To say nothing of sprouting horns and moulting your skin. 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. And then the murders start.Īs hypnotically beautiful as it is horrifying (and, believe it or not, autobiographical), 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 any more, but Bowie was still just a little too weird. Black Hole (Pantheon Graphic Library) Black Hole (Pantheon Graphic Library): Charles Burns: 9780375423802: : Books Skip to main content. Read the Study Guide for Black Hole Black Hole essays are academic essays for citation. 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. Black Hole (Pantheon Graphic Library) Charles Burns on . Black Hole study guide contains a biography of Charles Burns, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis. There's no turning back.Īs 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 of it, or even to treat it. An edition of Black Hole (2005) Black Hole by Charles Burns 3. As more kids catch the bug, they are exiled from normal society because of their deformities. A 'bug' starts spreading through the school, an STD which causes its victims to develop strange physical mutations. The disease is manifested any number of ways - from the hideously grotesque to the subtle (and concealable) - but once you've got it, that's it. This comic book series revolves around the lives of high school kids in Seattle in the 70's.

We learn from the outset that a strange plague has descended upon the area's teenagers, transmitted by sexual contact. And you thought your adolescence was scary.

Black hole by charles burns