Blog #3

   In my twisted utopia where censorship doesn't exist and graphic novels get the respect they deserve, all high schools would be required to teach surrealist genius Charles Burns' magnum opus, Black Hole. This of course will never happen on account of the sex, drugs, violence and indescribable grotesque dreamscapes that are not only written on paper, but shown to you in beautiful, painstaking detail by a master of his craft. 

   Black Hole was started by Burns in 1995 and took ten years to finish, resulting in a beautiful, intricate and sensitive work that takes place in the mid-1970's and tells the story of a Washington state high school during the outbreak of "the Bug," a sexually transmitted disease that physically mutates its carriers. The mutations can be easily hidden, like a small tail, or nightmarish, like say... a second mouth that grows on your neck and has a mind of its own. Many of the victims are exiled from society, leaving home to live in a makeshift campgrounds in the woods, where some of their more empathetic friends bring them food and living supplies. Burns works in all black and white and includes passages re-creating some of the characters nightmares, creating a unique point of view for each character, showing their individual frustrations, fears and desires.

   Shown mostly through the eyes of four characters (Keith, Eliza, Rob, and Chris) the story works as a metaphor for both the overwhelmingly rapid physical changes of a teenager and the social alienation that effects so many high school students, focusing on a struggle for social acceptance, and desire to hold on to a normal teenage life as they face the reality that the disease is something they'll never be able to run away from. 

Kind of hard to hear interview with Charles Burns