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Comics You May Have Missed: Black Hole

No Fly Zone: Comics You May Have Missed: Black Hole
© Mania

In the age of "helicopter parents" and umbilical cords that stretch from the womb to age 30, writer-artist Charles Burns's twisted, hyper-sexualized vision of the teenage psyche may not resonate as much as it once did. Regardless, even the pampered kids of today probably feel as alienated from their parents as any generation has, which makes Black Hole rather timeless.

Black Hole takes place in Seattle in the mid-1970s, where a grotesque STD called "the Bug" tears its way through the students of a suburban high school. Burns works with the usual high school melodramatics, but injects a level of psycho-sexual horror. Keith likes Chris from his biology class, but she's in love with Rob. Eliza likes Chris, but he can't get over the fact that she lives in a drug den with a bunch of stoners. There's more than that, but the Bug holds sway over all. At their first sexual encounter, Rob thinks Chris already knows he's infected. Now, she's got it. And, Eliza not only does she lives with burnouts, but she's got it too. In fact, more and more kids catch the Bug as the story progresses. But, it isn't some sort of itchy rash or inconvenient discharge, either. The disease turns the teenagers of suburban Seattle into H.R. Giger nightmares, giving them horns, scales, fangs, and all manner of monstrosities. Those who are too far gone live in a camp in the forest outside of town, occasionally venturing out for food. Some of the infected can pass unnoticed, but many are too obvious. On a strictly surface level, the combined pressure of adolescent woes and the Bug eventually send the cast spiraling towards tragedy. But on a less literal level, there's more going on in Black Hole.

Throughout Black Hole, we only see the characters' parents and teachers on occasion. In fact, they are curiously absent from much of the narrative. In the same way that Charles Schulz depicted the cast of Peanuts living in a childhood world of their own (the adults reduced to wordless warbling), Burns ratchets up the teenage isolation dial to 11 by making the adults barely present. It's probably intentional. Think about it: if an STD as obvious as the Bug were making the rounds, surely parents and teachers would be all over it. There would be school lectures, teenagers would be kept apart, and a panic would probably grip the town. While the uninfected treat the Bug's carriers with scorn, there is, overall, very little reaction from the adult world.

The Bug serves more as a complex metaphor for the horrors of adolescent growth, sexual awakenings, and the feeling of isolation from the larger world. Every teenager, no matter how fortunate, feels utterly alone. They think they may not escape childhood alive. And, make no mistake, the Bug is fucking scary. Having an STD as a teenager is probably a frightening enough experience, but the Bug forces the cast of Black Hole to do two things. First, the isolation they already feel as teens is made very literal. People shun the infected. Second, it makes them truly experience the runaway fantasies most teenagers have. Without parents, they live in the woods. They live on the road. They don't eat or shower often. It's as if Burns says, "Yes, adolescence is difficult and your parents seem harsh, but here's the alternative."

At first glance, Black Hole looks like an off-beat, indie art comic in the vein of Eightball--not identifiable with any of the beloved geek genres, and more avant-garde and experimental than anything. But, make no mistake Maniacs--Black Hole is a fucking horror comic of the first order, with shades of '70s Wes Craven and David Cronenberg. Burns litters the story with dreams and hallucinations of sexual terror that would make the men who directed Last House on the Left, The Brood, and Dead Ringers proud. Phallic snakes and vaginal wounds wraps themselves around his characters' minds, as the reader remembers coming to grips with his or her own sexuality. It wasn't much fun then, and, looking back, one wonders how anyone comes out sane. As a teenager, sexuality is a dark forest of confusing, conflicting, often unfulfilled desires--coupled with the ever present fear of STDs. Burns barely touches the fear and consequences of pregnancy, which is perhaps the book's only real shortcoming. But yes, Maniacs, Black Hole is a big, damn horror comic. Instead of shocking you with traditional gore--you know, bullet wounds, severed appendages, and blood-splashes aplenty--Burns invents new ways to unravel and contort the human body. A gaping vaginal wound on a girl's back is torn open to shed her skin. A tiny mouth on a young man's neck whispers his secrets while he sleeps. Instead of vampires or zombies, adolescent turmoil is the monster--made flesh by way of a disease that turns ordinary kids into walking horrors of Burns's own invention.

Burns's art shows bears his work with Art Spiegelman's Raw like a badge of honor. It looks like quintessential American underground comic art, though cleaner and more precise than Spiegelman or Robert Crumb. Actually, Burns's stuff kind of looks like someone threw Crumb's art in the shower and made it detox before going out in public. It features the same sort of exaggeration that both borders on mockery and reveals a sad humanity underneath. Watching the teens' transition from normal to monstrous is fucking painful. We said that Black Hole was a horror comic. But, it doesn't so much frighten you as leave you feeling unnerved, sympathetic, and disgusted. There's a scene towards the end in a KFC, of all places, that stands as one of the most powerful in the entirety of Black Hole--one that reminds us how close many of us walk the edge between darkness and light during adolescence.

Black Hole is a household name in independent and underground comics. It took 12 issues and nine years to come out, but it's available in trade paperback now. It's a challenging, hallucinogenic, nightmarish read that will leave you shaken and unnerved. But, the media often romanticizes the American teenage experience. We forget the long, dark night of the soul that is adolescence. In the whole of life experience, it's not a happy time. Charles Burns has the nerve to stand up and remind us what it was like.

You are now exiting the No-Fly Zone.