. Said virus is communicable through sex. All the main characters are teens dealing with identity crises, sex, and drugs. The story goes from frank and unflinching t...more

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Feb 15, 2008

Hillary rated it

· review of another edition

Jared and I have been discussing whether this graphic novel merits four or five stars. On the one hand, it's still not quite up there with truly great works of literature. On the other, it's about as good as it gets for this medium. It ends abruptly, without a true wrapping up, but, hey, so do a lot of good books. Mostly, it reminds me of Dan Clowes's _Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron_ in its dreamlike but indelible images. I laughed when I opened the book and saw a drawing of a slit on the firs...more

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Sep 03, 2007

Christopher rated it

· review of another edition

About 12 years ago I pre-ordered a copy of Charles Burns' collected Black Hole comics sight unseen. I'd never read any of his books before, but I was really into reading alternative comics, especially big fat ones with beginnings, middles and ends. You know; real stories. I'd had enough of reading continuous, never-ending, soap opera story-lines from the big comic publishers, and the really good single issue comics from Drawn and Quarterly only came out sparingly; maybe one issue every two years...moreAbout 12 years ago I pre-ordered a copy of Charles Burns' collected Black Hole comics sight unseen. I'd never read any of his books before, but I was really into reading alternative comics, especially big fat ones with beginnings, middles and ends. You know; real stories. I'd had enough of reading continuous, never-ending, soap opera story-lines from the big comic publishers, and the really good single issue comics from Drawn and Quarterly only came out sparingly; maybe one issue every two years or so.

Anyway the promised first collected edition of this book never happened, and my pre-order was canceled. I forgot all about it. Then a few weeks ago I was in a comic shop for the first time in years and noticed this big book sitting there on the shelf. It apparently made it out of the publisher sometime in 2005. I was considering buying either this or John Porcellino's King-Cat Classix, and then suddenly, without warning, I decided to buy that Jay Ryan poster book instead.

Anyway again, the local library recently revamped it's inter-library loan system so that it now includes a lot more collections from a lot more libraries in Illinois. Some fairly obscure stuff that I never could have gotten from there before (like this book) suddenly became available. Step 1: Internet. Step 2: Search. Step 3: Reserve. Step 4: Wait. Step 5: Read.

Thanks Joliet Public Library for sending this book to me. It is absolutely freaking beautiful, creepy, and sexy all at the same time. I can't say I know exactly what the story is about. Through the entire book, I walked a line between understanding and total confusion, sometimes stepping on one side and sometimes the other. Luckily, Burns has laid tons of tiny, visual clues in the corners of his panels to help decipher the meaning during subsequent rereads. I guess it is mostly about sexual awakening and the teenage aversion toward becoming a responsible adult, wrapped up in the guise of a sexually transmitted disease that turns teens into freaks.. There's also a lot of vagina/gaping-wound/gnashing-teeth/crawling-insect visual metaphors for you woman haters to read something into. Oh and there’s also a hot girl with a sexy tail.
(less)

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Feb 26, 2008

Ryan rated it

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I grew up reading Spawn, so I'm more or less inured to comic book violence. Which is why I've never been creeped out by a comic before.

Charles Burns creeped me out. In a good way. He has a really clean, tight style and his storytelling is very evenly paced. There are entire sequences devoted to glass extracted from an open wound.

His nightmare sequences are amazing as well--wonderfully hypnotic--even if I'm not sure how they're serving the narrative. But whatever....more

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Jan 28, 2008

Christine Giraud rated it

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OK! Now we're talking. This is the first graphic novel that I've read and I think a great one to start with. It's graphics are well done, the text flows well, blah blah blah. But what really works is how I can finally understand why anyone would consider this a new genre of literature. The graphics tell you as much, if not more, than the words. The plot was good but would have been dull in a traditional short story. The graphics really help build the characterizations as the plot progress...more

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Mar 28, 2007

Aaron rated it

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Recommends it for: Hardcore comics readers, lovers of the surreal

Holy shit, what a strange and affecting book. Charles Burns's art is exquisite; the almost woodcut-style black-or-white comics visually echo and reflect themselves over the course of a very surreal narrative and make suburban Seattle into a dark and sometimes terrifying dreamscape. The teens suffering from the disfiguring 'plague' of the story, like in Clowes's Ghost World, linger in that liminal space between childhood and maturity with a discomfort with which we are all painfully familiar, yet...more

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Nov 11, 2011

Jeff rated it

Although I've found Charles Burns' graphic style to be somewhat unappealing in other contexts, there's no denying that Black Hole is a triumph both in terms of its visual and narrative storytelling aspects. Burns weaves a highly dramatic (yet realistic) portrait of teenage angst, with an invocation of a specific locale that rings true - as a current Seattle resident, I find that his method of depicting local weather and topography is easily recognizable, even when delivered in necessarily small...more

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Jan 29, 2009

Andrew rated it

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Shelves: graphic-novels-comic-books

Synopsis:
Black Hole is set in 1970's Seattle, WA. The cast is a group of high school teens - most of whom just want to have sex, do drugs and other standard teen-time-wasters. However a mysterious and un-classified STD causes mutations among its victims (i.e. one character grows an extra mouth in his neck, another character grows a tail, etc). These victims quickly become estranged from their families and friends, resort to running away or living alone in the woods, and all feel lost and a...more

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Dec 28, 2008

Barky rated it

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Shelves: dark, graphic-novel, horror, mystery, disease, nudity, violence, borrowed-from-the-library

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Graphic novel. Black and white drawings, crisp lines, mostly dark, but fit with the dark theme, or add to it. High school or early college students are slowly catching some kind of disease that manifests itself in various ways, but alters their bodies. Some of them can pass as normal, while some have deformities that are too obvious. The ones who can’t pass generally leave. A group of them live in the woods nearby. Their existence is gradually revealed, as is the existence of the disease. ...moreGraphic novel. Black and white drawings, crisp lines, mostly dark, but fit with the dark theme, or add to it. High school or early college students are slowly catching some kind of disease that manifests itself in various ways, but alters their bodies. Some of them can pass as normal, while some have deformities that are too obvious. The ones who can’t pass generally leave. A group of them live in the woods nearby. Their existence is gradually revealed, as is the existence of the disease. There’s Keith who has a crush on this girl in his biology class, Chris, and he has this vision of what’s about to happen to her while they’re dissecting frogs during their lab one afternoon. Chris hooks up with Rob who has the disease (manifested in a little mouth that appears on his throat, located just low enough that he can pass for normal). When he tries to tell her about being “sick” she says, “I know,” meaning something else entirely. Chris catches the disease from him, but doesn’t know it until she skinny dips and her friends all turn away from her – she has a long slit in her skin down her back – and she actually sheds her skin later on. Chris runs away, Keith pines after her, Rob is murdered. A host of other characters step in and out of the story – Keith’s friends, and the kids in the woods. Keith still wants to save Chris somehow, or show her that he doesn’t care about her disease, but she’s never been interested in him. After Rob is killed she cares less and less. Another one of the mutants, Dave, also has feelings for her, and he’s much more dangerous than he appears. She ends up running away in the end, and we’re left not knowing what happens to her, but it doesn’t seem she will survive being alone and her somewhat self-imposed exile. All she knows is that she can’t go back to how she lived before. Keith, meanwhile, after making his last ditch effort to save Chris and show her how much he cares, rediscovers the lizard woman, someone he was strongly attracted to. They decide to leave town together, as well – especially after Keith discovers that Dave has murdered a bunch of the mutants in the house where he was supposed to be housesitting. He doesn’t want to clean it up or make the explanations that people are going to require of him. His future remains uncertain as well, but there’s a bit more hope.

Remniscent of V – visitors the television series, and of Robert R. McCammon’s Swan Song where people were transformed by a terrible lesion that began to grow over their faces/features and which upon completion of the transformation fell away to reveal their true nature reflected in their features. Also could be a statement about AIDS or other sexually transmitted diseases – how these separate you from the community, how others see you differently afterward. Haunting, and sometimes disturbing. There are a lot of adult themes here, which teens may not object to, but that adults will probably object to on their behalf. A lot of nudity, some sexual encounters, and violence. Teens will probably gravitate to it anyway, but may have to shelve this with the adult graphic novels.

I thought this was very well done.
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Dec 22, 2008

Jack rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: comics

A deeply unsettling but intriguing horror comic. In 1970's Seattle, a sexually transmitted disease spreads among a group of teenagers, causing them to become disfigured in bizarre ways. As the infected become social pariahs (and the subject of a myriad of twisted fetishes), they also fall prey to a mysterious killer.

The first time I started this I had to put it down as body-related horror tends to freak me out and the surreal disfigurements the characters are so vividly and grotesq...more

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Jan 27, 2012

Thom Bensley rated it

· review of another edition

I think I read Charles Burns's Black Hole a year too late. It's a great story, the art is fantastic, it's funny, creepy and damn entertaining, but the whole thing feels very "High School" which is now a couple of years behind me. This has been mentioned many times on Goodreads reviews, but it is important to know. All the angst, violence and random sex with beautiful (ly drawn) characters just seems like a cash in on teenagers wet dreams and fantasies.
Black Hole is about a diseas...more

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Jan 22, 2012

Bryan rated it

I really like Charles Burns art style and paired with his writing it's a very convincing representation of the 70s, while at the same time not going over the top into the realms of camp or parody.

The story was definitely interesting, but I'll admit it was a little too vague and open-ended for my tastes. I'm not saying there's anything wrong or bad with that, but I guess I like a little more explanation and resolution in my stories. That doesn't take away from the quality of the work, b...more

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Nov 19, 2011

Mel rated it

· review of another edition

I was recommended this by a friend and got a copy from the library. It's a very strange but very good graphic novel. It's one that's half teen coming of age half horror. I guess the closest thing to it would be wet moon, but instead of adorable young goths and emos this is full of early/mid seventies teens. Teenagers who have sex get hideous mutations. It's an STD that transforms you. At first it seems like it's fatal, that it forces you out of normal society. But as the book progresses and more...more

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Nov 11, 2011

zxvasdf rated it

· review of another edition

An unclear but virulent plague is rampant in a community, contracted dominantly by sexually active high school teenagers. This plague is capable of being subtle and not very subtle at the same time, not unlike your garden variety sexually transmitted diseases. The symptoms manifest as queer physical deformities (transformations, for some). Others are afflicted with zombie like features, often with degenerative communication and mobility. Others attain near transcendental additions to their anato...more

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Oct 05, 2011

Michael Ryan rated it

Shelves: own

Why go to movies based on comics when you can just read graphic novels like this that take you into a world balanced between reality and a 6th dimension demon nightmare? We don't get things explained to us. There's suggestion of some sort of plague that's turning people into mutants. But we don't need this explained to us. It would be like dissecting the reasons for a counter-culture existing rather than enjoying the culture.

Instead, we just inhabit this word with attractive/repulsiv...more

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Aug 30, 2011

Maxwell Heath rated it

Shelves: comics, gna

I had to force myself to finish this. In fact, were I not reading it for a book club, I probably would've given up about halfway through.

The virus/plague/whatever thing is pretty silly. It's transmitted mainly through sex, and thus serves mainly to show whether someone has been having sex with one of the infected, thus becoming a social outcast themself. Beyond this isolation issue the plague is not explored, which is stupid. There are many works that explore the theme of teenage is...moreI had to force myself to finish this. In fact, were I not reading it for a book club, I probably would've given up about halfway through.

The virus/plague/whatever thing is pretty silly. It's transmitted mainly through sex, and thus serves mainly to show whether someone has been having sex with one of the infected, thus becoming a social outcast themself. Beyond this isolation issue the plague is not explored, which is stupid. There are many works that explore the theme of teenage isolation, but few that explore what it's like to have your skin constantly fall off or to have a talking mouth on your neck.

The characters are generally not that interesting to me. The protagonists are partiers and druggies, something I can't really identify with. The characters that I can identify with, the nerds, are swept into the background. Their exile in the woods is poorly thought out, as it seems unrealistic that nobody ever looks for them, especially not someone investigating the strange new disease that mutates teenagers. The main characters have arcs to an extent, but they aren't really interesting and both end with the characters simply running away from everything, which I find unsatisfying.

The plot consists of a series of somewhat out-of-order vignettes. Often, things are told in flashback that would make more sense being told normally, since the flashback doesn't seem to add much. But really, the plot's largest failing is that it doesn't really exist. There's a few different story threads: somebody is murdering infected; one girl running away with her boyfriend and then running further when he's killed by the murderer; a boy who had a crush on the girl falling in love with an infected artist. But none of these really amount to all that much in the end. The book seems content to wander aimlessly around, like many of it's characters do once they've gone on their latest drug trip. The ominous foreshadowing in the first story amounts to very little. It makes the plague seem like a world altering event when it only seems to affect a group of teenagers despite it's potential impact.

The artwork is competent but uninteresting. It's entirely black and white. Characters can be distinguished from one another and the plague victims look somewhat creepy, although also just a little silly. The art's biggest failing is that it's "trippy" sequences fall flat for me. And this isn't an issue of the monochrome aspect of the art: Marvel's black and white Doctor Strange reprints contain plenty of great alien dimensions that work despite the lack of color. Overall, the art is okay, but not enough to save this book.

So, overall, I don't think this book worked. There are better ones out there for those who like isolation derived teen angst, and there's always zombies for exploring a strange plague. Therefore, I'd recommend taking a pass on this despite the awards it's won.(less)

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May 12, 2011

Zaubin Z rated it

· review of another edition

A really great graphic novel. Very difficult to describe and do it justice with my description. This is one of those graphic novels that really makes excellent use of the visual graphic medium to inform and influence the perception of the reader. It's not so much about the storyline itself, though engaging, but about the way the reader is led to feel and think. The story itself is about teenagers in some random town, and a spreading sexually transmitted disease that mutates and disfigures pe...more

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Mar 20, 2011

Dan Keating rated it

· review of another edition

Despite a few narrative weaknesses, Charles Burns' graphic novel Black Hole does what it promises - unnerves and disarms without completely abandoning hope.

Black Hole is about a group of disaffected, barely-connected teenagers in Seattle in the 1970s, where a sexually-transmitted disease known as "the Bug" is causing people to develop sometimes-grotesque deformities.

The story is entirely character driven, involving a large number of characters but principally follow...moreDespite a few narrative weaknesses, Charles Burns' graphic novel Black Hole does what it promises - unnerves and disarms without completely abandoning hope.

Black Hole is about a group of disaffected, barely-connected teenagers in Seattle in the 1970s, where a sexually-transmitted disease known as "the Bug" is causing people to develop sometimes-grotesque deformities.

The story is entirely character driven, involving a large number of characters but principally following Keith and Chris, whose attempts at emotional connection are extreme but understandable, given the emotional voids they typically inhabit and try to escape. I won't spoil how those attempts go, but I'll definitely say that watching them make their attempts is an outstanding experience.

There were only two problems that I had with the graphic novel.

The first was the narrative structure. Too often, the story is delivered as flashback by a particular narrator - we see Chris sitting under a tree and she tells us the story of how she hooked up with someone as a memory, for instance. This isn't all bad - Burns didn't fall so heavily into the "summarized flashback plot progression" trap that it killed the story, but it still felt like a weak device that didn't necessarily fit. There is definitely an emotional progression throughout the story, and I think it would have been better served just presenting events as they happened.

The second were the character epiphanies. There were a few times that characters came to sudden realizations or made snap decisions without any real process going into them. There was a definite sense of fate throughout - several characters have unnerving "visions" of the future - and that sense of fate, rather than being tacky, actually contributed well to the characters' sense of disorientation. That, and none of the decisions they make - people they sleep with, people they decide they'd be happier with, etc. - are decisions that can't be explained at all - they're just go from one extreme to another very quickly, coming dangerously close to melodrama. Still, it doesn't quite fall overboard.

Black Hole has excellent art which emphasizes the symbology of the story often and plays with structure - cross-cutting panels with text, warping perspective, etc. It's nothing revolutionary but it's well done and appealing. Some panels are a little unclear, but oftentimes that feels intentional and aids interpretation rather than hindering comprehension. You'll get all the important stuff. And it's always nice to see a graphic novel that isn't afraid to show you everything.

All in all, I'd definitely recommend Black Hole to anyone who has the stomach for a frank discussion of teenage sexuality and disaffection. It's pretty darn good by itself, but it does feel as though something's lacking - not in the ending (which is, in my opinion, spectacular) but more in the middle. It should be interesting to see if the author revisits this concept at any point in the future.(less)

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Jan 25, 2011

Ksenia added it · review of another edition

I had originally been wanting to read this for quite some time, so I was pretty excited to get a copy at New York Comic Con a few months ago. This book was highly praised when it first came out five years ago.

I don’t get it though. I feel like I’m missing something in the story. I wasn’t as awed by it as I think I should have been. The summary is pretty much explanatory: the run-of-the-mill teen angst with teens dividing into their respective cliques and whatnot. And to further the ost...more

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Oct 17, 2010

Thurston Hunger rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: people with tails or who have loved people with tails

Wow. So good, the threads of teen alienation and love coiled so tight in a narrative that casts shadows like Twin Peaks but somehow uses its disturbing elements to seem more real, than surreal. And what is at the nexus of alienation and love, sex...but especially in those young adult realms...sex is bursting with myth as much as with hormones.

There's much more to this tome than that mysterious quality of burgeoning sex: the reluctant artist (Lizard Queen!) in her basement hideaway, t...more

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About Charles Burns

Charles Burns is an American cartoonist, illustrator and film director. Burns is renowned for his meticulous, high-contrast and creepy artwork and stories.

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Quotes from Black Hole

“Eliza sitting naked on a pink towel. So beautiful I could die.

Concentrating, all focused in on her sketchbook, but aw, god ...her tail.

Her cute little tail moving slowly back and forth, making a fan shape in the dirt.

She's the one. She really is. I know that now.” — 2 people liked it

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