Black Hole

Black Hole by Charles Burns
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A sexually transmitted disease is infecting teenagers, a disease that mutates anyone that catches it. But what happens to the people who catch the teenage plague?

I'm a recent convert to Charles Burns so I was eager to try this, his multiple award winner. The awards were totally justified because Black Hole is awesome.

Set in the Seattle suburbs of the 1970s, Black Hole is the story of teenagers caught in a black hole of sex, booze, drugs, and a plague that inflicts mutations on anyone who catches it. Keith, Rob, and Chris are caught in its pull and may never escape.

Charles Burns' '50s EC throwback art is simultaneously sensitive and grotesque, depicting monstrous deformity, teenage angst, and gentler emotions with ease. The use of blacks is moody as hell and the book has a claustrophobic feel at times.

The writing is superb. Charles Burns clearly remembers what it's like to be a lovelorn, sex-crazed teenager. The angst, drug-addled tales are all too familiar if you toss out the ever-present threat of the sex plague.

Speaking of the sex plague, it could be interpreted as the feeling of alienation a lot of teens feel at one time or another. The afflicted separate themselves from the normals as they barely eke by, eventually withering away and dying.

I like that the story is told using shifting viewpoints and told in small morsels. Keith was the character I latched onto, although Chris and Rob had their moments. There's no happy ending, though. Nobody magically comes up with a cure for the sex plague. People just deal with it as best they can.

Black Hole deserves every award it has won. Five out of five sexually-transmitted mutations.

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