![]() ![]() Published by Pantheon (2005 Reprinted 2008). Launched as a serial in 1995 and collected in 2005, Charles Burnss Black Hole broke new ground in terms of content and form as an avant-garde horror comic portraying teen angst in the face of a mysterious epidemic in mid-1970s suburban Seattle. On the program: gravitational waves, the theory of relativity, black holes.and more. At once reminiscent of Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, John Carpenter’s The Thing, and Marvel Comics’ X-Men (where, again, mutant teenagers struggle to fit in in spite of mutant “deformities” that render them grotesque to their kith and kin), Burns’ narrative turns “The Bug” into a catchall metaphor for alienation, sexuality, AIDS, and Otherness-though he never reduces the central uncanniness of the conceit through explication or editorializing. Even better, Burns’ artwork stuns: Rendered in stark black-and-white, Burns’ style recalls the classic EC Comics-era titles T ales from the Crypt and The Vault of Horror (though Burns’ line-work and shading are much more precise)-which makes sense: This is, finally, a horror story about what it means to be a teenager.Ĭharles Burns, Black Hole. Charles Burns’ twelve-issue comic book series Black Hole (Pantheon 2005) follows a group of teenagers in dreary 1970s suburban Seattle as they face the usual and unusual tribulations of adolescence: love, loneliness, uncertainty about the future, and a sexually-transmitted infection known as “The Bug,” which causes strange physical mutations (a tail, an extra mouth, skin that sloughs off) in the unfortunate hosts. ![]()
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