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Amazon Sales Rank: 13404
Publication Date: 2008-01-08
Release Date: 2008-01-08
Publisher: Pantheon
ISBN: 0375714723
Type: Paperback
Number Of Pages: 368
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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 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…
Average Rating: 
Review: 2009-10-11
Through a black hole into a world so like our own.
This book was fantastic. I'd circled it for years in the book store, and I was so happy I finally picked it up. Burns' characters are consistent, believable, and thoroughly fleshed out. You feel their emotions with the way Burns tells his story, and it brought me back to being a teenager and how the world looks through such inexperienced eyes. At the same time, there's something strange happening to everyone, and instead of being overdramatized, the problem lies in the background. Like so many of the threats in real life, the characters hope by ignoring it and pretending it's not true that it'll go away, or at least not affect them. The art was excellent, staying consistent and clear, creating an atmosphere that was believable but unique. I love the ending too, and I won't ruin it here, but it was perfect for the type of story told and leaves the reader feeling that everything that needed to be said was said.
Review: 2009-07-30
Ponderous
Can't wait for the movie version, though I was disappointed to learn that, after all the chazzerai, my favorite director (David Fincher) won't be doing it after all. For many years it was his passion project and I feel, who else can turn Charles Burns' powerful and yet turgid vision into something worth seeing?
As many have noted, Burns' artwork is stunning, and he has the 70s down pat, and the mysteries of teenage loneliness and angst he knows as well. As a writer, he suffers from a fatal dullness. The pictures he paints are scary, but his characters just mope along in mumbles, and what's worse is that, I've been reading the book for about a year and a half now, and I still can't tell the characters apart. Which one is Chris and which the artistic girl? Rob, Keith, what's the difference? And the action, if you can call it that, is so attenuated I grow sleepy. Finally today in a burst of energy I finished the book and it is dull. What a frustrating piece of work, so great on the one hand and such a disaster on the other. But yes, it is moody. And it will stay with me a long time.
Review: 2009-06-09
A great introduction to graphic novels
This was the second graphic novel that I ever read, the first was the book version of The Originals. I am not into manga or anime, but I decided that I should give this genre a try.
I really enjoyed Black Hole. It is a thinly veiled commentary on how people who are different are outcasts. He used the freakish nature of the disease to get our interest, but it is actually a parable for what goes on in our society everyday. The illustration style is captivating and engaging.
Since reading Black Hole, I have gone on to read other graphic novels. It was a great place to start.
Review: 2009-05-02
The terror of teenage years.
Black Hole is one of the more unsettling reads in the graphic novel world.
You might know Burns' work from that Iggy Pop album cover he did. It's kind of hard to miss, particularly in Black Hole where colour is saved for the covers, and nowhere else.
The run - gathered together here (more or less) tells the story of a 1970s STD. Not a regular STD, Dazed And Confused-style thing, but a complete mutative disorder. Through the use of the bug, as several characters call it, Burns highlights the unique terror of being an ugly teenager, and feeds it steroids.
It's difficult to say exactly why this work is so affecting. The starkness and almost stock-imagery feel of the art is a reason, I suppose; its precision allows no room for misinterpretation when you see some of the deformities some of the characters are afflicted with. But it's more than that; Burns focuses on something that's rotten within the concept of the teenager, with the world itself.
This is one you'll really have to read to understand. Sure, a lot of people won't like it, or won't see the big deal about it. But I'd urge you to look harder; like a Chambers or Lovecraft tale, there's a truly gargantuan horror lurking behind Black Hole, just out of sight.
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Amazon List Price: $18.95
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