Black Hole

Charles Burns

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.