Status
Available
Call number
Publication
Pantheon (2008), Edition: Illustrated, 368 pages
Description
A chilling graphic novel set in suburban Seattle during the mid-1970s describes the lives of the area's teenagers, who are suddenly faced with a devastating, disfiguring, and incurable plague that has descended on the young people of Seattle.
Media reviews
A high-school kid keels over and faints after hacking open a frog in biology class, and within weeks a plague is moving through 1970s Seattle. Spread by sexual contact and fluid exchange, it attacks only teenagers. One grows a little tail. One begins to shed her skin like a snake. Some lose their
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noses; some get harelips; some degenerate into little more than skulls. Deformed and cast out, the victims retreat to tents in the woods and live a hand-to-mouth existence among their own kind. But something is stalking them there too... Show Less
Black Hole is presented as a supposedly autobiographical novel. It was originally published serially as a comic, and 10 years of labour went into its making. Its serious intent is not in doubt; but what about the execution?
"Everything's either concave or -vex," the Danish poet Piet Hein once wrote, "so whatever you dream will be something with sex." In Charles Burns' decade-in-the-making graphic novel "Black Hole," the natural concavity and -vexity of everything leaps out at you: Nearly every image is a sexual
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metaphor, with the distorted clarity and mutability of a nightmare. And sex in "Black Hole" also means body horror, sickening transformations and loss. The first page's abstraction -- a thin, wobbling slit of light on a black background -- opens up to become wider and fleshier, then to become a blatantly vaginal gash in a frog on a dissecting pan (surrounded by pools and pearls of liquid). Show Less
The arrival of Halloween always brings with it a plethora of horror-related media, including comix. This season's standout graphic novel focuses on one of the scariest of all horrors: high school. The title of Charles Burns' long-awaited book, Black Hole (Pantheon; 368 pages; $25), says it all. For
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many people—including myself, naturally—high school felt like an endless, inescapable vacuum without air or light. Unlike more conventional horror stories set among high school kids, where each one gets "offed" by a masked killer, Black Hole uses the worst parts of emerging adulthood, like changing bodies, alienation and sex, as the sources for a skin-crawling creep fest that will likely be the best graphic novel of the year. Show Less
Computer
I couldn't really get into the book, i was reading it but it didn't really have a good message to me personally.
User reviews
LibraryThing member MeditationesMartini
Well, reading the Avengers book and then this after Understanding Comics definitely helped me realize how much more craft went into this one. In particular, I'm afraid that whenever I read comics from now on I'll be obsessively checking the panel transitions. Oh well.
This is a freaky story about a
Anyway, I got into this, and that's why I wished Burns had given us some more background, made the disease and the world more realistic - not, like CDC men, but a bit of explanation. But I understand wh that might have compromised the mental realityof the images and the weirdness, and that's a more interesting reality anyway, and so I am content. Also, I really like how the first thing any teen does in these stories when they get happy or sad or, like, gassy or whatever is to go straight to the beach or the forest. We here on the west coast have a powerful ally in keeping ourselves spiritually fed - that being nature, of course - and I suspect that our consumption of pharmaceutical mood stabilizers lags correspondingly. Cascadia!
This is a freaky story about a
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sexually-transmitted disease in 1970's Seattle that is turning kids into shambling monstrosities who live out in the woods, and how they feel about that. It hits all the angles you want it to hit - changing bodies, self-loathing, taking control of your own life - and would come across as a kind of combination Anastasia novel/Young Werther/That '70s Show if it weren't for the total weirdness of what's happening. The disease manages to be disturbing without being horrific, and it made me wish Burns had treated it a bit (a bit) more realistically - like, I get that this is a psychological story about teens, and the disease is just an externalization of their confusions and fears and the oh-so-jaded, used-up feeling that only a 17-year-old who's done some drugs in an unwise manner and been involved in ill-considered sexual practices and had to get up to a filthy house and wished they could go home to mother knows. (God, it's nice to be a grownup. You go from "Nobody knows the trouble I've seen" to "Everybody knows, so let's speak of pleasant things.") Anyway, I got into this, and that's why I wished Burns had given us some more background, made the disease and the world more realistic - not, like CDC men, but a bit of explanation. But I understand wh that might have compromised the mental realityof the images and the weirdness, and that's a more interesting reality anyway, and so I am content. Also, I really like how the first thing any teen does in these stories when they get happy or sad or, like, gassy or whatever is to go straight to the beach or the forest. We here on the west coast have a powerful ally in keeping ourselves spiritually fed - that being nature, of course - and I suspect that our consumption of pharmaceutical mood stabilizers lags correspondingly. Cascadia!
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LibraryThing member Widsith
We watched Riverdale recently, The CW's newish series based on the Archie comics, and I found it a frustrating experience. It had all the elements that I normally love – namely, small-town America, murder, secrets and sexual tension among high-schoolers – and yet it didn't go nearly dark enough
I haven't read this since, I don't know, some time in the early 2000s, and I don't know if I ever read it all the way through at the time – doing so now, I realise what a superb achievement it is, surely one of the greatest comics to come out of the American tradition. In his chunky, moonlit panels, Burns builds up a shifting association of images linking the erotic with the horrific until you are primed to react to the slightest of his gestures with great surges of dread or excitement.
The teenage protagonists of this book live in a small town in the American northwest of the mid-1970s (you can date it only by a fleeting reference to Bowie's new album Diamond Dogs). Here, the usual confusion of peer groups, social cliques and sexual frustration is exacerbated and exemplified by ‘The Bug’, a sexually-transmitted condition that causes bodily mutations, some of them extreme – forcing their sufferers to live feral in the woods – and some more benign, allowing kids to ‘pass’ as normal.
This body-horror metaphor for guilty sexual awakenings in Protestant America may have been done a million times, but it just goes to show it can always be done again by someone brilliant. And Burns really does it well: Black Hole, as well as being technically excellent and superbly emotional, has that quality that I look for in every work of art I love – that sense of what the fuck is that. Some of the details here are exquisitely creepy, like the boy with a second mouth above his sternum which, when he's asleep, calls out in a high-pitched childlike voice to the girl he's lying with: “unn…it…it won't work…it can't last…nnn…never make it out alive…” as she shakes him and yells, ‘R-Rob? Come on wake up! Rob?’
Burns's artwork is marked by its thick black lines and a certain flat, depthless quality to the panels – as with a white-line etching, there's oceans of inky black background, and often his images have the stark clarity of a woodcut.
There's a lot of nudity in Black Hole, both male and female, which I particularly noticed this time around because I read most of it sitting at a pavement café on Bahnhofstrasse where my waitress did not seem to be a fan. But voyeurism is a very minor component – naked bodies here are not just about sexiness (though sometimes they are about that), they are also about vulnerability, the raw facticity of your physical frame that, as a teenager, is still new and strange; the absurdity of this shaped packet of meat that inspires pity, protectiveness, desire, or revulsion. This point comes across very strongly when one character leafs furtively through a porn mag, and we see the huge gulf between the sexualised nakedness of the models there and the awkward, defenceless nakedness of the teens in the actual story.
If it has faults, they perhaps come in the final couple of sections, where Burns can't quite find a resolution that lives up to the weight of mystery and feverish emotion that's gone before. But you're in good shape if you're falling victim to your own successes, and this is definitely a success – weird and transformative, it'll touch the parts that other comics, or TV shows, can't reach. Whether you want it to touch you there is another matter.
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or deep enough to really hit the spot. I was fretting vaguely about these themes for some time afterwards, and when I saw a copy of Charles Burns's Black Hole in a bookshop, I realised that it was exactly what I'd been looking for.I haven't read this since, I don't know, some time in the early 2000s, and I don't know if I ever read it all the way through at the time – doing so now, I realise what a superb achievement it is, surely one of the greatest comics to come out of the American tradition. In his chunky, moonlit panels, Burns builds up a shifting association of images linking the erotic with the horrific until you are primed to react to the slightest of his gestures with great surges of dread or excitement.
The teenage protagonists of this book live in a small town in the American northwest of the mid-1970s (you can date it only by a fleeting reference to Bowie's new album Diamond Dogs). Here, the usual confusion of peer groups, social cliques and sexual frustration is exacerbated and exemplified by ‘The Bug’, a sexually-transmitted condition that causes bodily mutations, some of them extreme – forcing their sufferers to live feral in the woods – and some more benign, allowing kids to ‘pass’ as normal.
This body-horror metaphor for guilty sexual awakenings in Protestant America may have been done a million times, but it just goes to show it can always be done again by someone brilliant. And Burns really does it well: Black Hole, as well as being technically excellent and superbly emotional, has that quality that I look for in every work of art I love – that sense of what the fuck is that. Some of the details here are exquisitely creepy, like the boy with a second mouth above his sternum which, when he's asleep, calls out in a high-pitched childlike voice to the girl he's lying with: “unn…it…it won't work…it can't last…nnn…never make it out alive…” as she shakes him and yells, ‘R-Rob? Come on wake up! Rob?’
Burns's artwork is marked by its thick black lines and a certain flat, depthless quality to the panels – as with a white-line etching, there's oceans of inky black background, and often his images have the stark clarity of a woodcut.
There's a lot of nudity in Black Hole, both male and female, which I particularly noticed this time around because I read most of it sitting at a pavement café on Bahnhofstrasse where my waitress did not seem to be a fan. But voyeurism is a very minor component – naked bodies here are not just about sexiness (though sometimes they are about that), they are also about vulnerability, the raw facticity of your physical frame that, as a teenager, is still new and strange; the absurdity of this shaped packet of meat that inspires pity, protectiveness, desire, or revulsion. This point comes across very strongly when one character leafs furtively through a porn mag, and we see the huge gulf between the sexualised nakedness of the models there and the awkward, defenceless nakedness of the teens in the actual story.
If it has faults, they perhaps come in the final couple of sections, where Burns can't quite find a resolution that lives up to the weight of mystery and feverish emotion that's gone before. But you're in good shape if you're falling victim to your own successes, and this is definitely a success – weird and transformative, it'll touch the parts that other comics, or TV shows, can't reach. Whether you want it to touch you there is another matter.
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LibraryThing member stephmo
In 1970s Seattle, "The Bug" is a sexually transmitted disease infecting teenagers in varying ways - minor skin growths, new appendages, tiny mouths, and disfiguring transformations. The story's narration neatly flips points of view between Chris and Rick, two teens distanced and seemingly connected
Burns cleverly pours every experience of high school and adolescence into the story of Black Hole. Where one will remember the desperation of every crush, the importance of your entire life and the seemingly desperate need to keep tightly defined social circles - Black Hole brings all of this back in vivid detail. if there is a constant in this world, it is that of the teenager needing to hold tight to these archetypes.
If there's something else that Burns captures well, it is that year where the teenager slowly allows the growing away from those things they once clung to with absolute desperation. So there are the losses of crushes, learning to recognize caring, shedding of popularity, finding that some won't cope, learning when to leave and dealing with loss...some of it metaphorically and some of it very real.
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by the bug. The story is both surreal and familiar.Burns cleverly pours every experience of high school and adolescence into the story of Black Hole. Where one will remember the desperation of every crush, the importance of your entire life and the seemingly desperate need to keep tightly defined social circles - Black Hole brings all of this back in vivid detail. if there is a constant in this world, it is that of the teenager needing to hold tight to these archetypes.
If there's something else that Burns captures well, it is that year where the teenager slowly allows the growing away from those things they once clung to with absolute desperation. So there are the losses of crushes, learning to recognize caring, shedding of popularity, finding that some won't cope, learning when to leave and dealing with loss...some of it metaphorically and some of it very real.
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LibraryThing member dr_zirk
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
I do find that the overall story is somewhat weakened by a series of murders that enter into the proceedings fairly late in the game. This additional dramatic element distracts from the otherwise strong metaphorical plot that Burns delivers, and steals away some of the powerful outcomes that derive from the core of this tale, which is the strange but all-too-familiar world of teenage doubt and alienation. What is so effective is the use of a mysterious disfiguring disease as a symbol for all of the tormented feelings of these characters - in this device alone Burns has achieved something deep, believable, and highly original.
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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 doses.I do find that the overall story is somewhat weakened by a series of murders that enter into the proceedings fairly late in the game. This additional dramatic element distracts from the otherwise strong metaphorical plot that Burns delivers, and steals away some of the powerful outcomes that derive from the core of this tale, which is the strange but all-too-familiar world of teenage doubt and alienation. What is so effective is the use of a mysterious disfiguring disease as a symbol for all of the tormented feelings of these characters - in this device alone Burns has achieved something deep, believable, and highly original.
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LibraryThing member sophroniaborgia
A strange disease called the bug is affecting malcontent teenagers. It's sexually transmitted, and it leads them to develop bizarre mutations that render them outcasts from the rest of the world. There's not much to the story, but the illustrations are incredibly detailed and well-executed. And
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yes, they are creepy. Some of them will definitely haunt my nightmares for a while. Show Less
LibraryThing member woolgathering
While this is an effective metaphor for the awkwardness of teenage self-realization and relationships, as well as for the end of the hippie era and all of the broken dreams and false aspirations of that time, being a woman I could not get past the fact that the female protagonists in this story are
I did like the very last page, though. I thought it succeeded somewhat at tying the idea together and speaking to a vast and universal confusion of purpose.
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about as unrealistically drop dead gorgeous as you'd expect them to be in any adolescent male fantasy, despite their "deformities," which never affect their faces. Is the fact that all of the protagonists/good guys are incredibly goodlooking and everyone else is hideous supposed to be indicative of the way people view themselves versus others? I'm not sure, and my confusion suggests that maybe that part of the metaphor doesn't work.I did like the very last page, though. I thought it succeeded somewhat at tying the idea together and speaking to a vast and universal confusion of purpose.
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LibraryThing member jbrubacher
A sexually-transmitted plague goes through the teenagers of a community, who each deal with it in their own way. Sometimes it's obvious they've got it, and sometimes no one knows. Some of them try to deal with it, some try to disappear, some because lunatics.
This is a fascinating book with a lot of
This is a fascinating book with a lot of
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impressive and often disturbing artwork. I found myself interested in many of the characters, even though a lot of their inner monologue was kind of predictable teenaged emo. The end of the story let it down, because despite the characters and the premise there didn't seem to be a point to it all. It became slightly more gratuitous and there was a sort of mystery, but the mystery didn't really matter in the end. Show Less
LibraryThing member devandecicco
Interesting exploration of the brokenness of teenage sexuality and the struggle with identity.
LibraryThing member Arctic-Stranger
It would be too easy to say this book is a metaphor for a) teen angst, b) aids, c) teen suicides or any other ailment of youth and/or society, but in fact this is just a damn good story, and while it may touch on the above areas, it is much bigger. Kind of like David Lynch meets the OC.
LibraryThing member arsmith
what an awesome surprise! i picked this up because of the cover and the inside flap and it totally blew me away. a very satisfying read. psychological horror. i dare say this has been the best book i have read all year. sometimes a graphic novel (i.e. a picture) really can depict an idea so much
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more clearly than anything else. Show Less
LibraryThing member JulieTurley
Burns' lurid black and white drawings unflinchingly illustrate his tale of '70s-era Seattle teens who have been inflicted by a plague that transforms their bodies in surreal and horrifing ways. A riveting metaphor, not only for AIDS, but for adolescence in general.
LibraryThing member wsquared
Charles Burns is known for his striking and disturbing comics, which include Black Hole, originally published as a 12-issue series from 1995 to 2005 and now collected as one graphic novel.
The story is set in Seattle in the 1970s, where a mysterious “bug” is infecting the town’s teenagers and
Most of the plot features Keith and Chris, biology lab partners, who soon contract the bug and have to deal with the realities of living with its effects. Their stories diverge and intersect until a final shocking event that drives them apart forever. Though the “bug” serves as a metaphor for sexually transmitted diseases, the story is more broadly about alienation and the high school experience of experimentation and young love.
The story is set in Seattle in the 1970s, where a mysterious “bug” is infecting the town’s teenagers and
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leaving them with often horrific mutations including lizard-like tails, shedding skin and deformed facial features. At a time when most high schoolers are concerned with the weekend’s kegger, the infected students have to deal with daily ridicule and face a life of seclusion. Even worse, the outcasts who live in the woods have been discovering disturbing sculptures and body parts scattered amongst the trees.Most of the plot features Keith and Chris, biology lab partners, who soon contract the bug and have to deal with the realities of living with its effects. Their stories diverge and intersect until a final shocking event that drives them apart forever. Though the “bug” serves as a metaphor for sexually transmitted diseases, the story is more broadly about alienation and the high school experience of experimentation and young love.
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LibraryThing member Antholo
It's been awhile since I read this, but it hit me. I found the story devastating, the artwork glorious, and overall experience of reading this moving. It's quite shocking, it'll definitely make you uncomfortable. I recommend to those who enjoy such experiences.
LibraryThing member Djupstrom
I have just recently gotten into graphic novels, and I think this is one of my favorites. Burns writes a taught story with unexpected twists and turns. The illustrations are great.
LibraryThing member 59Square
Merideth says: This black and white graphic novel didn't make a big impression on me when it first came out. I thought it was an obvious treament of a well worn topic. Rereading it for a project, I think that there is something here. Burns' art is very well done, and there is an understanding of
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the way teenagers think. However, there is a sexism that runs through this title that unnerves me, and I can't recommend it whole heartedly. Show Less
LibraryThing member grunin
I've known Burns's work for decades, and frankly found it too disturbing for me; he has an attraction to themes of body-horror much like filmmaker David Cronenberg, whose films make me queasy. But I bought this anyway because I read that Neil Gaiman was adapting it for the movies, which I took as a
The graphics are brilliant, of course, and creepy as all hell; but the deep subject of the book is social groups and subgroups, with special attention to stigmas and pariahs.
I don't want to talk about the plot, but I will say that the narrative point of view alternates gracefully between two main characters, Keith (male) and Chris (female).
The sex scenes seem to bother some people, but considering the subject of the book is the social consequences of an STD I don't see how they could have been omitted. The narrative is open-ended, but as an allegory for AIDS (an unavoidable reading) it makes sense.
If you like Cronenberg, you won't have any problem with this.
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very high recommendation. Still, it sat on my shelf for a week before I got up the courage to open it.The graphics are brilliant, of course, and creepy as all hell; but the deep subject of the book is social groups and subgroups, with special attention to stigmas and pariahs.
I don't want to talk about the plot, but I will say that the narrative point of view alternates gracefully between two main characters, Keith (male) and Chris (female).
The sex scenes seem to bother some people, but considering the subject of the book is the social consequences of an STD I don't see how they could have been omitted. The narrative is open-ended, but as an allegory for AIDS (an unavoidable reading) it makes sense.
If you like Cronenberg, you won't have any problem with this.
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LibraryThing member wandering_star
Before I started Black Hole, I knew that it was about a mysterious plague that affects teenagers. I suppose I was expecting strange occurrences and a sense of growing horror as people begin to realise what is happening. But in fact, when the book starts, the plague is already there: an established
I found this quite difficult to read. Both the grotesqueness of the plague symptoms, and the awfulness of being a teenager, were made much more immediate and disturbing by the fact that they were depicted in images rather than words. (The style of the drawings, monochrome and usually with heavy black backgrounds, and the often grotesque dream sequences, add to the overall grimness - it's not one of those books that you start looking at and instantly want to read).
That said, since finishing it, I have kept going back to look through it, and noticed new things. It is certainly a book with a lot of impact. This all sounds like faint praise. It's not meant to be: I think this is a good book. It's just that you need to know what you are getting into.
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fact of life. The teenagers are just being teenagers - copping off with each other, getting stoned, trying to figure out what to do with their lives - with the plague as just another of the shadows that hangs over them.I found this quite difficult to read. Both the grotesqueness of the plague symptoms, and the awfulness of being a teenager, were made much more immediate and disturbing by the fact that they were depicted in images rather than words. (The style of the drawings, monochrome and usually with heavy black backgrounds, and the often grotesque dream sequences, add to the overall grimness - it's not one of those books that you start looking at and instantly want to read).
That said, since finishing it, I have kept going back to look through it, and noticed new things. It is certainly a book with a lot of impact. This all sounds like faint praise. It's not meant to be: I think this is a good book. It's just that you need to know what you are getting into.
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LibraryThing member rrriles
A coming-of-age graphic novel set in 1970s Seattle, wherein high school life revolves around a strange new STD that leads to horrible mutant-like deformations, written over the course of a decade and yet illustrated with amazingly consistent chiaroscuric inking? Yes please.
LibraryThing member pinprick
Burns manages to pack disease, teen angst and isolation, love, sex and high school all into one gorgeous, stark graphic novel. It evokes the lonely feeling of adolescence beautifully, and the art itself is amazing to look at. It manages to be both tender and creepy at the same time, and the layers
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of story and art are blended together seamlessly. Show Less
LibraryThing member MariaKhristina
This book was really great. I have seen Burns' work in comic book anthologies and really liked it so it seems as if he is consistent. The novel was a very easy read, flowed really well and the illustrations were fantastic. I really like his stark black and white style. It's also a good cautionary
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tale, use condoms! Show Less
LibraryThing member rrees
A disturbing view of teenage sexuality with images that are simultaneously beautiful and repulsive.
LibraryThing member clstaff
Some ideas/concepts/stories simply cannot be portrayed using words alone, Charles Burns' graphic novels fall into this category. Black Hole is such a weird, wacky tale it couldn't possibly be left up to the readers imagination to visualize the happenings within. Without graphics to accompany the
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thought/dialogue bubbles the book would be a mish-mash of sentences that are grammatically correct, yet somehow don't make any sense. You may need to be a raving madman to enjoy this book, but it is one of the greates stories I have ever read! Show Less
LibraryThing member beccaboben
All around great read, great insight into the turbulence of adolescence, even if the teens are suffering from some horrible disease. I like how it's the story of several people, and how they are affected by, and handle the ailments they get.
The illustrations were great, love the use of black and
The illustrations were great, love the use of black and
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white. Show Less
LibraryThing member KarenAJeff
I didn't really enjoy this book.
LibraryThing member melissarecords
The author really takes me back -- I was definitely getting that 1970s, Pacific Northwest adolescent vibe. But man, this is funky. Horror meets scifi. Really weird stuff! The images sure made a big impression on my mind. A masterful portrayal of strangeness and alienation.
Subjects
Physical description
9.3 inches
ISBN
0375714723 / 9780375714726