Black Hole [Hardcover]

Charles Burns (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 18, 2005

Suburban Seattle, the mid-1970s. We learn from the out-set 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 turning back.

As we inhabit the heads of several key characters — some kids who have it, some who don’t, some who are about to get it — what unfolds isn’t the expected battle to fight the plague, or bring heightened awareness to it , or even to treat it. What we become witness to instead is a fascinating and eerie portrait of the nature of high school alienation itself — the savagery, the cruelty, the relentless anxiety and ennui, the longing for escape.

And then the murders start.

As hypnotically beautiful as it is horrifying, Black Hole transcends its genre by deftly exploring a specific American cultural moment in flux and the kids who are caught in it- back when it wasn’t exactly cool to be a hippie anymore, but Bowie was still just a little too weird.

To say nothing of sprouting horns and molting your skin…

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The first issues of Charles Burns's comics series Black Hole began appearing in 1995, and long before it was completed a decade later, readers and fellow artists were speaking of it in tones of awe and comparing it to recent classics of the form like Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan and Daniel Clowes's Ghost World. Burns is the sort of meticulous, uncompromising artist whom other artists speak of with envy and reverence, and we asked Ware and Clowes to comment on their admiration for Black Hole:

"I think I probably learned the most about clarity, composition, and efficiency from looking at Charles's pages spread out on my drawing table than from anyone's; his was always at the level of lucidity of Nancy, but with this odd, metallic tinge to it that left you feeling very unsettled, especially if you were an aspiring cartoonist, because it was clear you'd never be half as good as he was. There's an almost metaphysical intensity to his pinprick-like inkline that catches you somewhere in the back of the throat, a paper-thin blade of a fine jeweler's saw tracing the outline of these thick, clay-like human figures that somehow seem to "move," but are also inevitably oddly frozen in eternal, awkward poses ... it's an unlikely combination of feelings, and it all adds up to something unmistakably his own. "I must have been one of the first customers to arrive at the comic shop when I heard the first issue of Black Hole was out 10 years ago, and my excitement didn't change over the years as he completed it. I don't think I've ever read anything that better captures the details, feelings, anxieties, smells, and cringing horror of my own teenage years better than Black Hole, and I'm 15 years younger than Charles is. Black Hole is so redolently affecting one almost has to put the book down for air every once in a while. By the book's end, one ends up feeling so deeply for the main character it's all one can do not to turn the book over and start reading again." --Chris Ware

"Charles Burns is one of the greats of modern comics. His comics are beautiful on so many levels. Somehow he has managed to capture the essential electricity of comic-book pop-art iconography, dragging it from the clutches of Fine Art back to the service of his perfect, precise-but-elusive narratives in a way that is both universal in its instant appeal and deeply personal." --Dan Clowes

Questions for Charles Burns

Amazon.com: Cartoonists are about the only people today who are working like Dickens did: writing serials that appear piece-by-piece in public before the whole work is done. What's it like to work in public like that, and for as long as a project like this takes?
Charles Burns: There were a number of reasons for serializing Black Hole. First of all, I wanted to put out a traditional comic book-- I'd never really worked in that comic pamphlet format before and liked the idea of developing a long story in installments. There's something very satisfying to me about a comic book as an object and I enjoyed using that format to slowly build my story. Serializing the story also allowed me to focus on shorter, more manageable portions; if I had to face creating a 368-page book all in one big lump, I don't know if I’d have the perseverance and energy to pull it off.
Amazon.com: One thing that stuns me about this book is how consistent it is from start to finish. From the first frames to the last ones that you drew 10 years later, you held the same tone and style. It feels as though you had a complete vision for the book from the very beginning. Is that so? Or did things develop unexpectedly as you worked on it?
Burns: I guess there's a consistency in Black Hole because of the way I work. I write and draw very slowly, always carefully examining every little detail to make sure it all fits together the way I want it to. When I started the story, I had it all charted out as far as the basic structure goes, but what made working on it interesting was finding new ways of telling the story that hadn't occurred to me.
Amazon.com: Some of the very best of the recent graphic novels (I'm thinking of Ghost World and Blankets, along with Black Hole) have been about the lives of teenagers. Do you think there's something about the form that helps to tell those stories so well?
Burns: That's an interesting question, but I don't know the answer. Perhaps it has more to do with the authors--the kind of people who stay indoors for hours on end in total solitude working away on their heartfelt stories... maybe that kind of reflection lends itself to being able to capture the intensity of adolescence.
Amazon.com: In the time you've been working on Black Hole, graphic novels have leapt into the mainstream. (I think--I hope--we're finally seeing the last of those "They're not just for kids anymore!" reviews.) What did you imagine for this project when you started it? What's it been like to see your corner of the world enter the glare of the spotlight?
Burns: When I started Black Hole I really just wanted to tell a long, well-written story. The themes and ideas that run throughout the book had been turning around in my head for years and I wanted to finally get them all out--put them down on paper once and for all. I've published a few other books and while they sold reasonably well, they didn't set the publishing world on fire. I was pretty sure I'd have some kind of an audience for Black Hole, but that was never a motivating factor in writing the book. And my corner of the world is still pretty dark. I guess I'll be stepping into the spotlight for a little while when the book comes out, but I imagine I'll slip back into my dark little studio when it all settles down again so I can settle back into work.

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. The prodigiously talented Burns hit the comics scene in the '80s via Raw magazine, wielding razor-sharp, ironic-retro graphics. Over the years his work has developed a horrific subtext perpetually lurking beneath the mundane suburban surface. In the dense, unnerving Black Hole,Burns combines realism—never a concern for him before—and an almost convulsive surrealism. The setting is Seattle during the early '70s. A sexually transmitted disease, the "bug," is spreading among teenagers. Those who get it develop bizarre mutations—sometimes subtle, like a tiny mouth at the base of one boy's neck, and sometimes obvious and grotesque. The most visibly deformed victims end up living as homeless campers in the woods, venturing into the streets only when they have to, shunned by normal society. The story follows two teens, Keith and Chris, as they get the bug. Their dreams and hallucinations—made of deeply disturbing symbolism merging sexuality and sickness—are a key part of the tale. The AIDS metaphor is obvious, but the bug also amplifies already existing teen emotions and the wrenching changes of puberty. Burns's art is inhumanly precise, and he makes ordinary scenes as creepy as his nightmare visions of a world where intimacy means a life worse than death. (Oct.)
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Pantheon (October 18, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 037542380X
• ISBN-13: 978-0375423802
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 1.6 x 9.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (80 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #87,667 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

76 of 79 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Easily one of the year's best., November 15, 2005

By 

Robert P. Beveridge "xterminal" (Lakewood, OH) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Black Hole (Hardcover)

Charles Burns, Black Hole (Pantheon, 2005)

Really, the only thing I should need to say about Charles Burns' superlative Black Hole is "wow." And I'm not terribly sure I can say anything more; many professional reviewers have tried, and as good as the reviews have uniformly been, all of them have failed to capture what it is that makes Black Hole one of the best books, graphic or no, of the past half-decade (or more). When faced with such glorious failure, why not give it a shot?

Set in suburban Seattle in the mid-seventies, Black Hole centers on two high-school students, Keith and Chris, who know nothing about one another other than the they share a biology class. Keith, like most of the rest of his class, has a major crush on Chris; Chris thinks Keith is a really nice guy. The chapters alternate between the exploits (and points-of-view) of the two.

Surrounding the tale of these two would-be lovers is the Bug, a sexually-transmitted disease (while one couldn't call it akin to pregnancy, given its 100% infection rate, Burns does have a few amusing moments where his characters liken it to same). People infected with the Bug are outcasts who live in a wooded area above Ravenna Park that Keith and his stoner pals call Planet Xeno (for no particular reason they can name). There are also weird goings-on in the woods (that will likely put you in mind of The Blair Witch Project). And then people infected with the Bug start to disappear...

Black Hole is pitch-perfect in tone, pacing, and characterization. There's just a touch of nostalgia, though Burns never allows himself to fall into the trap of romanticizing the mid-seventies. The mystery angle is handled strangely but effectively; the world outside doesn't know about it, and the infected themselves almost seem to accept it as one more way in which they're outcasts. No one's really interested in solving it; it's just there. It's an unexpected way of handling things, and risky. But as everything else in this book, Burns handles it with brilliance.

If there is a weakness to the book, it comes in the final fifty pages. One of the storylines (telling you which would probably be considered a spoiler) has a weak ending. Burns, however, makes up for it with the ending to the other storyline, which is handled with even more eloquence and power than the rest of the story.

I can't say enough about the art, either. Burns cut his teeth in early issues of RAW Magazine, and it shows; his work (this was, according to interviews and other reviews, a conscious decision on Burns' part) never changed during the decade it took him to write this book. From the looks of things, if you compare his work in RAW (what I remember of it, anyway; it's been a while) to the work in Black Hole), it's still strikingly similar. Because it's what I've been reading, I have an urge to compare the art in Black Hole to that of, say, Sandman; the problem is that the Sandman artists and Burns are miles and worlds away from one another artistically. It wouldn't be like apples and oranges, but maybe Golden Delicious apples and d'Anjou pears. Burns does what he does, and while it may look more crude than recent titles, everything has its reason, and by the time you've finished this, there will be no argument that Burns is at the top of his game here.

Fantastic. Will easily find a spot near the top of my Best Reads of the Year list. *****

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Eueww! It touched me with its second mouth..., January 6, 2006

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Schtinky "Schtinky" (California) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Black Hole (Hardcover)

Outstanding! Absolutely the best graphic horror novel ever written, and brought together in one book that I literally finished in only a few hours. Then I had to go back, and peer once again at the wonderfully twisted graphic cells.

Forget herpes and AIDS, this story is about a $exually transmitted disease that is sweeping through the teen population in Seattle WA during the 70's. Sure, it may be fatal, but when teenagers are so concerned about looks and cliques and fitting in, this little bug reaches into the core of their self esteem and strips it by making them become...freaks. Every reaction is different, from second mouths to boils to skin peels to total disfigurement.

In an era of heavy greenery-smoking, a group of friends, including Keith Pearson, like to make their way to a private spot in the woods to get high. They find strange items, like a campsite of sorts.

Keith is enamored by a girl in his biology class, Chris. But Chris has a crush on Rob Facincanni. At a party, Rob protests but Chris seduces him, only afterward discovering why he protested. Rob is one of "them", the 'diseased'.

While Rob and Chris come to an understanding, Keith meets an affected girl names Eliza. Rob helps Christ to escape to the `encampment', a place where the 'diseased' live in peace, in their makeshift camps. Keith tries to save Chris from the camps, but still feels Eliza pulling him to her.

But really, can anyone be saved from this monstrous evil? Is hiding the best way, or would running away be better? How many of the diseased within the camp are also diseased in the mind? What will happen to Keith, Chris, Rob, and Eliza? Certainly, you will find it to be more than your average teen must deal with.

'Black Hole' is heavy gauge graphic-novel-horror at the best its ever going to get. Subtle in places, horrific in others. The setting of the 70's really touched me also, concert tickets to Emerson, Lake & Palmer, David Bowie's "new" album 'Diamond Dogs', the parties, the smoking, the haircuts. Its all realistic and stupendously great. 'Black Hole' makes my teen years in the Seattle area not look so bad after all.

The only thing I could find wrong with 'Black Hole' is that there wasn't enough of it. I want more. More disfigurement, more violence, more squinginess. If you read only one book in 2006, make sure it's 'Black Hole'. A MUST for any aficionado of the horror genre, and the graphic novel nuts. Definitely worth the price. Enjoy!

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Once You Were Tagged, You Were "IT" Forever, December 12, 2005

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prisrob "pris," (New England USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Black Hole (Hardcover)

"I don't think I've ever read anything that better captures the details, feelings, anxieties, smells, and cringing horror of my own teenage years better than Black Hole. By the book's end, one ends up feeling so deeply for the main character it's all one can do not to turn the book over and start reading again."
Chris Ware

I had heard about this book, but I really didn't know what it was about. Me, the adult, who loves to read, and Amazon sent me this book I ordered. Why, it is a comic book! I started to read, and I was captivated. This was meant for the teenager in all of us. The teenage years, we can't quite forget. For some of us, the best years of our life, for others, the alienating, lonely, isolating years of our teenage existence.

Charles Burns started writing a comic book ten years ago that became a large three hundred and eighty plus paged book of teenage life. Done in back and white drawings with a story in first person, it tells us of "The Bug", a strange plague transmitted by sexual contact that affects and infects teenagers in Seattle in the 1970's. The teenagers are affected in different ways, for some it is a rash; for others it is the grotesque body parts that grow upon their bodies. But, for all, it is an isolating, alienating experience. No one who has "The Bug" will ever be accepted by society or ever be the same again. The anxiety of our high school years, the torment, the torture of words, by our peers. How can we forget? Well, we can't and "The Back Hole' brings this world home to us.

Keith has a crush on Chris. He and Chris have sex with other people, and they both develop the plague, "The Bug". There is no education about this new "thing", there is no publicity to help make everyone aware of this new "thing". It just is, and those who have it are isolated. They either live in the woods or come out at night, or they live in a tent like Chris. Chris and Keith find each other and find a little solace in their loves. There are no adults in this book; there are no adults in the teenager's lives. Because after all, what would they say "I told you so?" This is a world of a black hole, isolating, alienating, and miserable. An existence that many of us have seen. And, then the murders begin.

Charles Black is a genius. He must be. How else someone could write a book for teenagers, but meant for everyone to read. But at the same time, meant only for teenagers, for them to know, for us to realize, we are not alone, this existence is real but there are people who care. Highly Recommended. prisrob